Customer Reviews

Miss Manners on Painfully Proper Weddings

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was not written by the wedding industry. Hospitality, family, friends, and unselfishness take precedence over a rising tide of materialism, greed, and the show business mentality. She will not tell you what to go out and buy to make "your day" perfect, but will focus instead on the relationships and manners that will give weddings real meaning. This book is well worth reading.

The brevity of this book reflects a basic fact about tasteful weddings--they shouldn't be so far out of your everyday experience that you need hundreds and hundreds of pages of advice. Most efforts at originality have more to do with egos running amok than with concern for the seriousness of the occasion or for the guests' comfort. I used this and the chapter on weddings in "Excruciatingly Correct Behavior." No one fought over wedding planning, everyone had a wonderful time, and our friends said they thought the wedding really suited us. What more could anyone want?

Love, love, LOVE this book and Miss Manners! Lots of the basic questions that came up in planning my wedding were covered, but more important is the philosophy she espouses. After you read this book you will find it hard to flip through all those bridal magazines without rolling your eyes at the fuss they make over trivial topics. Miss Manners reminds you what's truly important. We had a lovely wedding that was universally described as "perfect" and no stress whatsoever in planning it. I give this book to all my friends as soon as they get engaged.

This book is wonderful. While not a checklist of how to do everything, it reminded me, using hilarious examples, that a wedding should be a reflection of the people getting married and not a broadway production. Also makes the (usually neglected) point that spending a fortune and concentrating only on yourself are very bad habits to begin your marriage with. I recommend it to every bride. You may not like some of the things she says but they're all true.

We had a LOT of family problems around our wedding. I didn't think Miss Manners could cover every single situation, but she did. We followed almost all her advice and like magic, all our evil relatives and troublesome friends fell into line. Worth more than all other wedding books together.

In her signature acerbic style, Miss Manners offers suggestions for wedding etiquette that will be entertaining and useful for anyone planning, or enduring, a wedding. She disparages such popular myths as My Perfect Day and required registries and gives the engaged couple and their families a guide for having a charming, meaningful wedding without exhausting themselves or treading on too many toes in the process. Reading this book should be a prerequisite for getting engaged.

Even the most level headed among us find that when planning a wedding we start to get carried away with details, excess and more, more, more. Miss Manners provides a wonderful reminder of what is really important, where to focus your emotional energies, and how to handle the mini-crises that seem, at the time, to threaten your happy day. Read this book when you are getting overwhelmed and you will find that her philosophy doesn't just help you make some decisions, but helps you refocus on the important aspects of the day. With her sage advice my wedding was memorable and enjoyable!

The title tells it all. It's painful to be proper. However, Ms. Martin's great sense of humor makes reading this book fun. This is one of the few wedding books worth buying. I don't agree with Ms. Martin 100% on every aspect of a wedding, especially those having to do with a different cultural background. However, the principles of being respectful and thankful, etc. are true in every human society. This is a book that everyone, hosts and guests alike, should read.

Author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Fiddle (Complete Idiot's Guide to)

I was impressed with this book - you might think it's full of stuffy, old-fashioned notions, but it's not. It's basically about one thing: Miss Manners feels that the "this is my day, so I can do WHATEVER I want and should get whatever I want" idea held by many modern brides is way out of line.
This book reminds you that weddings should be about marriage, family and friends. Everything else is really unimportant window dressing, and no, everyone that comes to your wedding is not obligated to bring a gift. Fun reading before a wedding, and perhaps mandatory should spending or expectations begin to get out of control!

She's got some pretty interesting--sometimes unbelievable--letters from readers to share, too.

My mother-in-law gave me this book prior to our wedding 27 years ago, and because of the timeless information it provides we found it very helpful in doing our part in planning for the 2007 wedding of one of our daughter's best friends! My daughter, husband, and I were responsible for writing, printing, & addressing the invitations & reply cards, and this was invaluable for sample invitations, correct forms of address, and lists of the appropriate way(s) to do things. (Remember, if in doubt err on the side of properness & tradition to keep those wagging tongues silent - for some reason everyone thinks your wedding is about THEM.) My husband was the official wedding photographer (with me as his assistant) and it was a godsend to have Miss Manners' suggested lists of photographs to be taken. Not only did it help us think of everything the bride and groom might want but it made us much more confident that we were not neglecting relatives, special friends, parents of special friends, etc.