Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a review of "Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding," and also a comparison of this book to "Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette" by Peggy Post.
First and foremost, it seems obvious, but don't buy this book if you don't like Miss Manners' style of writing. Many newspapers run a Miss Manners column, you can use the "Look inside this book" Amazon feature, or you can Google for "advice by Miss Manners" for some sample columns. People tend to either love or hate Miss Manners - I personally find her very arch and witty, but I have friends who feel her dry tone and third-person self-references to be intolerably snooty.
Much of this book is a reprisal of "Miss Manners on Painfully Proper Weddings," so if you have that book already I'm not sure you need to buy this one as well. The only particular advice I can remember that has been updated for modern times is that Miss Manners tolerates the discreet inclusion of registry information on a wedding website. Other than that, the advice is much the same.
In comparison to Emily Post's "Wedding Etiquette", "Wedding Etiquette" is more of a general guide for wedding planning, with some etiquette advice thrown in, whereas Miss Manners' book is mostly about etiquette, with little advice on wedding planning. Whether this is good or bad for you depends on whether you are already getting that planning advice from elsewhere. For example, Post's "Wedding Etiquette" has a very long section on different ways to word the invitation (depending on who is hosting, etc), whereas "Surprisingly Dignified Wedding" has a much shorter section for this. Chances are, though, that you will get a detailed guide from your stationer when you order your invitations, so the extra pages in Post's "Wedding Etiquette" may not be providing that much value to you.
Post's "Wedding Etiquette" tends to be more clear and direct (perhaps it's just that Peggy Post has a more direct writing style, while Miss Manners sometimes sacrifices clarity for cleverness). While Miss Manners agrees with Peggy Post on most issues, sometimes the actual etiquette advice does differ. For example, let's consider the question of whether a guest is required to bring a gift to the wedding. Peggy Post writes straightforwardly that "Invited guests have an obligation to send a gift, whether they are attending or not." On the other hand, Miss Manners maintains that an invitation does not constitute an obligation to send a present, but "if you do not feel sufficiently pleased by someone's marriage to be moved to try to contribute to that person's happiness, you don't belong at the wedding." This essentially boils down to "you must bring a present if you attend the wedding, but not if you decline the invitation," but the way it is phrased is a little oblique.
Miss Manners also tends to be stricter and require you to make more sacrifices for etiquette, while Peggy Post tends to make more allowances for convenience and personal preferences. For example, Miss Manners is very much against the idea of reducing the guest list to trim the budget, or to allow the wedding to fit in your chosen reception space. She believes it is rude to consider a location or style of entertaining more important than the presence of guests ("We had to choose between having the wedding in a charming little place without you, or in an ordinary place with you, and we decided to lose you." She would rather you invite everyone who should be invited, and have a simple punch-and-cake reception. On the other hand, Peggy Post does recommend cutting the guest list to preserve the budget.
Overall, I prefer Miss Manners' "Surprisingly Dignified Wedding" over Post's "Wedding Etiquette." I like that Miss Manners tends to have stricter etiquette rules than Peggy Post. Much of my purpose for reading a wedding etiquette book was to figure out how to be as polite as possible, not how much I could toe the line and still be considered within the bounds of etiquette. Also, much of the wedding planning advice in Post's "Wedding Etiquette" is duplicated in my wedding planner and in wedding magazines, so the extra depth there was not as useful to me. However if you are not buying a lot of wedding planning materials and are looking for one book as an all-in-one guide, then I would recommend Post's "Wedding Etiquette" as a more comprehensive resource.

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Bride and mother-of-the-bride rebel against today's monster weddings and explain how weddings can be charming, affordable-and excruciatingly correct.
Today's brides are bombarded with wedding advice that promises perfection but urges achieving it through selfishness ('It's your wedding, and you can do whatever you like"), greed (choosing the presents that guests are directed to buy), and showing off ('This is your chance to show everyone what you're about"). Couples wishing to resist such pressure see elopement or a slapdash wedding as the only alternatives to a gaudy blowout. But none of these choices appealed to a bride who happened to have been brought up by Miss Manners. Judith Martin and her newlywed daughter, Jacobina, explain how to have a dignified ceremony and delightful celebration without succumbing to the now-prevalent pattern of the vulgar, money-draining wedding that exhausts families and exploits friends. 6 illustrations

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