MISS MANNERS

I’ve been squeezed out of a tiny wedding

Dear Miss Manners: My stepson is getting married during the pandemic, and is now only able to invite a tiny number of guests. He plans to have his big wedding at a later date. The guests now only include the bridegroom, their son, the couple standing up for them and their natural parents.

I feel that that is disrespectful and inappropriate. Am I wrong in feeling this way?

Gentle Reader: Whom would you ask them to eliminate to allow you one of those slots?

Oh, whoops – Miss Manners had failed to notice that although you listed the bridegroom, who is not exactly a “guest,” you did not list the bride.

But the bride is only the first whose claim to this highly restricted gathering seems stronger than yours. Later, when larger festivities are held – it will not actually be a “wedding,” as the couple will already be married – you should be included. Now is the time to withdraw gracefully, with all your good wishes.

Dear Miss Manners: My mother taught me that it wasn’t in good taste to display my framed photographs of friends and family members in the living room (the “public area”) and that I should display them, instead, in the bedrooms or “family room/den.” The exception would be a portrait (painting) or the like.

Is this still true?

I live in a small duplex with only one living area. My son, after a decade of my begging, gave me a framed photo of himself. After I unwrapped it and thanked him, I immediately put it on my mantel. I think I’m going to leave it there, right or wrong. However, that made me wonder what the reasons were behind the rule my mother taught me, and if they were still valid.

Gentle Reader: The idea was that public rooms were for art, and private ones for that photograph of you with a movie star you once met at a charity function, or the one of your now-teenaged child as a toddler taking a bubble bath.

But then photography came to be recognized as an art. So that shot of the woods with the early ray of sunlight can be shown in the living room, as can photographic portraits.

Of course, that was before the age of the selfie. Miss Manners cautions you that neither your snapshot nor that picture of your fancy dinner qualifies.