How Do I Keep People From Throwing Me Bridal Showers?

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Leave YOUR advice for the bride in the comments. [Via Flickr user Ceng Design]

Dear Uncommon Courtesy,

I am getting married soon, and this is completely a ridiculous problem, but I am being inundated with offers to throw pre-wedding parties and events. People want to give me bridal showers, bachelorette parties, and pre-wedding family get togethers. I’m very grateful of course, but I am not really interested in being the center of attention and I don’t really have time to attend all these different events. How can I turn them down politely and without hurting anyone’s feelings?

Sincerely,

Low key bride

Official Etiquette:

Strangely, Miss Manners has tons of advice for guests who want to get out of attending (and bringing gifts!) to a never ending string of pre-wedding parties, but she hasn’t covered advice for brides who don’t want to go to their own parties. Therefore, the default answer is to just be gracious and go, you monster! We kid of course, but this is sort of the problem with the trend of greedy brides- people just can’t fathom the idea that someone wouldn’t want to have a bridal shower or bachelorette party.

Our Take:

Jaya: Oof, this is really a problem! I was dealing with this a little myself, and I’m someone who gets burnt out on social interactions pretty easily, and gets anxious about being “on” and such. I know I’m lucky that so many people want to celebrate, but it can be overwhelming when you just want to throw one party and everyone insists on half a dozen parties to ring in that party!

Victoria: So how are you handling it?

Jaya: Trying to graciously turn things down, in a “oh you really don’t have to do that” way, with mixed results. Like, if I say to my friends “you know what, i’m just not feeling a shower” that’s fine. But there’s more of a scolding tone of “they’re just trying to be nice” when an adult does it. Haha, “adult.” I’m 27. But you know what I mean. What should I be doing?

Victoria: Yeah, that’s such a touchy situation, I don’t really know how you would handle that tactfully and without offending anyone.

Jaya:  Victoria you’re the one who gives me answers!!!! What am I supposed to do, try to politely communicate by myself?

Victoria: I mean, I think it’s less of an etiquette thing and more a family relations thing. I think etiquette strongly encourages going along with it unless theres a particularly good reason not to.

Jaya: Ahhh, and “I’m overwhelmed and want people to stop fussing over me” isn’t particularly good?

Victoria: Haha there’s the rub. You have to decide which hills you want to die on, and in a wedding, there are a whoooole lot of hills.

Jaya: And, like with many other words thrown around at weddings, a bride is often “selfish” when she doesn’t live up to what others expect she should be. I think it’s also hard because often times, at least for me, these requests are coming from people who don’t communicate with each other. People from my side want to throw things, people from his side want to throw things, and it all adds up.

Victoria:  Yeah, exactly. Although, multiple showers are fairly traditional for exactly that reason. But ugh also, showers, traditionally, should really only be for your closest friends and relatives.

Jaya: And I guess, if your goal is toning down pre-wedding events, multiple showers, however compromised, is not really a great end game.

Victoria: But then you also don’t want to end up with a shower with 50 guests. After thinking about this some more, the advice I would give is to just gushingly thank people for offering and then be like, “but really I am just so overwhelmed with the wedding and my regular life, I couldn’t possibly.” And then if you need to pull out the big ammo and say “there are so many people wanting to host parties, I couldn’t possibly attend them all, so I would prefer to not show preference to any of them.”

Jaya: That’s perfect. I mean, it’s the truth too, but somehow I always think that would sound ungrateful like “wahhh too many people want to throw parties for me and it’s giving me anxiety.”

Victoria: Hahah yeah. I mean, if you have some attendants or at least a maid of honor—someone is at least nominally in charge of coordinating all that stuff and can be the bad guy. So that’s an option for people who have attendants.

Jaya: And showers can be so intense and huge events these days, it’s bananas.

Victoria: Why don’t people understand anymore that showers are supposed to be small with tiny little gifts like wooden spoons? They would be so much less objectionable that way, for both brides and guests.

How To Deal With Americans

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Europe According to Americans [Via]

Europe According to Americans [Via]

Uncommon Courtesy is based in America, and if you couldn’t tell already, most of our etiquette focus has been on the way the Western developed world does things. However, in our ongoing attempt to educate ourselves about the world, we decided to take a look at some “international” etiquette tips for dealing with Americans.

From Etiquette by Vijaya Kumar

American business people are considered very open and friendly. Foreigners however find this friendliness short-lived.

Business people from other cultures are put off by the abruptness of Americans, for whom time is money.

Americans, being friendly, tend to jump onto first-name terms very quickly, which is wrong.

From Passport USA: Your Pocket Guide to American Business, Culture & Etiquette by Dean W. Engel

Some American women have adopted the practice of using both their family name and the name of their husband’s family.

Greetings include saying “Hello” or “Hi,” often followed by “How are you?” This inquiry is purely rhetorical.

Beyond the handshake, American men may sometimes embrace briefly—usually with a good thump on the back. But they’ll shrink from the sorts of embraces common in Latin America or European-style kisses on the cheek. These have homosexual overtones in the U.S., and regardless of a heterosexual male’s attitude toward someone else’s  homosexuality, to be perceived as homosexual is widely considered an insult. [Ed note: UUUUUUUUUGH]

“No” means “no,” whether it’s shouted in the boardroom or whispered at an informal dinner. Reluctance to emphatically state a negative response and the tendency to resort to euphemism (“that would be difficult”)—common approaches in many Asian cultures—are sources of aggravation to Americans, who are more concerned with knowing the intent of others than having their feelings spared.

Americans will sometimes emphasize a strongly held commitment, belief or position by banging on a table or suddenly standing up.

There is no national consensus on what’s funny.

From The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink by Andrew F. Smith

Dining etiquette became pointless in the pervasive fast food culture, although it was still recommended as a way of projecting success and savoir faire. [Ed note: I wonder what percentage of Americans stopped buying fish knives?]

From Star-Spangled Manners: In Which Miss Manners Defends American Etiquette by Judith Martin

The curiosity of having compassionate people attack a system that mandates and codifies the consideration of others is doubly-odd when the etiquette bashers are American, whose national etiquette refuses to dignify anything resembling class distinctions.

Failing to respect the symbolic power of apparently casual customs is asking for it. Examples of socially dangerous behavior are: not mustering enthusiasm for the local food delicacy, violating your  high school’s sense of propriety about dress, wearing a baseball cap at a baseball game when the National Anthem is playing, and suggesting a disconnection between  a bride’s being handed from her father’s protection to her husband’s in cases where the union has already been blessed with children.

From YUCK! …That Guy Didn’t Wash His Hands!: The Complete Guide to the American Man’s Bathroom Experience, including The Original American Bathroom Thesaurus by Brian J. Baker

Americans have a tacit fascination with bodily functions, none of which garner more of our cultural obsession than the three main acts of expelling human waste: Farting, Peeing, and Pooping.

Farting in anywhere but the toilet cube is seen as a serious bodily miscalculation.

Why the heck would anyone want to bring their opened food or drink in the bathroom?

We hope this has been enlightening. International readers! What have you been taught about dealing with Americans?

How To Be Near Celebrities (Or, Don’t Grab Zac Efron’s Bicep in a Bar)

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DON'T PANIC

DON’T PANIC [Via]

Celebrity is something that sounds very complicated. On one hand, if you make it to the point of being a celebrity, you likely have lots of money. On the other, that comes at a significant cost to your privacy. On a third, you probably already knew that privacy was something you’d have to give up a bit to achieve celebrity. On a fourth, who among us could even conceive of what that sort of lifestyle would feel like until we got there, at which point it’d be too late to back out? It’s tricky, and I do feel a great sympathy for them, even though they can dry their tears on their millions.

This is all to say that New Yorkers are historically fantastic about dealing with celebrities. Not that we don’t have our invasive moments, or gush about “celebrity sightings” when they’re over, but in general the rule is to treat a celebrity like you would any other person on the street/in a restaurant/at the grocery store. Don’t stare, don’t start talking about them, don’t yell “oh my god you’re Lucy Liu!” when they’re walking down the street.

If you’re a huge fan, you may be inclined to ask for an autograph or a photo. This is one of those things that seemingly comes with the territory of being a celebrity, but this is when common sense really needs to go into overdrive. Is the person in question at lunch or generally engaged with something or someone else? Then, like anyone else, they would probably rather not be bothered. If Helen Hunt is casually browsing books at a bookstore perhaps you can go up to her and say you’re a fan, but you should not if you see her in a restaurant eating with her family. Bill Murray always seems game though.

However, there is a catch to the “just treat celebrities like normal people” thing, which is if you are a total weirdo around people it might come off bad around celebrities. Here’s an example: A few years ago my fiance and I were at a fancy, “speakeasy”-style cocktail bar, and both on our third or fourth drinks (which were very strong), when who should walk in and sit down next to us but Zac Efron. He was there with another guy, and was wearing this tight thermal shirt, and I was never attracted to Zac Efron and had never seen High School Musical but holy hell was this man attractive. Just, arms. I was totally star struck, but also determined to keep my cool and not act like he was any different than any other insanely hot person sitting next to me. So I keep chatting with my fiance, when I hear Zac Efron order a drink I had. I whip around and say (let’s be honest, I probably yell) “Oh my god, I LOVE that drink” as I reach over and grab his bicep for friendly emphasis. Like you’d do to maybe any other normal person if you’re feeling flirtatious and casual but should not do to a really famous person! From what I remember, he was very gracious about the whole thing, saying he always gets that drink when he goes to that bar, and asking if we’d ever been before, and us wishing each other good nights as we turned back to our partners.

So, you know, don’t do that.

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.

How To Avoid Rude Small Talk

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Get it?

Get it?

Small talk! It’s weird and often uncomfortable, but we all have to do it otherwise we’d never make friends/would always be that person standing just outside of a conversation. You have to wade through the small talk to get to anything interesting! Or you can be like me this weekend and drunkenly start talking to strangers about their love lives before you get their names, but maybe you shouldn’t do that.

Here’s my theory: I don’t think you should open a conversation with a stranger/acquaintance with the most obvious thing about them. For example, if you meet a pregnant woman, don’t ask her about her pregnancy. Maybe she’ll bring up her pregnancy on her own, and then you can talk about it, but maybe she’ll want to talk about her job and her other interests because she’s sick of being asked about morning sickness. The same thing goes for someone getting married, on a job search, or applying to college. They may want to keep talking about it, but there’s also a good chance they’re completely talked out.

This doesn’t count for everyone. If you’re asking your own teenage son about how high school is going? Duh. Are you a Maid of Honor asking the bride how planning is going? Makes sense. But you have to make sure you’re close, which generally means friends-who-talk-constantly or close family (meaning you have a relationship outside seeing each other three times a year at whole-family gatherings). Below are a couple of suggestions as to questions/comments to avoid, and as always leave yours in the comments!

For an Engaged/Married Person

  • I’m so excited for the wedding!—Did you get an invitation yet/have the couple verbally confirmed you’re invited? If not, don’t assume anything, even if you’re close to them.

  • Are you dieting?—Usually followed by a weird stare if you say “no,” or a push for details if “yes.” Weird either way. Plus it comes off as you thinking the person in question should be dieting.

  • When are you having kids?—This is SUCH a personal question, and can often be painful to the person/couple in question. Maybe they have a medical condition that prevents them from having kids and don’t want to talk about it, or maybe they flat out don’t want kids. It should never be a question of “when.”

  • Unless you know for sure that one person in the couple is really into planning and the other is really not, ask both people the same questions and use plural pronouns. This is especially an issue with heterosexual couples, where everyone has a tendency to ask the bride-to-be about wedding planning and issues, and continues to ask the groom-to-be about his job, his hobbies, or anything else going on in his life.

For a Single Person

  • Any variation on “why are you still single?”—First off, single is not a “still.” Plenty of people are just fine with being single. And even if they’re not, this pretty much just blames them for their relationship status. Often this comes in the “But you’re so pretty/smart/interesting!” iteration, which both suggests that a) these are objective requirements to finding a partner and b) it’s somehow the person in question’s fault for not finding someone attracted to these things. Relationships aren’t science, and they take a heavy dose of luck.

For a Pregnant Person

  • Do you want a boy or a girl?—What is your expected answer here? “Oh man, I just want a boy so bad. If it’s a girl I’ll be so heartbroken. Nine months for nothing.”

  • When are you due?—True story: When I was in New Zealand I went shopping with another woman for sausage. This woman had a two-year-old daughter and still had some “baby weight” or whatever bullshit you want to call it. Anyway, the butcher gave me a slice of one sausage to try but hesitated giving it to her, joking that it was made with wine. She looked at him quizzically, and he gestured to her stomach in a “you know, because you’re pregnant” sort of way. She wasn’t pregnant. Do not assume anyone is pregnant.

For Kids

  • Where are you going to college?/Are you going to college?—This is specific to a certain class that assumes college is in the cards, but for the entirety of high school any adult talking to me only wanted to talk about SATs and college applications.

For Anyone

  • You look great! Have you lost weight?—Unless this person maybe lost 400 pounds and is super proud of it, no. Skinny does not necessarily equal healthy or beautiful.

  • You look tired today—I get this so much when I don’t wear makeup. It’s my normal face. My normal face looks bad to you? Ok.