I’m going on record as saying it is the height of rudeness to presume that someone follows the same etiquette details as yourself. Etiquette standards vary from place to place and country to country… assuming someone has the same ideas on the subject as you is equivalent to assuming that person has the same religious and political leanings as yourself… not realistic, and not polite.
Furthermore, instead of saying to yourself… “Well, clearly friend X is familiar with the Etiquette Code of the Pompous Accords of 1769, and therefore I do not need to tell him relevant piece of information Y…” … just tell them. Assuming someone knows something is as bad as assuming they believe something… see point above.
No, you needn’t do it individually, unless you (in this case) only know one couple with children. Put it on the invitation. Tacky? Why is telling someone information that they may, and in all probability will, benefit from, tacky? It’s common-frigging sense. “Oh, that’s right… Jonathan’s not telepathic and has no capability to predict there is a no-child policy at the wedding… perhaps it would be courteous to let them know.”
I put my elbows on the table. It’s comfortable. If you subscribe to whatever Manners-Pope that says that’s a no-no, and my behavior offends you, let me know. I’m stubborn enough that I won’t change my behavior, but at least I’ll politely decline future invitations and spare you the offense.
(1) is mandatory; since the rule is that only the people named on the invitation are actually invited, you need to follow the rule if you want to have any hope at all of anybody else following it. If you address the invitation to “The Smiths”, you’re gonna get the Smiths. All of them. (By the way, this means that you need to correctly address the inner envelope as well as the outer (mailing) envelope, which many people just throw away when they open the invitation and thus can’t refer to when they finally get around to RSVP’ing and need to know who was actually invited.)
(2) is iffy. As I mentioned in my (badly coded) post on the first page, I think it’s rude to explicitly specify a disinvitation on what’s supposed to be an invitation. I’d recommend putting it instead on one of the additional sheets (map, hotel info, etc.) that accompany the invitation. As I said, it also really softens the blow of disinviting the kids if you can offer group childcare or a separate “kids party” for them instead.
(3) is probably a wise move, considering how many people seem not to draw the necessary deductions from (1). I’d recommend that you get on the horn quite promptly, within a week of the time you can reasonably expect people to have received the invitations, because if they’re going to have to make separate arrangements for their kids they’ll need a lot of advance notice.
I’d also recommend not stressing the “disinviting” motif or sounding as though you just called to break the bad news. Start off with some general happy chatter (brides are supposed to be especially good at this :)), ask in a hopeful way if they’ve got the invitation yet, tell them how much you’re hoping they can come, and just mention regretfully in passing how sorry you are that you couldn’t also invite little Jared or Mackenzie. Then they’ll either murmur something understanding and you can sign off amicably, or say “Huh? You mean Jared or Mackenzie isn’t invited to your wedding?”, and you’ll have a somewhat awkward conversation to get through, but not nearly as awkward as it would be if they showed up at the wedding with Jared or Mackenzie in tow.
And don’t forget tactic (4): having an evening and/or formal wedding, as Gargoyle mentioned. Parents tend to be more used to the idea of evening or formal events being adults-only and will be less likely to kick up a fuss about it.
CandidGamera, it’s only rude to assume that someone doesn’t share your culturally relative etiquette when it’s possible they don’t. In this case, the groom and the invitee are from the same culture, and the same region. Their basic etiquette is the same, so there’s no hubris here.
And like it or not, addressing invitations to only those who are invited is pretty basic etiquette in our culture. It’s not quite “say please and thank you and don’t talk with food in your mouth” basic, but we’re not talking about the proper honorific to use when introducing dukes and earls, or which of your three forks goes with which course. This is etiquette on the level of not letting the door swing back and hit the person behind you or not inviting yourself over to someone’s house for dinner.
Also, there seems to be some confusion as to what the OP means. I took his comments about “we went back and forth about it” to mean that he and LadyChance were debating among themselves about whether or not to go, and the groom got wind of the issue through the grapevine. Others have intepreted it as meaning he and the groom had been discussing the issue, which makes quite a bit of sense. Sadly, though, this interpretation would mean that the OP was pressuring his friend for an invitation for BabyKate, which is quite rude. If this is the case, he’s out of wedding weenie territory and on into being the wedding buttmunch. Every wedding has one, unfortunately.
I would agree if this were some obscure rule of etiquette tucked away in a footnote somewhere in a book by Miss Manners.
However, it’s less a matter of formal etiquette and more a matter of common knowledge that the only people who are invited to an event are the people whose names appear on the invitation.
My coworker is getting married and has invited me to the wedding, but the name of the guy I’m seeing was not on the invitation so I figure he’s not invited and I’ll be flying solo to that event. I could ask her if he can come, but I don’t think that would be very polite.
This way will probably be more fun also, since all of us coworker types who will be there solo can talk to each other at the event. Rather like a young kid who can’t appreciate the event, the guy I’m dating wouldn’t be able to appreciate it cause he wouldn’t know anyone. If he did, and he could, I’m sure his name woulda been on the envelope. Kind of like if the kids were invited.
CandidGamera:I’m going on record as saying it is the height of rudeness to presume that someone follows the same etiquette details as yourself.
No, the height of rudeness is to presume to correct other people directly when they’re not following the same etiquette details as yourself. See below.
Etiquette standards vary from place to place and country to country…
Yes, but they still are standards, and it’s quite reasonable to expect people to be familiar with—and abide by—at least the basic etiquette standards of the place/country/social group they’re dealing with. That’s simply assuming they know basic manners, which is a fair assumption to make. If you don’t know the basic manners practiced by the group you happen to be in, that’s when you do a lot of alert but discreet glancing around to see what everybody else is doing so that you can imitate them.
Tacky? Why is telling someone information that they may, and in all probability will, benefit from, tacky?
Because, for one thing, it’s rude to assume that your friends don’t know basic manners. I’m not saying it’s wrong, mind you, just that it’s officially rude. If you want to tell your friends explicitly something that they would have known from basic manners, but you’re not sure that they actually do know it—which, as you point out, is sound common sense in many cases—then you have to come up with a less direct method of telling them. See my suggestions above for politely conveying the “no-kids-at-weddings” policy without bluntly telling people “Your kids aren’t invited, so leave 'em home!”
I put my elbows on the table. It’s comfortable. If you subscribe to whatever Manners-Pope that says that’s a no-no, and my behavior offends you, let me know.
Fair enough, I’m letting you know. It is acceptable in informal American manners to put your elbows on the table (when eating in company, I suppose you mean), but unacceptable to do so in a formal American social situation. When you’re the host at your own table, you get to decide whether things are formal or informal, so you can put your elbows on the table if you want to. When you’re a guest at somebody else’s table, they get to decide, so if you’re not sure about how to behave the safest thing is to watch them and do what they do.
I’m stubborn enough that I won’t change my behavior
Now that is flat-out rude. Yes, etiquette standards differ from place to place and country to country, but you don’t get to decide whether and when they differ from individual to individual. It is stupid to have everybody stubbornly insisting on their own right to use whatever personal manners they please and sorting out all the different offense levels on an individual basis, rather than abiding by some simple and well-known common standards. It does not improve anybody’s social life to have no way of knowing whether some of their guests might lick their plates or pee in the fireplace, and to have to deal with all the resulting awkwardnesses on the spot, so to speak. Just get the chip off your shoulder and mind your manners like a sensible adult.
If it’s any consolation, the only thing ruder than your declaring you don’t need to abide by etiquette standards is somebody else’s openly reproaching you for not abiding by etiquette standards. (No, this situation right now doesn’t count, because we’re debating the etiquette of social occasions rather than practicing it.) Putting your elbows on the table at a formal dinner is rude, but it would be even ruder for someone there to tell you that you ought to take your elbows off the table.
but at least I’ll politely decline future invitations and spare you the offense.
Polite hosts won’t say anything to you about it. They’ll just spare themselves (and their better-mannered guests) the offense by not inviting you again.
You are really dancing on my last good nerve. I used to be Director of Catering at a very la-de-dah hotel and planned more weddings than I care to remember. I swear to God I don’t care how poor I am I will never, ever work with wedding groups again. It’s because of all of this, “If my kids can’t go…”, “I’m not going if so and so isn’t invited,” etc., etc.
GET OVER IT! Not everything revolves around your precious little darling. When she starts screaming during the ceremony, then skidding and twirling around the dance floor during the reception…ugh! There are times when children are appropriate and times when they are not. Get a babysitter! It is a wedding for goodness sake, not an occasion for you to show off how cute your 4 year old is. Believe me, people have seen 4 year olds before… It’s an adult event where we all use our “indoor” voices. Who says so? Whoever planned the event, issued the invitations and is paying the bill.
Indirectness works the other way, too. When my children were young, if I wasn’t sure if they were invited to a family wedding ( or any other party) * , I would call the cousin who was getting married, congratulate him or her, and make some reference to hoping I could find a babysitter so both my husband and I can attend. Either they say they hope I’ll be able to make it or they say “bring them” . Either way, I have my answer, and I don’t look like I’m asking for an invitation.
My first cousins generally invited my children to any parties they had while my children were young, but every now and then, they didn’t. One group of first cousins had 6 first cousins on my side of the family, and at least ten on the other side. If the other party had an equally large family, the only kids invited would be the nieces and nephews.
The basic rule here is what a list of people too long to credit here have already stated: the invitees are the people named on the invitation. Sometimes it’s tough, but that’s just life. If you can’t go, you can’t go.
There are caveats, and might’ve-could’ve-should’ves, but they don’t undermine the basic rule. One caveat is that if you’re close enough to the inviter, you can call up, politely explain your situation, and ask if your child/friend/whatever may attend along with you. But there’s no obligation on their part, and it’s a major no-no for the guest to make the inviter feel like they’re the bad guy if they say no.
And one shoulda is that, for something like a wedding, it would be a really swell thing if those throwing the party were to provide a babysitter to make life easier on their guests. (My wife and I did at our wedding, and we were working within a tight budget; I was still in grad school, and her parents weren’t in a position to help out much with the costs. And AFAIAC, the swankier the wedding, the less excu$e there is for not providing somewhere to park the kids and someone to look after them, because the more minute a cost it is compared to everything else.)
BUT the happy couple, or their parents, or whoever is throwing the party, is not obligated to provide such a service. Maybe in thirty years, Emily Post will say it’s something the hosts should provide at a wedding if they can. Them’s ain’t the rules now, though. So if the hosts don’t provide babysitting, you’re welcome to grumble in your heart, but not in a way that would get back to the hosts and make them feel bad.
Every wedding I have ever been to with kids had little screamers and was unpleasant for everybody. Every adult [age 13 and over] wedding I have been to has been great … the youger folk tended to cluster in rough age groups and the only mixed age groups were on the dance floor and at tables.
As I doubt I will ever get married again, unless mr aruvqan dies, and even if i do get remarried it wont be a formal churching or even reception but I am in favor of allowing weddings to be no kid zones if people want. Realistically, 4 months or sometimes even longer is way more than enough time to plan babysitting.
And FWIW, people invited are named on the invite, and that is that=) with us, it is mr and mrs aruvqan … no kids [unless we can bring a cat?] =)
doreen: *Either way, I have my answer, and I don’t look like I’m asking for an invitation. *
Absolutely. After all, telling someone that their loved ones are not wanted at an important event, for whatever reason, always has kind of an unpleasant ring to it. A little tact and good-nature make it much less unpleasant than a blunt “No Children Under 13 Allowed” or some such proclamation.
The problem is that, at least in my family, events that include the kids tend to become about the kids. You have to make sure that the kids have something to eat, something to do, and are properly supervised. Everyone ends up paying attention to the kids rather than one another. Yes, this includes weddings.
Also, if I’m spending upwards of ten grand on a wedding, I’d rather it not be an opportunity for a parent to teach his six-year-old that screaming and running up and down the aisles during a church service is not appropriate. An extreme example, sure, but if you have to teach a child how to behave in public, it means they don’t know, or at least don’t have it down 100% of the time.
But if it’s my wedding, I don’t want people to duck out early. I want them to enjoy themselves so they won’t want to duck out early.
I just wanna say that I’ve found this thread very educational, and no matter how it turns out, I’ve definitely learned something about wedding invitation etiquette. For one thing, it now explains the rather odd (to me) wording of the invites we got for our niece’s wedding, upcoming in May. We got two invitations for our household:
#1, addressed to:
Boxer and Duck Duck Goose
Bonzo
La Principessa
#2, addressed to:
The Cat Who Walks Alone
Big Jake
I thought it was odd that Niece would feel a need to specify (a) that her two younger teenage cousins were invited in the first place. Aren’t they surgically attached at Mom and Dad’s hip? Don’t they go everywhere with us anyway? Answer: “Only the people whose names are on the invitation are invited”. If they hadn’t been listed, we would had to have found a babysitter for a 14 and a 17, and there would have been blood on the floor.
And (b) that her oldest teenage cousin and her fiance would require a separate invitation just for them. Why not just list them under Mom and Dad? Answer: Because they count as “real grownups” all by themselves now, they’re a team. They require their own invitation.
my baby’s growing up
[snif]
I’m having a mostly child-free wedding. We are having a flower girl and a ring bearer - 7 and 4 -, a junior bridesmaid - 9, and their three siblings - 6, 5, and 3. Most family friends are planning not to bring their children. I’m very close to the six children attending, and they are also the children whose parents I trust. The seven, six, and three year old are the most well-behaved children I have ever met - they’ve behaved themselves in expensive restaurants (Ruth’s Chris), during parties with adults, and every single time I’ve seen them - their parents do an awesome job of raising them. The other three children are my cousins’ children, and again, I trust their parents.
I shouldn’t have to justify having some children and not others. If I invite one friend from work, am I required to invite the entire office? It’s not an all or nothing situation. However, I’m pretty lenient about whether or not kids will attend. We have more kids coming than we’d expected.
However, if it’s a matter of friends not attending because they have nowhere to take their child, I’d rather they bring their child and attend. In the case of two friends who will have six-month-old babies, I desperately want them to attend because I can’t imagine getting married without them. I’ve told them to bring their babies if it’s a matter of bringing them or not attending.
The main reason we’ve said that the wedding is mostly child-free is because of one child. She’s the granddaughter of my parents’ best friends and her own parents are awful. They spoil her rotten and she is incredibly badly-behaved. Somehow at my own brother’s wedding, I got saddled with her. I didn’t hear the toast made by my dad to my brother and sister-in-law because I was busy asking her to be quiet. And of course, her mother and father had conveniently disappeared. I don’t want to be watching her on my own wedding day. My mother has already made it clear to her grandparents that she will not be attending (and her grandparents are fine with it - they’d be the one to get stuck with her, and I want them to enjoy themselves).
I understand the OP’s predicament, but I also understand the reasoning of the bride and the groom. Children can be incredibly distracting at times and I’ve heard horror stories about weddings with children. And I’m certainly not saying that this it the OP’s situation, but in my own case, it’s the children’s parents I don’t trust to remove the child from being a distraction - which is why we’re trying to limit the number of children that attend.
When it comes to children under the age of twelve, many folks will assume that you A.) forgot to put them on the invitiation or B.) didn’t feel the need to do so, since it’s only common sense that they go most places you go.
Unless I told someone specifically that children weren’t invited, I would expect them to bring the kids or not, depending on their own personal preference.
In other words, to paraphrase a good Lone Ranger joke, “What you mean ‘our’ culture, kemosabe?”
Maybe where you come from, it is. Personally, if I hadn’t specified ‘no children’, I think I’ve implicitly given them permission to bring children or not, as they like.
DDG:And (b) that her oldest teenage cousin and her fiance would require a separate invitation just for them. Why not just list them under Mom and Dad? Answer: Because they count as “real grownups” all by themselves now, they’re a team. They require their own invitation.
Actually, that tradition sometimes extends to sending a separate invitation addressed only to the (minor) kids (though still in the parents’ envelope. Argh, I mean that the kids’ invitation is still in the same envelope with the parents’ invitation, of course).
It is by no means required, but is often kinda sweet if you can afford the extra invitations and postage, to let young kids have a fancy engraved invitation card of their very own—ooooh. (Well, maybe kids today are blase about it, but it used to be quite unusual and exciting to get a Fancy Formal Letter.) And when they feel they have a personal stake in the correspondence, they tend to nag their parents into RSVP’ing early!
I still remember when I was little getting a separate invitation for me and my brother and sister to our cousin’s wedding. It was addressed very traditionally, and I’ll never forget the thrill of realizing that I was “Miss [Lastname]” as opposed to “Miss [Firstname] [Lastname]” because I was the eldest daughter, just like in old books. In other words, I was the “Miss [Lastname]”, the default “Miss [Lastname]”. Talk about pride of birth and reveling in unearned advantages! I know just how aristocrats must feel.
(Warning: I don’t think it’s still considered correct to address invitations that way, and it’s definitely very unusual. The eldest daughter nowadays is more likely to feel miffed that you left out her first name. And many people don’t use honorifics like “Miss” at all any more, even on wedding invitations, especially for children.)
CG:Personally, if I hadn’t specified ‘no children’, I think I’ve implicitly given them permission to bring children or not, as they like.
In theory, there’s nothing wrong at all with your deciding what rules seem sensible to you and then acting on them, but in practice, it’s a royal pain not to have a basic set of rules as a common standard. If everyone in your own social group understands your non-standard rules, that’s just fine. But if you’re dealing with people outside that group, it makes a lot more sense for you to expend the minor effort to understand what the basic standard rules are than for everyone to have to deal with the consequences of the misunderstanding after it happens.
It’s like traffic laws: the most important thing is not that everybody does what seems most logical and efficient to them individually, but that everybody knows what the standard rules are that everybody’s expected to follow. Otherwise, you end up with a lot of misunderstandings, incompatible choices, and collisions. And that’s what you’ll get if you go around automatically assuming that your small children are invited to weddings even if they’re not named on the invitations.
Irony, much? I expressed my opinion of the rudest thing one could do, and you corrected me, saying that correcting someone else on details of manners was more rude? Despite your disclaimer below, it is applicable… because there’s no such thing as ‘American’ manners. One arbitrary person somewhere decided to make up a code of behavior, and a bunch of folks subscribe to it, but that’s no concern of mine. I’m polite (Which is different from being mannered), but my standards of etiquette are my own.
So if I’m invited to a Jewish friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah, I’m supposed to do a cram session on the Talmud? They should just assume I know all the intricacies of the ceremony? And imitation’s a fine theory, but some of us are intelligent without being especially observant. Or would it possibly make a tiny bit more sense for him to possibly ask me if I’m familiar with it, or detail the high points?
I know which option saves time and embarrassment.
And yes, I suppose you can fire back that invitations are entirely different, yadda yadda… let me make something clear, though… I’ve never participated in a wedding in anything other than a “guest” fashion after the age of 5 or so. Even as a guest, I’ve only been to a handful. If I saw an invitation addressed to me and my hypothetical wife, and we had a hypothetical child around 4, I would feel free to bring the child. If the bride and groom don’t want to invite me to their next wedding (heh), so be it. That hypothetical child depends on me and his hypothetical mother for his hypothetical welfare. And anyone who thinks I’m going to assume I have to leave him behind because his name doesn’t appear on the invitation, can go to hypothetical hell.
What’s so basic about wedding invitations? Do you get a lot of them? My friends and family tend to get married once. And given that I’m 25, most of them aren’t married yet.
And your suggestions are simply delightful… I’m happy, as long as that ifnormation gets conveyed. I try to never assume someone knows something beyond the English language. (And even that’s bad sometimes. ) If I start to explain something they already know, they can politely interrupt and tell me so, and I won’t be offended. Usually, I’ll just ask if they’re familiar with the subject of discussion.
Well, I abhor formality. I don’t enjoy dressing in a formal fashion or eating in a formal fashion. And frankly, I don’t see why any should be bothered by elbows on a table.
Actually, I do. It’s a wonderful free country we live in. Though perhaps we should have a constitutional amendment protecting our right to prop our elbows on our tables.
Of course, there are things that I do generally agree with in the generally-accepted manners codes. Definitely no peeing in the fireplace. That’s simply indecorous. If someone wants to lick their plate, though… well, I’ll probably get a chuckle out of it, but I won’t be offended.
Really? So all the mannersists out there have painted themselves in a corner?
“It’s impolite to gnaw the hostess’s leg, but dash it all, I can’t say anything about it!”
Cool. Hopefully they’ll logic-loop themselves into complete silence in a few decades by deciding its rude to print books on manners.
Which won’t bother me in the slightest. If they value silly, niggling details of behavior like using the proper fork or not propping up one’s elbows when one’s arms are tired, I’m better off not dealing with them.
Well, darlin’, you know what the first three letters in assume are, right? People who make such assumptions in spite of commonly-known custom and etiquette to the contrary are indeed making asses of themselves. The fact that some people are asses doesn’t mean I should pre-emptively treat everyone as though they’ll be asses. Doing so would be quite rude and insulting.
Think about it–you call someone and invite them and their SO to a party. Them, specifically, by name. As in, “Would you and thus-and-such like to come to a party next Saturday?” Does that give them carte blanche to bring adult siblings or friends who live with them and go everywhere they go? Does the invitation automatically include the couple’s Shih Tzu, who goes pretty much everywhere with them? You just forgot to mention the friend or sibling or dog, or took it as a given that they went everywhere with the couple, right? Right?
A-ha! But people often DO ignore traffic laws, and those even have real penalties! They do so because it’s more convenient for them, or perhaps they’re ignorant of specific statutes. And yes, it causes collisions, of course…
But standards of etiquette are the same situation, only worse! Not only do you have people who choose to ignore them or are ignorant of them, both of those outcomes are more likely because there are no tangible consequences.
However, for those of us who do want to be nice to other folks, if the instructions are spelled out in a clear and direct fashion, we will follow them.
To put it another way : You cannot possibly guarantee every person you know has the same ideas and level of knowledge about etiquette as you do. As double-plus-good as it would be to have everyone agree on exactly the same standards of etiquette, it ain’t gonna happen. So it’s simpler, and quicker, to spell out the grey areas.
) If I start to explain something they already know, they can politely interrupt and tell me so, and I won’t be offended. Usually, I’ll just ask if they’re familiar with the subject of discussion.