Etiquetteer

Dear Etiquetteer:I always thought that a bride and groom went to all the wedding functions, including the day-after breakfast. Isn’t this the case? Attending a recent wedding breakfast, I saw a few disappointed faces when the bride and groom weren’t there. Dear Rubbernecker: Etiquetteer remembers an old joke (but not its source, so please let Etiquetteer know if you know) about the Victorian wedding tintype in which the groom is seated and the bride standing behind him. "Shouldn’t the lady be seated?" asked someone. "On the day after the wedding," came the reply, "she was probably too sore to sit down and he was probably too tired to stand up!" You may take from this little anecdote that Etiquetteer doesn’t think a bridal couple should be seen at all after they leave the reception, mostly because everyone knows what they were supposed to be up to the night before. You can also bet that the wedding guests still present for any day-after festivities will want to continue speculating on whether the bride was really entitled to wear white. No bride should have to be present through that . . .

Dear Etiquetteer: Two friends of mine are getting married. Since they’ve been living together for over ten years, they really don’t need all the usual household gifts people usually give at weddings. They’ve decided to take a really adventurous honeymoon and would like to ask their friends to contribute to the travel expenses. Isn’t there a tactful way for them to do this? Dear Gifted Guest: Argh! For the last time, it’s the height of rudeness to tell people how to spend (or not spend) money on you, unless they ask and then they deserve what they get. For those who ask, the idea of a honeymoon registry (like other bridal registries for household goods) seems to appeal to many. Etiquetteer is alternately fascinated and appalled that such registries already exist, such as www.thehoneymoon.com, www.sendusoff.com, and www.thebigday.com, among others. Now Etiquetteer suspects some wedding guests will continue to balk at such a thing, preferring to present a gift of a thing rather than an experience. That is their right, and if so, the Happy Couple will just have to lump it.

Dear Etiquetteer:I work in a fairly large office building, with a very heavy revolving door at the entrance. I take pride in being a gentleman, and always hold open a regular door when I'm in the company of a member of the opposite sex, however, I don't know the rules about revolving doors. Am I being chivalrous by letting my colleague enter first, even though it forces her to push the heavy door herself to get it started, or do I enter before her so that I can do the heavy pushing instead of her? Thanks ever so much for your advice. Dear Floored in the Doorway: Thank goodness Chivalry is not yet dead! Etiquetteer is so glad that you wrote with this question, which proves that someone out there still cares about other people. You have just made Etiquetteer’s day! Etiquetteer thinks that gentlemen may gallantly precede ladies in revolving doors or exiting buses, but for different reasons. In a revolving door, gentlemen may not only do the "heavy lifting" as it were, but also regulate the speed of the door. This is more important than you may think. Etiquetteer has seen elderly ladies propelled to the floor by thoughtless collegians carelessly zipping through revolving doors. On a bus (or a flight of stairs), the gentlemen is always closest to the ground. So if you’re going up, the lady goes first and if you’re going down, the gentleman does. This got started back in the day when ladies wore huge gowns with 14-inch platform shoes (no, Etiquetteer is not kidding) and it was much easier for them to stumble. Gentlemen were there to break their fall. Happily, ladies’ fashions are less risky these days, but the function continues since the elderly or infirm sometime need extra assistance boarding the bus or getting upstairs.

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