Bride needs new plan to minimize kid guests

Dear Miss Manners: My daughter expressed her desire to have as few children at her wedding as possible. She has a flower girl, so naturally this 4year-old will be attending, and she also told the groom’s out-of-town brothers that they may bring their young boys. A groomsman’s wife just delivered, and she told them to please bring their infant child, understanding that leaving a 1-month-old with a sitter may not work out so well.

Now a member of the bridal party apparently needs to bring her 1-yearold child because she doesn’t go anywhere without her, so my daughter figured if she said the groomsman could bring his newborn, then in all fairness, she needs to allow her bridesmaid to bring her toddler.

She has had a few negative responses from people who shared that they “can’t afford a sitter” or “never leave their child with anyone other than family,” and she smiles and says, “I hope it works out, as we want you to be able to share in this day with us.”

Miss Manners, what are we to do if people show up with their children? It is clearly marked on the invite as to how many are invited from their household, but apparently no one reads this anymore or RSVPs. It is bad enough when they do not RSVP, and then when they bring additional people who aren’t invited, it becomes a situation that is difficult to navigate.

Gentle reader: Having given up on the hope that everyone will enjoy a wedding these days, Miss Manners finds herself setting a lesser goal of offending the smallest number of people possible. Even this will be a difficult standard to meet if parents struggle to find baby sitters and then find themselves with a flower girl, two (or more?) nephews-in-law, a mother with infant and a 1-year-old.

Your daughter may exclude all children from the event, but, for understandable reasons, she did not do so. It is time either to hire a baby sitter and a quiet room somewhere away from the main ceremony, or to bribe one of the older children to mind the younger ones.

Dear Miss Manners: The traditional checkout process at stores and fast-food restaurants has always been a separate line for each cash register, and if you happened to end up in a slow line, that’s just the way it was.

However, some places, like banks, have switched to a single “wait here for next available cashier” model. Studies have shown this is generally faster and more efficient, but when there is nothing to indicate one way or the other, what is the prevailing etiquette? Is it one line or multiple lines? Should people be allowed to straddle multiple lines?

I shop at a local pharmacy store that has two cash registers at the front, one across from the other, with a single aisle between them. Every time I have shopped here in the past, there have been two separate lines, with people standing on the left side of the aisle to wait in line for the left cashier, or the right side to wait for the cashier on the right. Today there was a college-aged man standing right in the middle of the aisle, so I politely asked him which line he was in. His reply was “The ONE line,” with a tone that implied I was an idiot for asking.

There is no sign indicating “wait here for next available cashier,” so is it wrong of me to assume that there were actually two separate lines, and he was wrong for trying to straddle both lines?

Gentle reader: Designing checkout lines — like manning cash registers and stocking shelves — is a store responsibility. Smart managers are aware that fistfights among the clientele are likely to interfere with business, and therefore try to make such layouts unambiguous.

When ambiguity does exist, Miss Manners allows free rein to the whims of the first person in line: Everyone behind will then have to conform.

If the aisle between the two cash registers has a function then your college-aged man failed the tests of reasonableness and good intentions. To send a question to the Miss Manners team go to missmanners.com.