OT Wedding Announcement

Not knowing each other's family was certaily the case wiht us. We'd met at uni, after I had a perepatetic childhood. One of the first things Mum did when we finally set the date was ask me for Alan's parents phone number, and ring them for a guest list and addresses. She did the same for Alan and for me, so she knew exactly who to invite and their proper titles (such as Dr and so forth), and initials and everything... She was VERY efficient, but then she had trained and worked as a secretary, and run several different organizational thing in her role as an RAF officer's wife. I think she is where a lot of Big Sis's skills as a PA come from!

While she wasn't working when we got married, Mum was running this wedding in the aftermath of my father's sudden death.

When things are not done strictly according to the rules of ettiquette in a situation like that, everyone will be very understanding and very sympathetic. Wedding lists at stores are very old. I'm sure they go back to the 30's...

Despite my mother taking similar care with my sister when she got married, Little Sis still ended up with 20 dinner plates from her chosen china, and the store took them back and swapped the extra ones for other pieces.

I think the whole store/china list thing came about when decent china was hard to come by. It certainly became necessary here in the UK, where, especially after the war, when everything we made of any quality was being exported to pay for the war. There was no way my parents' families could have got hold of a decent bone china dinner service in the mid fifties, even though they could have afforded it between them.

It's always wise to know the local customs. :) It still horrifies me that wedding guests can be requested to dress in colours chosen by the bride, and that bridesmaids pay for their own gowns in the USA. Here it is still the norm that these whole outfits (shoes, dress, headdress, any bag they carry, but not usually the undies) are all paid for by the bride (or her parents), and their flowers, like all the flowers, are paid for by the groom. It is still the norm that the groom buys the bridesmaids a little gift. Jewelery is traditional.

My neice is getting married in November, she had her 2nd bridal shower this past saturday. (the first one was with the groom's family ) As many on the wedding guest list live far away...i live 200 miles from them...the couple "registered" with several stores. One was a nationwide chain, one was a local higher-end gift shop, and i think one was an online store. For me...it was very convenient to peruse the lists and choose something in my pricerange. (they all had websites). i found a terrific gift for her, in a price i could afford, i car- pooled with several other family members, had a ball at the shower, she loved the gift, it was checked off as something already bought so it couldnt be duplicated....all was well in the world.

i'm a firm believer in Bridal regestrys. they save time, money, headaches and heartaches.

now...flowers and gowns are another story.......

amy in CNY

I appreciate the bridal registries too. They make it possible for us to send a little gift, sometimes just one spoon, that the bride will welcome. As our families grow and spread far away, we love to receive invitations to the weddings even if they're just a courtesy. Wish we knew some of them well enough to truly dislike one; we still have Aunt Persniffoney's lamp for someone to inherit. Polly

Is it a hurricane lamp? Sorry....couldn't resist.

I wish. Polly

Oh Kathyl! That's dreadful ... . In message , KJ writes

I'd have LOVED one! :D I still would. We have two of these:

Don't thinks they'd welcome my aged and not very beautiful feet. Much better covered up!

Sally at the Seaside~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~uk

Kate XXXXXX wrote:

It's probably a replica of the lamp in "A Christmas Story"....fishnets and all!!

amy in CNY

People are always free to participate or not, regardless of the degree of formality of an invitation. Invitations are just that, a message asking friends to attend an event. Announcements are usually sent after the event, to inform friends of the new union. Parents or the couple generally choose one or the other, but some may send invitations to a very small group, and the announcements to the larger circle of friends. Mm, what do you mean by 'extent'? A guest will either attend an event or not, so I am confused, but that is nothing new. Thanks.

PAT, procrastinating

Bother I even managed to forget that bit - it really seems to have drifted so much from that in practice that maybe we are getting to the point of having redefined ettiquette. I would say that we got less than

10% of the gifts sent rather than brought to the wedding and that was even with the store that had the list offering free delivery, people still didn't use it! To be honest I think that few people (at least in England) in their 20s even know that that is how you are supposed to give a gift to a couple getting married and if you have the reception somewhere like a hotel, where someone is setting everything up, they will routinely set up a gift table.

Cheers Anne

I'm not sure if that is a US/UK difference, I had 3 bridesmaids, 2 of which were friends and the other was a younger sibling. It became obvious at some point that they were expecting to pay for their dresses, when we had no such intentions, even though we actually chose off the rack evening dresses that they got to keep and I know they then wore several times. My mum suggested it was probably best if they paid for their own shoes, I don't know if that was right or not, I'm not sure if shoes count as personal items or not! As it turned out they liked the shoes so much they went out and bought them in another colour as well (this is all sounding rather wierd now, but both friends did this, I remember going out for an evening about 18 months after the wedding and they were both wearing the wedding shoes in black!).

My husband did buy them a gift and it was jewellery!

Cheers Anne

If the ceremony is in a church, at least in a church in the UK, you can't really control who comes to the church, a church is a public place, not somewhere private where you control who comes in and who doesn't. For this reason, my understanding is you can't invite someone only to the ceremony and not to a reception, hence if you are having a limit on the reception and there are people who you know who might like to come to the ceremony, but you can't manage to invite to the reception, you can't sent them an invite and therefore an annoucement is a possible way of letting them know.

There has been a sort of tradition at the church we got married at where the Sunday before, it's put in the bullitin, which covers a lot of people as often that is a major part of the group of people you are friendly with but aren't quite close enough to to invite.

Another issue is parental expectations, my parents had around 50 people at their wedding, they got married in my mother's home town, which wasn't where either of them were living, so it was relatives and close friends adding to that total.

We got married in the city I had been living for 5 years and my husband

3 years, which meant in addition to family there were lots of friends who we would have liked to invite, in part just because of the time in life we got married and partly because I think we are a bit more outgoing than my parents (who had a small and well defined group of friends who still meet once a year, 30 years later). So once we'd listed my family, his family (large), friends of the family, my parents were only expecting 10 or so more, when we could easily have listed 50 or 60 and would have been quite happy to have a cheaper reception and other cost cuts so we could do that, but that would have meant not having the reception in a hotel where they did all the work and my parents didn't want to go for an option where there was lots of work to do - I've been to some excellent weddings like that, but it does create a lot of work and you need lots of willing volunteers.

We have one daughter, she's 3, so we don't have to worry yet about a wedding fund :-).

Anne

Nor mine, Sally >g< . In message , Sally Swindells writes

I absolutely love getting an invite with a registry list. It means I don't even have to think of something to get the couple. Just walk into the store with the list, find an item in my price range, wrap it up, and VOILA, I know it's something they wanted. I don't have to call someone to ask about colors, or sizes, etc.

When my favorite little cousin got married a few years ago, I couldn't decide at all what to get for her or whether I'd give money. The invite came with a gift registry card. One stop shopping is great, I walked into the store, picked up the bread machine for her shower and the stand mixer for her wedding. Quick, easy, done. She had picked things in a price range from $5 to a couple hundred. She received even the most expensive items on her list as co-workers pitched in to get the more expensive things.

I sure wish gift registries had been available to me 38 years ago, I still have 2 unused fondue sets in the attic. I had more monogramed ashtrays (we don't smoke) daisy-shaped candy dishes, three-tiered neon orange cake servers than we knew what to do with.

Etiquette to me is more than following some ancient set of rules that don't always adapt well to today's society, but more to make life more relaxed and pleasant for the folks around us.

The most fun I've had with a gift registry was one for a sporting goods store. The couple were avid campers, but had been using old hand me down equipment. They received a tent, screen house, Coleman stove with pots and pans, and even a copper fire pit for their backyard. Way more useful than my monogrammed ashtray.

Denise

Mom used the 'unused' ashtrays for holding pins when she was hemming our skirts, by the SM, by the sink to hold her wedding ring when she did dishes and by her bed after her hands started swelling at night, and those are the first places that come to mind.

HTH Butterfly (Who doesn't have an astray in the house)