Family has no obligation to repay wedding guests

plane ticket and my new dress?”

I cannot see this situation as anything other than them showing their true colors, and I don’t want to have any relationship with them anymore.

It never ceases to amaze Miss Manners how, even under the best circumstances, weddings — a time for joy and warm family feelings — consistently bring out the worst in people.

While your relatives have behaved abhorrently, they may well be rebelling against the circuslike atmosphere and financial outpouring that weddings typically incur. And now they feel that it was all for naught.

That does not condone their behavior.

You have no financial obligation to these people other than returning any presents your daughter may have received. If you wanted to address your family and friends’ travel concerns, you could have hosted a gathering in the wedding’s stead — presumably excusing your hapless daughter from attendance. But there is no reason to do so for such unfeeling people.

I have noticed that you are big on thank-you notes for everything.

If I expected a thank-you note from everybody who ever spent the night at my house, I would have to get a mailbox the size of a mid-sized car. Same with gifts. Same with dinner. I never sent thank-you notes and my friends never did, either. We were happy with “thank you.”

Isn’t this all just a little too much thanking? (But I do send a thank-you email to my family when they host a big holiday party.) Can you help me understand why I differ in my responses to my friends for their hospitality?

Miss Manners is having trouble imagining such a sublime thing. If you did not understand the pleasure of receiving written thanks, you would not be sending them to your family.

The rule for thanking people is to respond in kind. For example, if someone sends a gift through the mail and is not there to see you open it, you send a letter. For ones handed out in person, verbal thanks are enough. For meals and overnight stays, it is dependent on the ceremony of the occasion. A formal dinner party requires a formal, written thankyou note. Pizza back at the house does not.

It’s not complicated. Miss Manners maintains that it is better than a world without gratitude.