Reader Response, Vol. 6, Issue 5

READER RESPONSE Vol. 6, Issue 5, February 4, 2007
		Dear Etiquetteer: You and your recent column were on my mind last night when I was at the symphony. The woman behind me rattled her bracelet through the entire evening. At the end I turned around and asked her sweetly if she had enjoyed the concert. After receiving a favorable reply, I asked her if she was aware that her bracelet jingled through the entire concert. She said that she wondered why the people around her were so agitated and she thanked me for letting her know. She was clueless! She asked her friend to remind her not to wear the bracelet to future concerts! One can only hope. Etiquetteer responds: Etiquetteer commends you on your non-confrontational approach to addressing this problem. Turning around and snarling "Take off those **** bracelets!" would not have helped the situation. Etiquetteer’s mother was right as usual: you catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. Dear Etiquetteer: Here's another take on the gift/no gift thing. My wife and I discussed this quite heavily when we were planning our wedding, and I think we came up with a fairly classy solution. Our basic premise about gifts was that giving should always be spontaneous and never expected. No one should feel bad for not giving a gift, and no one should feel bad for giving one either. When we got married, we created a website for information for our guests. (This was in 1996, when the web was still new.) The wedding invitation included a map and schedule of events, and an invitation to visit the wedding website for more information. The website had an FAQ section that included the following, under the heading of "Gifts": You have already given us the best possible gifts: your love and kindness, as our family and friends. The nicest wedding gift you could give us is to share the day with us, either in person or in spirit. Thus, you should feel free to ignore the whole wedding gift and registry racket. "Gift and registry" was a link to a separate page on our site. The gift and registry page started out with a restatement of the above, and was followed by: "However, because some of you have asked us whether and where we are registered, we have enlisted the help of our dear friend C****** S*****, who is helping us tremendously in coordinating the wedding. Feel free to address inquiries about gifts to her, or to [Insert Name of Bride’s Mother here]." We communicated our feelings about gifts to these allies, along with information about where we were registered for anyone who wanted it. Just as in business, reaching a human at the other end instead of a machine (or in this case, a one-liner on a wedding invitation) made for a much more pleasant experience for everyone involved. Etiquetteer responds: It’s always refreshing to hear from a Happy Couple who are more concerned with their guests’ experience than with strong-arming them into showering them with Expensive Gifts. And certainly this is the traditional role of the Mother of the Bride (and the Mother of the Groom, too). Dear Etiquetteer: I have to write a condolence letter to the wife of a recently departed friend. Is she still Mrs. John Doe? Mrs. Jane Doe? Ms. Jane Doe? Dear Condoling: "Mrs. John Doe" is most Perfectly Proper unless she used her maiden name during married life. You would never address Ms. Jane Jehosphat as "Mrs. John Doe;" the militant feminists would mince your vitals into bits. Etiquetteer cordially invites you to join the notify list if you would like to know as soon as new columns are posted. Join by sending e-mail to notify <at> etiquetteer.com.