Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding Book

Many people seem to view Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, as a snobbish, overly fork-preoccupied type intent on making people follow unnecessary and picky rules. This is utterly wrong. Judith Martin has made it abundantly clear throughout her etiquette career that she finds forks uninteresting (if there are several next to your plate, start with the outside one), and believes that the point of etiquette is to "make people happy, or at least to prevent them from shoving each other." She is also'as is particularly evident to anyone who has seen her speak'very funny.

Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding is an updated version of an earlier book on weddings, with her recently-married daughter Jacobina Martin added as co-author. It's an invaluable guide to what is truly important at a wedding, what is not important, and what is actually rude. Hair-raising stories abound from all sides: hosts who ignore their guests, ask them to pay for their own food (or simply to deposit money into the couple's bank account), and who treat the wedding as a kind of show business production; clerics who joke throughout the ceremony; guests who refuse to reply to invitations, demand to be allowed to bring friends, or accept the invitation and then fail to show up.

In a world of rapidly declining manners and rapidly increasing friction, Judith Martin draws a roadmap for people who want to live together without offense, and sets a standard for a society in which people are genuinely civil to each other.