Yes.You really think so? (I thought some people might do that, but didn’t think the majority would…)
That’s too bad, since you have the chance to remove them.I still like the idea, and already have the envelopes stuffed and ready to go (just awaiting postage). I guess I’ll just come across as rude…
(
I have to agree with 1ke. It is very uncomfortable when a clerk asks you to “donate $1 to such and such” (I like to really know who my money is going to…some stores give to questionable charities) and wouldn’t be comfortable with a friend asking me to donate to a specific charity. Although you may feel the cause is a worthy one, not everyone will (example: protestant donating to Catholic apostolate, non-animal lover donating to shelter, a pro-life individual donating to any medical research without knowing their position on stem cell research). People may feel obliged to donate to something they aren’t comfortable with (my favorite charity is so poor that I doubt if they’d have brochures!). Also, it could be construed as self-advertising your own generousity.
If anyone does ask what you’d like, you can give them a brochure.
Good for you on addressing envelopes already…I truly waited until the last possible minute to address and mail my cards!
I’ve pretty much given up on trying to please everybody - I know people are going to feel offended. I’ve already had to deal with “why are you getting married in KY instead of near your family?”. I know the non-Catholic guests (which is almost everybody) run the risk of being offended because they can’t receive communion. I’m going against family tradition by not serving alcohol, or having a lavish reception with a full meal, and I know that will upset some. And I’m sure some of my relatives may feel offended by the request to avoid huge amount of cleavage and immodest dress at the wedding mass.
Don’t feel bad. This is exactly how I was. My Dad’s side of the family tends to have very large family reunions occassionally. My great grandmother lived a very long time so our family reunions often involved five generations. It was impossible to know everyone. But the rules of inviting insisted you never expressed favoritism. Instead to limit the guest count, you had to say “ok, we are not inviting grandpa’s cousin’s children.”
I don’t think you’ll offend everyone. Some people may actually like the idea and find it very creative. Unforunately, its impossible to please everyone.
I have never heard of anyone donating to a charity on your behalf. Honestly, I would find it rather rude that they’d be bragging to me about donating to a charity. Unless they’re asked to do so on our request, it just seems very rude.
Not proper? The woman who did our marriage prep told us that she had a gift opening at her wedding reception back in the 50’s. The church reception hall didn’t even ask if we wanted a gift table. We were just asked if we were going to bring our own box for cards or if we wanted to rent the box they already had. An aunt of mine actually called us up and asked us if we’d like to use the card box that had been used at their daughter’s wedding a decade earlier. The only gifts I got directly in the mail were from guests who couldn’t make it to our wedding.
Provided that the donor took the trouble to make certain they were donating to a charity the couple does support, why on earth would it be rude to donate to a charity in someone else’s honor and then tell them about it? In what way is that insulting? How is it “bragging” more than spending money on a gift that they give to you directly…particularly a gift from a registry, a gift whose price you know exactly?
Really? I am also from the old school where it is not considered “proper” to bring a gift to the wedding. I was taught it was best to send it to the mother of the bride’s house before the wedding and second best to send it to the couple’s home after the wedding.
I’m not talking merely of my generation as the younger generation. I didn’t want to make a wedding registry at all. My Mom is in her 50’s and insisted it’d be rude to not have a registry. I think marketing has been weaving its way into the culture around weddings for many decades. Certainly they said not to include the wedding invitation, but this seems the left over of a previous culture around weddings. The younger generations are much more likely to have wedding registry info in their cards because the commercial industry has a far larger grip than it did before, but its always been there.
I’ve never heard of Emily Post or Crane. Most brides look at wedding magazines, go online and maybe get the latest book on wedding planning at borders. I was given such a book as a gift. The book was a product of the wedding industry. It called a $20 thousand dollar wedding an economic wedding. The book was acting like spending $40 thousand was the norm. It became clear to me that its eduiquete advise was about encouraging my family and I to spend more money than necessary.
Did you miss the part where TraderTif proposes to include a brochure in the invitations. That is exactly what is proposed here-- inviting the guests to donate to the charity.
Certainly there has always been a gap between what is appropriate and “what people do”. That doesn’t change what is appropriate and what isn’t.
Which again, does not make it appropriate– i.e. proper according to social ettiquette. People do all sort of things. People suggest all sorts of things. Most are not out to buck ettiquette, most apparently are not informed of it. One would hope that professionals in the wedding business would know better, but apparently not.
Which defies logic as well as ettiquette.
Oh, my, I should probably not bring up the fact that the shower gift and the wedding gift are not one and the same.
Yup.
The reality is that we all know what the bridal couple will be doing on their wedding night, too, but it is vulgar to ignore the ettiquette about talking about that pointedly during the toast. There are ways to get food into your mouth that are more efficient than the mannerly way, too. Exercising good manners usually involves a loss in efficiency in the service of grace.
I had never heard of a gift opening at the reception till she told me about it. She only advised against it because of the risk of gifts being stolen. I was also told that you have a special sealed box for cards because gifts of money are easier to pocket than carrying a huge wrapped gift to your car.
Waiting for my friend at a restaurant, and I just overheard a woman (loudly) tell her friend/announce she isn’t wearing underwear. What people will do is no indication of what is appropriate.
Correct, but you suggested the guests would do this on their own. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this.
Ettiquette doesn’t have a logic. Its just a way of pretending that there is one right way of behaving outside of objective morality. In the end, it misses the point of morality and becomes fuel for gossip and rude criticism.
The actual purpose of the registery, originally, was in regard to china, silver, and crystal. One registered your pattern choices with the jeweler (who in those days sold such things).
If the couple were known to be patrons of a particular charity, it would hardly be a surprise. The idea of any registry, including a charitable wedding “registry” such as Kate and William had, is to provide ideas that may not be widely known, but that might be more to the liking of those who want to know if the couple has charities in common with them and don’t know that. The couple still puts the information in a place where it has to be scouted out, rather than confronting their invited guests with it as if the information were a demand for gifts.
Making the accusation against manners that they “miss the point of morality” and are fuel for “rude criticism” is a bit ironic, to say the least. Even though variations towards the same end are possible, ettiquette does have a lot of logic, just as the rubrics of the Mass have a logic. Some of this logic is that people are less likely to give unintentional offense or take offense not meant if the “rules of the game” have been spelled out for them. This is what codes of ettiquette do. In the end, actually, the rules of ettiquette are no more than the custom of people imitating the example of gracious people that went before them. That is how rules of ettiquette are born.
I have never found receiving a note about where the bride and groom are registered to be anything like a huge impersonal sign saying “Place your gifts here.” I’ve never been offended. If I didn’t receive it, I’d look for it on the wedding website. If it weren’t there, I would get creative and buy something. I wouldn’t be calling the bride or her family because I know they are far too busy. I also typically have no idea of who else is invited and would not call someone else on the chance that I might end up accidently informing someone that they weren’t invited.
But the problem is that the rules of the game contradict each other and are difficult to know because our cultural diversity. We live in a world where the “rules of the game” are more like a few torn pages of the GIRM combined with 10 or more pages of rules from multiple different sources. Meanwhile each individual has different pages from each set of rules. There is no unity or consistancy. In the end, all you end up having is a bunch of people criticizing you and calling you rude because you aren’t following the rules of the game according to their understanding of it.