Category Archives: A Perfectly Polite Wedding

Things In The Emily Post Wedding Etiquette Book We’ve Never Heard Of

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9780062326102The thing about etiquette is that there are now thousands upon thousands of “rules,” and all of them have precedent. With many ceremonies we rely on “tradition,” and though that’s a fleeting and ever-changing thing, you can always reach back to something a specific group of people did a few times 200 years ago and say “well, it’s tradition!” and everyone will take you at your word. The flip side of this is that, during the ongoing pressure of planning a wedding, people will insist on traditions you have never heard of, and you may feel forced to comply just because you’ve been convinced said-custom is indeed a tradition.

Recently, I received a copy of the 6th edition of Emily Post’s Wedding Etiquette, a lovely hardcover filled with tips on seasonal flowers, invitation wording, and updated text about same-sex marriage and having a “man of honor.” (It does still say that “men may choose not to wear a ring” but makes no mention that women don’t have to wear rings either. Ugh.) But looking through, there were a number of things that I realized I have never seen in person. I have been to 15 weddings in my lifetime (18 by the end of the year, including my own), from Catholic to Polish Orthodox to secular, Indian to Jewish, formal to garden party, and none of these things has ever happened. That doesn’t mean they never happened, or don’t still happen, or that you shouldn’t do them; this is just a reminder that you do not have to take every bit of advice given to you.

  • Having a separate “bridal bouquet” and “tossing bouquet.”
  • During the Best Man’s toast, it used to be customary for him to read any congratulatory telegrams. I’d actually be cool with bringing this back, so someone send me a wedding telegram.
  • Seeing the bride and groom serve cake to their parents. “Tradition has it that the bride serve the groom’s parents, and he serves hers.”
  • We knew it was tradition for the bride’s family to pay for the ceremony and reception, and the groom’s family to pay for the rehearsal dinner. However, the groom’s family is also apparently supposed to pay for the engagement and wedding rings, the officiant’s fee and transportation, and all the corsages. This seems complicated.
  • “Always address wedding invitation envelopes by hand, even when inviting hundreds of guests.” I have received plenty of wedding invitations with our names printed on the envelopes, and the world kept spinning.
  • Checking whether throwing rice/confetti/etc is allowed with your venue. Does anyone actually throw rice anymore???
  • The groomsmen also serve as ushers and show the guests to their seats.
  • Technically, this is from the 5th edition of this book, but traditionally, the couple was supposed to pay for the accommodations of their bridal party.
  • One of the groom’s traditional duties was to plan the whole honeymoon, often not telling the bride where they were going until they got there.

Showers, Bachelor/ette Parties, and Rehearsal Dinners, oh my!

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All your pre-wedding parties will be in beautiful soft focus. [Via Flickr user tmarsee530]

Despite weddings already being a huge big party that is going to stress you out for a year or more, people like to have other, smaller parties around weddings. Fun! As a soon-to-be-married person, you might have some expectations about these parties from things you have seen from wedding shows and movies. These expectations might be wrong, but we are here to help! You also might find yourself wanting to avoid these parties, in which case see this previous post about how to handle avoiding having a shower.

Showers

  • Showers shouldn’t be thrown by family members or (especially) the couple! However, family members can throw family-only showers. In this instance family members mean your mother, your significant other’s mother, your sibling, or your grandparents. It is okay for aunts/uncles/cousins. The reason for this is that a shower is defined by being all about showering the bride (or couple) with presents. Since, traditionally, the bride’s family was responsible for setting her up with her trousseau, her family requesting presents from other people for her was essentially like asking for presents for themselves to help defray the cost of setting up her home. Though this isn’t really true anymore, family thrown showers still have a tone of “greediness.” However, in many social circles it is completely fine and normal, so just be sure to check.
  • A shower shouldn’t be something that the bride requests or expects but once it is offered, the bride should be the one to provide the guest list and have final veto of activities. (Or veto of the event altogether.)
  • Shower invitations can include registry information as the whole purpose of the party is to give presents
  • You need to write thank you notes for all gifts given at the shower- make sure someone is writing down what came from who (it is not a cute shower game to have guests self address envelopes for their thank you notes, however.)
  • If you have multiple showers, the guests lists shouldn’t overlap (except, parents/siblings and wedding party), but if they do, guests are only expected to bring gifts to ONE shower. A kind bride will acknowledge that duplicate guests gave a gift at a previous party.
  • Often, someone will collect the ribbons from the gifts and create a “bouquet” for the bride to carry at the rehearsal.

Bachelor/ette Parties

  • Bachelor/ette parties are not gift giving occasions. Though some groups will decide to work a lingerie shower into the festivities (but this should not occur if the same group is already throwing a regular shower).
  • Bachelor/ette parties are optional and you must wait until someone offers to throw one. You can’t just assign it to the maid of honor/best man. However, you do get to have input and final say on the activities of the party.
  • You can throw your own bachelor/ette party if you are truly hosting ie paying for everything, such as having a “slumber party” at your house or something. If you expect everyone else to go out to something you plan and cover your dinner, drinks, strippers, whatever, you shouldn’t be the one planning it.

The Rehearsal

  • The rehearsal is important if you have a long or complicated ceremony. Most people opt to have one just so everyone will know where to stand and when. There are a lot of different arrangements of who walks down the aisle in which order and who stands where, so you don’t want to assume that you are all on the same page.
  • Everyone participating in the ceremony should be present at the rehearsal so they all know where to go and when during the ceremony.
  • Superstitious brides don’t participate in the rehearsal but watch from the side with a stand-in walking down the aisle.

Rehearsal Dinner

  • Rehearsal dinners are not a requirement, though they are a nice way to gather with your most important people and thank them for showing up for the rehearsal.
  • Traditionally (except this tradition really only goes back to the 1940s/50s), since the bride’s family was hosting and paying for the wedding, the groom’s family would pay for the rehearsal dinner. Now, you will have to all decide together who is going to pay for it.
  • Typically, you invite both sets of parents, the whole wedding party and their significant others (if applicable), any readers, and the officiant. Many people like to invite out of town guests and close relatives as well.
  • You want to make sure to actually invite your guests to this event, either with a formal paper invitation, evite, or a simple email or phone call. These invitations should be sent fairly soon after the wedding invitation
  • You don’t have to have a fancy sit down dinner; a pizza party or backyard barbeque sound like awesome rehearsal dinners!
  • It doesn’t even have to be a dinner, but can be a brunch or lunch immediately following the rehearsal.
  • People often give spontaneous toasts at the rehearsal, this is perfectly fine.
  • Many couples give gifts to their attendants during this time.

All parties

You can’t invite people to wedding parties who aren’t invited to the wedding itself. An exception would be a shower that your co-workers or other specific group (such as a sports team) throw you.

The Care and Keeping of Wedding Attendants

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While I appreciate the trend for tasteful bridesmaids dresses, the world seems less rich without dresses like this.

While I appreciate the trend for tasteful bridesmaids dresses, the world seems less rich without dresses like these.

Etiquette has nothing to say about how many wedding attendants you have, whether they are the same gender of the half of the couple they are standing up for, what you ask them to wear, all of that is optional and completely up to you, no judgments.

However, if you do have attendants, here are some things to keep in mind.

  • The only job of an attendant is to wear what you tell them to wear and stand up with you during your ceremony. While showers, bachelor/ette parties are duties that are traditionally and frequently arranged by the wedding party, they are absolutely not required and you can’t throw a fit if your attendants choose not to do so for whatever reason.
  • In the US, you can ask that the wedding party cover the cost of their attire/hair/make up even if you are picking it out. But you should be upfront about the potential cost and be understanding if someone needs to drop out because they can’t afford it.
  • Special gifts for the wedding party aren’t required, but they are very nice. A big thank you IS required.
  • Remember, these people are doing you a huge favor and you need to treat them respectfully throughout the whole process.
  • During the ceremony, you can have them perform certain duties such as holding the bouquet/rings and helping to arrange the dress before walking down and then back up the aisle.
  • Did you know that traditionally the groomsmen other than the Best Man were called Ushers and they would actually help usher guests to their seats before the ceremony?
  • While you can make your attendants wear pretty much anything you want, you should take their thoughts and feelings into consideration.
  • You can expect that you attendants show up on time and ready to go for the rehearsal and on the wedding day itself.

Now it is not unreasonable that you will want help and support from the people who are supposed to be your best friends and that you will want them to go above and beyond what etiquette requires of them. You just need to talk to them before they agree to be part of your wedding party and see what their expectations and abilities are and if they align with what you want and need. See this really excellent post about the management of a wedding party on Offbeat Bride for more ideas.

Wedding Invitations

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Dare I say that this invitation seems more modern than what you would expect for a royal wedding? [Via Flickr user markhillary]

We’ve talked about what to do with a wedding invitation for a guest, so now we have the etiquette of actually sending out wedding invitations.

Save the Dates

Save the dates are a relatively recent invention— a pre-invitation of sorts. They should be sent out as soon as you finalize your date and rough location. These do not have to go out to everyone you think you are going to invite. They should mostly go out to the most important people and especially the ones that live furthest away and will need to make major travel plans. If you send someone a Save the Date, you MUST invite them to the wedding, no take backsies (with a few exceptions), thus you should be judicious about sending them to only the people you are sure you are going to invite, lest you wind up in a position where you invite 100 friends and then realize your parents had a list of 200 relatives and your venue only fits 150. I should note that Save the Dates are absolutely optional, but something that many couples find useful.

Invitations

The style of your invitation should match the style of your wedding. This helps guests have a hint of the style of dress to wear and what to expect. Never include information about gifts or registries, the invitation should be about your desire to have the guest attend your very important day, not about what towels you need. I do like a discreet wedding website URL on an invitation because then your invitation can be simple and elegant and your guests can get all the nitty gritty details online.

The great thing about wedding invitations these days is that the style can really represent your event any way you want. This is a far cry from back in the day when only engraved invitations on white, ivory, or cream paper (with no borders or other decorations!) were considered acceptable and all the old biddies would turn your invitation over so they could check for the slight tell-tale engraving indentation on the back. And don’t even get them started on mechanically-made embossing dies.

Invitation Wording

There are many ways to word an invitation. This is the very traditional formal version:

Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Humperdink

request the honour of your presence

at the marriage of their daughter

Geraldine

to

Mr. Dudley Winklesmith

on Saturday, the fifteenth of March

Two thousand and fourteen

at five o’clock

The Church of the Holy Rollers

New York City

and afterward at

“The Snobby Club”

Now this invitation is worded for the parents of the bride as the hosts and at a church wedding. If the wedding is not at a church, you would substitute “request the pleasure of your company” for the words “request the honour of your presence” (honour is always spelled with a u in formal wedding invitations and is only used for a church ceremony). Also, traditionally in Jewish weddings, you write “the marriage of their daughter Geraldine and Mr. Dudley Smith” (using “and” in place of “to”).  On a formal invitation, you can put RSVP in the lower left corner. Dress code does not belong on a formal invitation, except, Black Tie may be written in the lower left corner. (But please, do find a way to tell your guests what the dress code is.)

The modern formal invitation often acknowledges the joint hosting by the couple and/or their parents and often includes both sets of parents regardless of who is hosting. A modern formal invitation would look more like this:

Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Humperdink

and Mr. and Mrs. Irving Winklesmith

request the honour of your presence

at the marriage of

Miss Geraldine Humperdink

to

Mr. Dudley Winklesmith

on Saturday, the fifteenth of March

Two thousand and fourteen

at five o’clock

The Church of the Holy Rollers

New York City

and afterward at

“The Snobby Club”

If the couple is hosting on their own, the invitation would look more like this:

The pleasure of your company

is requested at the marriage of

Miss Geraldine Humperdink

to

Mr. Dudley Winklesmith

on Saturday, the fifteenth of March

Two thousand and fourteen

at five o’clock

 The Snobby Club

New York City

Of course, these days you are welcome to do almost anything with your invitations! You should, however, include:

  • That it is, indeed, a wedding. (or a commitment ceremony or whatever, just some indication of what kind of event you are having).
  • Who is getting married (including the last names somewhere [in the examples above, Geraldine is used alone only following her parents names—if she had a different last name then them, she would be noted as Miss Geraldine Smith).
  • The date and the time (the time is traditionally listed as when the ceremony starts, but you might want to give ½ an hour or so buffer so everyone is definitely there before you start.) And don’t feel like you have to spell the date and time out, numerals are just fine.
  • The location.

Some informal invitation wordings that I like are:

Geraldine Marie Humperdink

and

Dudley Michael Winklesmith

request the pleasure of your company

at their marriage

etc

—

Together with their parents

Geraldine Marie Humperdink

and

Dudley Michael Winklesmith

request the pleasure of your company

at their marriage

etc

—

Please join

Geraldine Humperdink

and

Dudley Winklesmith

at the celebration of their marriage

etc

See many more great examples here.

Addressing Invitations

In the interest of space, please see this post on forms of address.

If you are using both an inner and outer envelope, you can use the formal address on the outer envelope and then just use first names on the inner envelope. The inner envelope is also a great space to include the names of kids you are inviting—parents only on the outer envelope and then everyone by first name on the inner.

Mailing Invitations

Invitations should be sent out 6-8 weeks ahead of time, especially these days with the abundance of Save the Dates, the actual invitation is really more of a formality.

Response Cards

Technically response cards are against etiquette because including them insultingly implies that the guest doesn’t know to RSVP correctly (which is technically with a handwritten response on their own stationery). However, nowadays, many people don’t know how to RSVP “correctly” so I think they are a useful tool. If you do use them, make sure to include a self addressed, stamped envelope. And for your own sanity, make sure to include a line asking for their name so you know who is responding! Email, phone, and wedding website RSVP instructions are all perfectly acceptable as well.

The Wedding Guest List

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If you are a princess, everyone wants to come to your wedding. [Via Library of Congress]

As we are coming to the end of “engagement season” and Valentine’s Day, we probably have a lot of newly engaged readers who don’t know where to begin. While we can’t help you pick out your napkin colors (trust us, we are too busy picking out Jaya’s napkin colors), we can help you throw A Perfectly Polite Wedding with our new series of posts on hosting a wedding.

When you begin to plan a wedding, the first two things you have to decide are your budget and your guest list because everything will come from there. The budget is up to you (but just let me say that you can have a beautifully polite wedding on $500 just as easily as you can have a $1 million wedding that is full of faux pas) but when it comes to your guest list there are a few things to remember.

Miss Manners’ advice about guest lists is to decide who you want to invite before you start looking at venues and getting limitations on the number of people you can include. Her opinion is that the day should be more about sharing a special time with the people you love rather than having the perfect venue that can’t hold all the people you love. This is pretty subjective of course. [Ed Note: We decided that we couldn’t handle being at the center of more than 150 people without a lot of social anxiety triggering, so we looked at venues with that limit, which gave us room to invite everyone we really cared about without there being a guest list of 300 4th cousins and “family friends” we’d never met. -Jaya]

Sometimes though, the people you love have people they love and those partners also need to be included. People who are married, engaged, or living together (in a romantic sense) are considered social units and must be invited together. Sorry if you’ve never met your kindergarten best friend’s husband, you must still invite him. Many people also extend this to long term romantic partners who don’t live together.

Luckily, there is no obligation to invite single people with an “and guest” or “plus one.” If you do know that a friend might want to bring some “special” that you don’t really know, you should ask them for the name and address the invitation to your friend and that person by name rather than just as a plus one. This way you also prevent a rude situation where a guest brings a plus one who you didn’t want at the wedding.

Invitations for people you know won’t be able to attend are a kind gesture for people whom you are very close to. However, be cautious about sending them to people who aren’t very close friends or family as wedding invitations often make people feel obligated to send a gift and sending them out willy nilly to far away people can seem greedy.

I used to be very against A lists and B lists, because duh, no one wants to be on the B list and it can be very hurtful if they find out they are. But I encountered a situation where a couple was having a wedding and in their long planning process had made some new friends that they weren’t able to invite as everything had already been set. However, a couple days before the wedding, they heard that a few guests weren’t able to make it, so they called up some of their new friends and explained the situation and said that they would love it if they would be able to come on such short notice. The friends were thrilled and came and had a great time. The moral of the story being that it can work, but it deserves a very personal phone call.