Creating a seating plan for eighty people is like an excruciatingly long LSAT problem: “Sam won't sit next to Myrtle and Sheila can't sit next to anyone wearing black. If there are ten people at each table, who will be on Sam's left?”
It took a week of heavy contemplation to finalize the seating (after which, naturally, a few people couldn't come, and the musical chairs sound track started all over again). I knew well enough to separate the divorced couple and to seat the members of a failed fix-up at different tables. But when I presented my plans to my future mother-in-law, stories of small resentments among people practically unknown to me poured out, and balancing tables for maximum peace and entertainment proved tricky with all of the additional restrictions. All this work still didn't ward off all strangeness. One guest showed up without his wife (she was in India), so I seated him near an old female friend of his. This led to an interesting moment in which another guest attacked him for publicly flaunting what she assumed was an affair. In the end, I was so thrilled to have seated everyone, I didn't even care that some couples rearranged things so that they could be closer to their spouses. It may have been naughty, but it was out of my control.
LESSON LEARNED # 4: SOMETIMES TRADITIONS HAVE TO BE LEFT BEHIND
Even though my obsession with comportment bordered on the obsessive-compulsive, don't think my relationship with etiquette was all hearts and pearls. Pre-wedding, my apartment became an etiquette farm. I couldn't stop collecting books on manners. If something stumped me, I had a tendency to leave a pile of texts lying open to key pages and sadly prone to the eager jaws of our young cairn terrier, who would shred them. (A 1924 volume of Lillian Eichler was a particularly tragic casualty.)
Paradoxically, the more one tries to be “by the book” (any book, all books), the more one will second-guess oneself. Consider the ubiquitous response cards that you stuff into invitations, hoping your guests will check a box or jot a note and let you know whether or not to expect them. They are, as it turns out, far from traditional, because back when these bits of behavior first calcified, prospective guests knew that the only thing to do with an invitation was to send back a handwritten note saying whether or not they'd be attending. I got stuck. Should I count on my guests knowing to get back to me themselves? That would be the absolutely most correct thing to do and I was nothing if not accurate. But in the modern world, you have to demand a reply or no one will say anything, and response cards only go so far anyway. I sent mine out and still had to do a round of uncomfortable phone calls, asking people what their plans were for a certain Saturday in January. It doesn't matter how gentle you are, dear Reader, some guests are going to need a poke.
LESSON LEARNED # 5: YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT, BUT YOU CAN REGISTER FOR IT
And there's still no doing everything right (or “right,” since etiquette is sometimes relative). Because it isn't traditional, and my childhood favorite, Miss Manners, says it's appalling, I decided not to register. Which was worse, refusing to register and annoying everyone or violating a code of manners that only a few people even know exists?
When everyone from my oldest friend's parents to my mother-in-law's cousin insisted on registry information, I had to bend my rules again. In a fit of capitalist optimism, my fiancé and I signed up for useful kitchen items that promised to renovate my culinary skills. This wasn't good enough. There were protests that kitchen items were too practical. I added some flatware. Complaints came in that my choices weren't complete. In the end, most people gave the presents they felt like giving, but, in hindsight, given the fact that our terrier nipped my in-laws' poodle while we were cutting the wedding cake, it would have been wise to have registered for some (more) obedience lessons.
LESSON LEARNED # 6: INVITATIONS CAN BE MAILED A LITTLE LATE
My mother, a woman whose reluctance to make decisions should qualify her for a government job, realized a little late in the game that she wanted to invite a few more people. Like a jerk, I balked because those invitations would be going out late and this lateness would be seen as insulting.
I was terrified of the Killer B-list. Etiquette texts caution against it. And the B-list does seem mean, as if one has to wait for the more important people to bow out before one can fill tables with some also-rans. Of course, this wasn't the case at all. I didn't have severe space limitations; I just had a mother who got inclusive at the last minute.
But with weddings, appearances are often more memorable than substance (which is why guests will remember your wedding dress better than your tenderly written vows), and I was torn. Which risk was more perilous: offending the late invitees with a postmark too close to the RSVP date or denying my mother her friends?
For my mother, I shut up and mailed all of her invitations. Everyone came. No one noticed—or if they did they didn't snark.
LESSON LEARNED # 7: GIVE UP…A LITTLE
I didn't pick my wedding dress. I had ideas, of course. I was planning to order something fabulous in pink from California. The appeal of getting something custom-made without having to leave my house had considerable appeal and seemed consistent with my family history.
My mother didn't choose her own wedding outfit. One of her father's patients created something for her: a Jackie-O-ish pink suit with gold buttons (no pillbox hat, but probably only because the whole event took place indoors in a high-rise on Manhattan's East End Avenue). My mother never had warm things to say about her suit, but she didn't seem to mind missing out on having to make that decision, and it seemed reasonable that she wouldn't have much to say about my choice.
But when she heard about my mail-order plans, my mother got strange. She wouldn't admit to feeling sad or left out, but something was wrong. I guiltily took her to a bridal store that was having a sale, and within minutes she popped up with a dress and a beaming saleswoman to hold it up to me. So much for thinking pink. My mother's selection was whitish, low-backed, scoop-necked, A-line, exquisite, and traditional. She was happy. How could I argue?
Etiquette is really about making everyone comfortable, and bending is occasionally wise, if not necessary. My dress wasn't nearly as important to me as it was to my mother. I didn't have to give in, but I did. And doing so was like having a get-out-of-jail free card in my back pocket. That one moment of generosity would buy me a chance to dig in my heels when I really needed it.
LESSON LEARNED # 8: ETIQUETTE CAN'T DO EVERYTHING
These moments made me realize that even etiquette has its practical limits. Living by the book (hell, living with the dog who ate the book) was creating impossible standards. And so I had to learn to read etiquette not as a fundamentalist with the Ten Commandments, but as a Supreme Court justice with some of the vaguer amendments.
“Strange” is the word that really says it all about modern weddings. After being rigorously taught about fighting to “have it all” and being pumped full of nuptial pornography in the form of can-do magazines and movie-star photo spreads, even the woman who never thought about her wedding dress and who always rolled her eyes at Pachelbel's Canon can find herself in a panic. It isn't that she doesn't want to get married. She just doesn't know what to do— because nothing, nothing feels natural.
How could it? All eyes are on the bride. Everyone's ready to compare her wedding to the scads of nuptials they've already attended, and she must take the feelings of two families into account, unless she is one of the very lucky few whose parents and future in-laws will be happy with anything, or nothing at all. (Where are these folks and what meds are they on?) Etiquette offers a snug structure that guides the confused and gives strong, firm answers to the most beleaguering problems. It's an unlikely life preserver in the harrowing seas of tulle.
For several years I've been writing about etiquette for the Web site Indiebride.com—answering plaintive queries almost daily. A lot of questions are standard: abused bridesmaids; couples who don't want to invite children; brides afraid of the spotlight; and people wondering if it's all right to ask for cash on
invitations. (Nope!) Often, readers confuse etiquette advice with therapy, and either seek help on more fundamental problems or try to use it to get away with murder. Etiquette can tell you how to finesse the moment and avoid social upset, but it can't change the basics. You can't fire a bridesmaid because you don't like her figure, and if your father despises your fiancé, you'll still have to navigate that ugliness, after the pigeons have eaten up all the rice.
Etiquette is great at dictating the “how” of things. The books all come with charts and lists galore: bridesmaids' duties, items to include on registries, rehearsal protocol… you understand. But none of the tomes on my shelves— and some of them have been hanging around for hundreds of years—encourage you to think about the “whether” of things and reject elements that don't suit you. “Traditional” is not synonymous with “necessary.” Etiquette should sculpt your plans, not dictate them. You can learn all about bridesmaids, but no one ever says you don't have to have them. And you really don't.
For my part, nuptial tranquillity came to me, finally, when I rejected the traditions that simply weren't for me:
No bridesmaids
No shower
No aisle
No veil
No being given away
No father/daughter dance
No name change
No cake smash
No tossing (of bouquet, rice, garter, anything)
The photographs show a traditional wedding. I'm a bride in white(ish) with a tuxedoed husband. Everyone's smiling. The flowers my mother-in-law chose are gorgeous and only one centerpiece caught on fire. Underneath the charm were tremors of bad behavior, but all I knew was that the band was playing every song I wanted to hear and I was married to the man I had loved for so long.
Etiquette saved and tormented me, but it taught me perspective and showed me how to live in two families at once. It was good practice for the future. Now we are three (four, with the etiquette-book-eating terrier), and wedding etiquette is really a practice run for parenting etiquette, which more people should learn.
Unsolicited advice goes entirely against the tenets of good manners. So while you didn't ask for them, here are seven bits of etiquette advice that should make your nuptials, and even more quotidian moments, less fraught:
Pick a few nonnegotiables, elements that have to go your way, and don't budge on them. Since you're asking, I wanted to be married by a judge and would accept no substitutes when it came to music. I was married by Uncle Bob and serenaded by Little Jack Melody and his Young Turks, all the way up from Texas.
Be willing to compromise on everything else. My mother picked my dress for me and I can't fault her taste. There will always be time for pink.
Feed every guest and every vendor. Everyone needs to eat.
Don't ask for presents or money in your invitation. It looks either weird or mercenary.
If you don't get a present from someone, it's just as well. That's one thank-you note you don't have to write.
Weddings should offer more pleasure than pain. Stir the pot only if you have to. It was unwise, for instance, of my brother to tell my mother two days before my wedding that he thought her dress was too big. She has agonized over it ever since and memorably tried to fob it off on me as maternity evening wear.
Lapses in manners make for good stories. Let them happen, commit them to memory, and feel free to enjoy them (with the names changed to protect the guilty) at dinner parties for the rest of your life.
the registry strikes back
janelle brown
My fiancé and I stood among the appliances stacked high on the shelves, totems to culinary efficiency, their gleaming stainless-steel surfaces still unsullied by greasy fingerprints. In the next aisle over, the glassware sparkled in the early morning sun. The room smelled like vanilla: comforting, sweet, the scent of home (ours! together!). It was Registry Sunday at Crate & Barrel, and we, after years of agonizing over other couples' registries, were finally about to begin our own. Endless possibilities lay before us: the children we'd have, the homes we'd live in, the omelettes we'd cook in top-of-the-line anodized-aluminum nonstick skillets.
Drunk. We were drunk with options. Or perhaps that was just the mimosas, made from freshly squeezed orange juice—the stylish silver juicer only $23.95, that the salesman was only too happy to demonstrate—clutched in our increasingly overwhelmed hands. Or was it a sugar high from the waffles, which a friendly saleswoman had just handed us, still hot from the waffle maker (on sale, $39.99!) and drowning in gourmet syrup?
Greg and I caught each other's eyes as the solicitous saleswoman chattered on about the waffle maker's heating elements and indicator lights. “Should we…?” I asked, the scanning gun twitching in my sticky palm.
“Do we really need…?” he asked, staring at his reflection in the appliance, his eyes slightly bugging out. Maple syrup glistened on his lips.
Reader, we didn't. But we did register for the juicer. We pointed the scanning gun and hit bleep.
To see wedding commercialism at its most crass and canny, visit Crate & Barrel on a Registry Sunday. In the early hours of the morning, before the store opens to the public, the newly affianced are invited to a “private” browsing session where they can peruse the store's goods and start a registry. Couples are greeted with a brunch buffet (produced on the spot, using, of course, Crate & Barrel appliances) and a goodie bag (ours included a hideous pair of heart-shaped champagne glasses, a box of Marimekko thank-you cards, and a registry guide reminding us that no couple was complete without both formal and informal table settings). At Registry Sunday, a personal shopping adviser offers instructions. And then, like hunters on opening day, the couples are let loose upon the store, scanning guns in hand.
Long before I got engaged, I knew that when the time came, I would register. A registry is, at its heart, utterly pragmatic. People give gifts at weddings, which meant that we would be receiving dozens, if not hundreds of gifts. A registry would make things easy. It would eliminate the guesswork, the unwanted gifts, the overlapping presents, and to ensure that we wouldn't end up with a kitchen full of near-identical appetizer trays or floral tea cozies sent from Idaho by Aunt Edna.
When I signed up for the Crate & Barrel Registry Sunday, I did so knowing full well that registries are big business to department stores and houseware chains (they were, in fact, conceived by one: Marshall Field's, Chicago, 1924), which is why those same stores were luring us with waffles and discounts and personal shoppers. The romantic mythos of the registry—that, together, friends and family are setting up the new couple with all that they'll need for their life together—had been kept alive not just by tradition, but by industry.
But until I had the scanning gun in hand, I was not aware of the extent to which a registry is both a challenge and a temptation: a dangerous cocktail of outdated marriage conventions, fantasy projection, and contemporary consumption culture that is difficult for even the most abstemious bride (which I was not) to avoid intoxicating herself with.
Deciding to do a registry at all had been a feat of compromise for us. My fiancé, a formerly impoverished ascetic whose life possessions easily fit into the payload of his ancient truck, had only recently recognized the merits of buying anything frivolous at all; whereas I, a decided aesthete, had been known to spend my weekends hanging out in home decor stores just for fun, reading the Design Within Reach catalog as if it were a magazine. Something about the idea of registering sat uneasily with us. Blatantly asking for specific presents felt acquisitional and opportunistic.
“It's like presenting a shopping list to our friends and saying, ‘Gimme,’ ” observed my still-reticent fiancé, when I told him about our date with Crate & Barrel.
But that, said our friends and family, was what weddings were all about: the one time in your life when you ask and shall receive, in abundance.
“Register for a honeymoon,” said one friend.
“Register for home electronics,” said another.
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br /> My mother, a firm traditionalist, would think of no such thing. Registries were for crystal and china, for silver and cutlery—for, she said, “The things that you'll own for the rest of your life.” I had listened to her disparaging remarks about the registries of other couples whose weddings she had attended; couples who had registered for wooden spoons and pepper grinders, useful but decidedly unglamorous household objects with trifling price tags. “Who really wants to give a wooden spoon for a gift?” my mother would complain.
Maybe I didn't feel compelled to stack my cupboards with silver, but I saw her point. In twenty years, that wooden spoon would be moldering in a dump somewhere, but a silver bowl would last forever. It was a principle, I convinced Greg, that we should use for our registry. If people were going to go to the trouble and expense to buy us gifts, we should make sure their gift would be appreciated and used for years to come.
So we finally agreed. We would register, modestly and reasonably, at only two stores: Zinc Details, a favorite specialty design boutique in San Francisco, and Crate & Barrel. We would register only for items we truly loved or needed, objects that were beautiful and eternal. We would not descend into shopping madness, in which we registered for a hundred things we didn't need and wouldn't ever use— panini presses and steak knife sets—simply because they appeared in one of those registry guides published by bridal magazines or because a department store clerk suggested we wouldn't be complete without it.
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