Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding [Hardcover]

Jacobina Martin (Author), Judith Martin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2010

Bride and mother-of-the-bride rebel against today’s monster weddings and explain how weddings can be charming, affordable—and excruciatingly correct.

Today’s brides are bombarded with wedding advice that promises perfection but urges achieving it through selfishness (“It’s your wedding, and you can do whatever you like”), greed (choosing the presents that guests are directed to buy), and showing off (“This is your chance to show everyone what you’re about”). Couples wishing to resist such pressure see elopement or a slapdash wedding as the only alternatives to a gaudy blowout. But none of these choices appealed to a bride who happened to have been brought up by Miss Manners. Judith Martin and her newlywed daughter, Jacobina, explain how to have a dignified ceremony and delightful celebration without succumbing to the now-prevalent pattern of the vulgar, money-draining wedding that exhausts families and exploits friends. 6 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

How to insert humor into the often deadly dull prose that details wedding niceties? Ask Miss Manners’ daughter to coauthor the collection of advice; Chicago improvisational teacher Jacobina, along with her mom-author (Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, 1979) Judith, writes a disarmingly dry yet wonderfully funny account of the dos and don’ts for getting married. Every conceivable subject gets its space, including the absolutely right (and wrong) proposal, avoiding the “bridezilla” factor, coping with invitations, chief responsibilities of the parties in the wedding, and the three terrible ideas: weddings as (choose one) “my day,” fund-raiser, or show biz. A question-and-answer format usually follows each major block of content; it’s here where the authors let loose their humor. An amuse-bouche that, despite its humor, provides more than a dollop of great common sense. --Barbara Jacobs

About the Author

Jacobina Martin teaches improvisational comedy at Chicago’s Second City and just married Ronald Kroll.

Judith Martin, author of the “Miss Manners” columns, several best-selling books on etiquette, and two novels, lives in Washington, DC.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 11, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393069141
• ISBN-13: 978-0393069143
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Miss Manners vs Emily/Peggy Post, March 25, 2010

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N. Fu - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding (Hardcover)

This is a review of "Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding," and also a comparison of this book to "Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette" by Peggy Post.

First and foremost, it seems obvious, but don't buy this book if you don't like Miss Manners' style of writing. Many newspapers run a Miss Manners column, you can use the "Look inside this book" Amazon feature, or you can Google for "advice by Miss Manners" for some sample columns. People tend to either love or hate Miss Manners - I personally find her very arch and witty, but I have friends who feel her dry tone and third-person self-references to be intolerably snooty.

Much of this book is a reprisal of "Miss Manners on Painfully Proper Weddings," so if you have that book already I'm not sure you need to buy this one as well. The only particular advice I can remember that has been updated for modern times is that Miss Manners tolerates the discreet inclusion of registry information on a wedding website. Other than that, the advice is much the same.

In comparison to Emily Post's "Wedding Etiquette", "Wedding Etiquette" is more of a general guide for wedding planning, with some etiquette advice thrown in, whereas Miss Manners' book is mostly about etiquette, with little advice on wedding planning. Whether this is good or bad for you depends on whether you are already getting that planning advice from elsewhere. For example, Post's "Wedding Etiquette" has a very long section on different ways to word the invitation (depending on who is hosting, etc), whereas "Surprisingly Dignified Wedding" has a much shorter section for this. Chances are, though, that you will get a detailed guide from your stationer when you order your invitations, so the extra pages in Post's "Wedding Etiquette" may not be providing that much value to you.

Post's "Wedding Etiquette" tends to be more clear and direct (perhaps it's just that Peggy Post has a more direct writing style, while Miss Manners sometimes sacrifices clarity for cleverness). While Miss Manners agrees with Peggy Post on most issues, sometimes the actual etiquette advice does differ. For example, let's consider the question of whether a guest is required to bring a gift to the wedding. Peggy Post writes straightforwardly that "Invited guests have an obligation to send a gift, whether they are attending or not." On the other hand, Miss Manners maintains that an invitation does not constitute an obligation to send a present, but "if you do not feel sufficiently pleased by someone's marriage to be moved to try to contribute to that person's happiness, you don't belong at the wedding." This essentially boils down to "you must bring a present if you attend the wedding, but not if you decline the invitation," but the way it is phrased is a little oblique.

Miss Manners also tends to be stricter and require you to make more sacrifices for etiquette, while Peggy Post tends to make more allowances for convenience and personal preferences. For example, Miss Manners is very much against the idea of reducing the guest list to trim the budget, or to allow the wedding to fit in your chosen reception space. She believes it is rude to consider a location or style of entertaining more important than the presence of guests ("We had to choose between having the wedding in a charming little place without you, or in an ordinary place with you, and we decided to lose you." She would rather you invite everyone who should be invited, and have a simple punch-and-cake reception. On the other hand, Peggy Post does recommend cutting the guest list to preserve the budget.

Overall, I prefer Miss Manners' "Surprisingly Dignified Wedding" over Post's "Wedding Etiquette." I like that Miss Manners tends to have stricter etiquette rules than Peggy Post. Much of my purpose for reading a wedding etiquette book was to figure out how to be as polite as possible, not how much I could toe the line and still be considered within the bounds of etiquette. Also, much of the wedding planning advice in Post's "Wedding Etiquette" is duplicated in my wedding planner and in wedding magazines, so the extra depth there was not as useful to me. However if you are not buying a lot of wedding planning materials and are looking for one book as an all-in-one guide, then I would recommend Post's "Wedding Etiquette" as a more comprehensive resource.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Weddings: what is important, what isn't--and how you can avoid offending all of your guests, February 20, 2010

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Lorin E. Kleinman - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding (Hardcover)

Many people seem to view Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, as a snobbish, overly fork-preoccupied type intent on making people follow unnecessary and picky rules. This is utterly wrong. Judith Martin has made it abundantly clear throughout her etiquette career that she finds forks uninteresting (if there are several next to your plate, start with the outside one), and believes that the point of etiquette is to "make people happy, or at least to prevent them from shoving each other." She is also--as is particularly evident to anyone who has seen her speak--very funny.

Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding is an updated version of an earlier book on weddings, with her recently-married daughter Jacobina Martin added as co-author. It's an invaluable guide to what is truly important at a wedding, what is not important, and what is actually rude. Hair-raising stories abound from all sides: hosts who ignore their guests, ask them to pay for their own food (or simply to deposit money into the couple's bank account), and who treat the wedding as a kind of show business production; clerics who joke throughout the ceremony; guests who refuse to reply to invitations, demand to be allowed to bring friends, or accept the invitation and then fail to show up.

In a world of rapidly declining manners and rapidly increasing friction, Judith Martin draws a roadmap for people who want to live together without offense, and sets a standard for a society in which people are genuinely civil to each other.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dignified on any budget, February 1, 2010

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S. C. Bain (St Louis) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding (Hardcover)

Not only are there rules for staying dignified, but tips for avoiding being pushed around by the wedding industry, and how to keep everything correct and tasteful on any budget. Emphasis is on the new relationship, and the couple's relationships with their families and friends. George Will's old comment about Miss Manners is still true--not only is she a great advice columnist, but a great commentator on American social life. Additonally her writing is very, very funny.