Bad Manners and Brimstone

I’m with you. You only know this lady to say hello to, and just signing up to her party without a direct invitation does feel like overstepping.

I suggest you say so to the older lady, and ask her to relay this to the hostess. Even if they themselves wouldn’t feel hesitant in your place, they should understand and the hostess - if she did mean to include you - should make contact. That will mean, of course, that you’ll be pretty much obligated to turn up! But, although it’s totally understandable for you to be avoiding spreader events, as the newbie in the community it’s probably not a good move to avoid the first holiday party you get invited to: it’s very easy to give the impression that ‘oh, vintagegal’s not sociable’.

No, that’s a new one on me! Sounds very creepy. Though I do a nice line in eyeballs: nurdle the centre out of a white pickled onion and replace it with an anchovy-stuffed olive. They’re very lifelike!

And in many countries, including, I believe, the UK, you must have a civil marriage at a government office in addition to any other kind of wedding you have.

Not quite true in the UK. Here in England and Wales, clergy of several major religions - eg Church of Engkand, Judaism, Quakerism - who perform marriages in a registered place of worship are also licensed to complete the civil marriage forms, so the religious ceremony is also a civil ceremony. And for weddings of some other faiths - e.g. Sikh, Muslim - provided the wedding takes place in a building registered for marriages a registrar can attend and do the civil marriage paperwork. 

And even if you do need an actual civil marriage ceremony in addition to whatever religious rite you are having (either because your religion is not something recognised by the civil authorities, or it isn’t taking place in an authorised building), you can arrange for a registrar to perform it in any place licensed for marriages.

Seconded. She has created an account on a crowd-funding website and let everyone know she wants them all to chip in to the tune of a minimum of $75 each for her delayed honeymoon. When contributions failed to flood in, she let everyone know that she was disappointed by their stinginess. If she’s not capable of working out for herself why she's at risk of losing friends, it’s quite pointless to try to explain to her.

I still occasionally look at the Miss Manners column out of habit, although it’s nowhere near as good or as witty as it was before Judith Martin handed it over to her much-less-talented children. And I'm sure that a large proportion of the queries are fabricated, either by readers or the columnists. But one of yesterday’s questions, or rather the readers’ responses to it in UExpress.com, interested me: https://www.uexpress.com/life/miss-manners/2025/07/29.

In my (British) childhood, dinner parties were a major part of middle-class socialising; my parents (who, for context, weren’t stuffy or old-fashioned in the least: they were quite bohemian, as were a great many of their friends) held one almost every week. The format was simple: a couple invited four guests (could be six if you had a big enough dinner table, but - British houses being a lot smaller than American ones - four was the norm) who might or might not already know each other, for drinks followed by a three course meal. And at the meal, couples were always separated: the point being that you wanted your guests to meet and talk to each other, not sit talking to their spouses, which they could do any evening in their own home. Everybody in my parents’ circle took this for granted. I also note from my ancient copy of Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior that back in the early 1980s Americans who gave/were invited to dinner parties did too.

Yesterday’s letter-writer, who splutters that he has a duty to ‘protect’ his wife at dinner parties, is clearly a nutjob (if he even exists at all). But I was startled to read response after response stating that while LW was clearly crazy, they too found the concept of seating people not next to their spouses ‘scary’, ‘would be torture’ ‘brings me out in hives just thinking about it’.

So I’m just curious. Did any other Brimstoners grow up with this convention? If yes, do you still follow it? Or ever encounter it when invited out?

 And if no, would you be unhappy if you found yourself separated from your other half at an assigned-seating dinner?

(Please do give a clue to where you live/grew up, if that isn’t visible in your profile.)

You were in no way obligated to give anyone any leftovers to take home. Your home is not a restaurant, it’s not as though they had ordered and paid for their meals.* IMHO, not even Nancy’s portion is not actually her own to do with as she likes, though to be sure it would have been a bit mean-spirited to refuse her it if she asked nicely. But the leftovers in general were totally yours, and you were 100% entitled to smile and say ‘Sorry, I have plans for the rest of that meat’.


* Guests/family members asking, let alone expecting to take leftovers home is much less a thing this side of the Pond; I’ve never experienced or heard of anyone doing so. (The host offering it, sure; but that’s different.) I wonder if the size of US restaurant servings is the cause of this? I’m told they are routinely more than the average person can eat at a sitting, so that it’s quite normal to order half of one’s meal boxed up to take home. Maybe the people who assume that  the leftovers from a family meal are or should be theirs to take home if they want are just carrying over that behaviour from restaurant eating?

Any avid knitter like your mother will have developed her own preference for the types and weights of yarn she likes to knit with. Do you have any pieces of hers that you could take to a yarn shop and ask them to identify, and say what yarns they sell that are equivalent? Then you could be pretty confident that if you bought some of those, they would be suitable for her.

Also, unless ‘Oh, what a lovely surprise!’ when opening Christmas presents is important for you and your mother, you could just ask her straightforwardly what knitting project she would really like to make if she had the right yarn, and what that yarn would be (and how much of it, of course - maddening to be given lovely yarn but not quite enough of it to make what you want!) and get it for her. If you wanted to retain some element of surprise could also throw in as well some small amounts, enough for a beanie or a scarf, of quite different yarns that just look interesting and special.

Even if there is no issue with the husband isolating her from her family, she may simply have assumed that cutting links with her mother necessarily entails cutting herself off from all her mother’s relations as well; and it wouldn’t hurt to receive an indication that her aunt is still there for her if wanted.