Wedding Etiquette: 4 Common Wedding Blunders You Can Avoid
By: JB Anthony
Nobody is perfect. But we can all try to be better: better hosts, better entourages, better wedding guests.
With all the many guests milling around in your friend’s wedding, surely, nobody will mind a few slip-ups. But when slip-ups and wedding blunders are committed out of ignorance and further develops into a habit, that is another story entirely.
Attendance
(1) Unless it is otherwise stated in invitations, wedding invitations are only good for you and a date. There is no need to bring along another friend, who brings along his or her date! Wedding receptions are almost always RSVP especially if the wedding reception is held in a formal and expensive venue. To avoid embarrassing incidents, it is better to go on a wedding alone, without a date, rather than to bring along the entire neighborhood!
(2) When coming to a wedding, it is important to be punctual. Never too early, but more hopefully, never too late either. In traditional church weddings where church doors may very well be closed once the ceremony has begun, it is improper for guests to interrupt the whole ceremony by pounding at the door just to be let in! Weddings are brides and grooms’ happiest day. Don’t ruin it for them by stealing the limelight with a grand, embarrassing entrance. How would you feel if others did it to your wedding?
Wedding Cheer
(3) Most common mistake people make when greeting the newly-wedded couple is to greet the bride a bright and cheerful “Congratulations,” and to pump the groom’s hand along with a booming “Best wishes.” Why is this a mistake at all? When you greet the bride with a “Congratulations,” it is tantamount to saying, “Hey, Congratulations… you just got yourself a great man!” Traditionally, in a society where men still woo women, it is not the bride who is lucky enough to have snagged the groom, but it is the groom who is the lucky one to have had the lady for his bride. Greet the bride “Best wishes,” and the groom, “Congratulations!”
Attire
(4) Some wedding invitations do not inform you as to the required attire and dress code for the wedding. If this is the case, it never hurts to ask the wedding planner, the couple’s relatives or the couple themselves, as to the required dress code. It is always better to ask now than to embarrass yourself and your hosts later. Guests need not necessarily wear the color motif of the wedding, but they do have to dress accordingly in keeping with the ceremony’s formal or informal nature.
In an average lifetime of 70 years, a person of average social acquaintances gets invited into weddings at least 25 times in his or her lifetime. That is enough numbers to develop a reputation in the weddings that you attend: either as one with the impeccable wedding graces… or as one who can commit the most perfect wedding faux pas!
J.B. Anthony is the webmaster of http://www.weddingetiquette.hottestniches.com For more articles and information on weddings and wedding etiquette, please visit http://www.weddingetiquette.hottestniches.com