Wedding Wednesday – Congrats or Best Wishes?

Yes, I promised I would not make this a wedding blog and yes, I am sticking to that promise. But, being barely a week into engagement and overwhelmed by well-wishes and questions from family and friends, it’s on my mind right now so it’s going on the blog. [Side note: I think I’ll keep wedding-related posts to Wednesdays (so I can take advantage of #weddingwednesday, obviously) so whether you are excited or repulsed by the idea, keep that in mind!]

After the big question had been asked and answered and our fingers warmed up enough to use our phones (it was really cold that day!) we started to call our family and friends to let them know the good news. We heard all manner of “congratulations!” and when we put the news on Facebook a couple days later, people from our pasts came out of the woodwork to say the same, with varying levels of all-caps and punctuation. It wasn’t until I got back to work on Monday and shared the news that I heard a slightly different response: “best wishes!” I didn’t think anything of it — it’s just another way of saying “congratulations,” right? — until a little later when another coworker spelled it out: “You say ‘congratulations’ to the groom, but ‘best wishes’ to the bride!”

Is this a thing? I had never heard of it before. I wondered if it might be regional, but, although I grew up in the south, my family is from Connecticut and no one among them or my fiancé’s family has brought this up. It doesn’t seem to be a generational thing either, since all of the women in my office seemed to be familiar with it and our ages range across at least three decades. I did some googling, and it seems that more than anything, it’s an etiquette thing.

Here is where I confess that I am not “in to” etiquette. I was taught to say please and thank you and to hold doors for people when they’re coming in behind me and make eye contact when speaking, basic manners stuff. But when it comes to who is “supposed” to say what to whom and when and how…*yawn.* I remember in middle school, in High Point, North Carolina, we had a week-long etiquette lesson for some reason. I don’t remember which class it was part of or if it was required by some Mandatory Southern Etiquette Curriculum or something, but an outside expert came in a few times and taught us what to do with our napkins and forks and not to put our elbows on the table. At the end, we had a lunch — sorry, a luncheon — during which we sat boy-girl-boy-girl and ate little sandwiches without making any crumbs and each boy had to present the girl to his right with a fake rose. My rose boy was one of the most popular boys in school so naturally I was very excited about that part. Unfortunately, he was still a 13-year-old boy, so he wasn’t super enthused. But that moment, when he made eye contact with me for about a quarter of a second and dropped a plastic rose in front of my plate, is my main memory of my etiquette training.

I honestly may not have even thought the word “etiquette” again until this week, when I started going through the many daunting wedding planning lists on The Knot and on Pinterest (most of which direct back to The Knot). Did you know that the bride’s parents are supposed to throw the engagement party?  And that the bridesmaids or either the bride or groom’s mother is supposed to throw the shower? And you have to tell every single person in both families before you tell social media. And don’t even get me started on this “who pays for what” breakdown.

Yes, I know these are not hard and fast rules, but they are common traditions, and almost every day I come across one that I didn’t realize was “a thing” before. Some of them make sense to me based on the history of marriage, and some just for pure organizational purposes. But a lot of it seems somewhat superfluous, and I can’t help but wonder how these lists and “rules” make people with “non-traditional” families feel. In a way, these how-tos end up being “compare-yourself-tos” for even the happiest and healthiest of couples. What about people with little money or strained family relationships? I guess that’s why we have sites like A Practical Wedding, which has already become my favorite destination for posts that will bring me back down to earth and reassure me that yes, it’s OK if I’m not an etiquette queen, and provide advice on how to explain that to questioning friends and relatives.

Which brings me back to the “congrats” vs. “best wishes” debate. Allegedly, it’s rude to congratulate a woman for “landing a man,” because it implies that she had trouble doing so or didn’t have a choice about who to marry. Best wishes is better in that case, while the man can be congratulated for successfully convincing the bride to say yes…

First of all, I hope there aren’t still many couples getting engaged without discussing it first. It baffles me to think that there are still a significant number of men who propose without being pretty confident in the answer. On that same note, marriage is obviously a partnership. I don’t feel lucky that my fiancé picked me, and I don’t think he would use that word to describe his feelings either. We’ve worked on this relationship for almost eight years, and we had many conversations about our commitment to that work going forward. That doesn’t sound sweet and romantic I guess, but it’s real, as is this comment from Miss Manners herself on the “congrats” vs. “best wishes” conundrum:

“[T]oday’s brides hear far worse. Those who are repeatedly told ‘It’s about time!’ and asked ‘Are you pregnant?’ are only too happy to accept kind thoughts, however they are phrased.”