A moment of your attention, please.

We---which is to say, Management---have striven from the start of this weblog to avoid tired personal trivia, and to stick to the mission, namely, prattling on about stained-glass craftsy goodness. It's better that way, was the idea, and Management have not been disappointed. But Management are terribly vexed by some social ineptitude on the part of Management's extended social group, and now beg your indulgence while Management offer a lesson in proper party-invitation etiquette.

1.) I am not a girl-shaped accessory of my fiance's. Not even if we live together. Not even if he makes more happy hours than I do. I have my own identity, my own schedule, and my own email address: welcome to the twenty-first century.

2.) Even if I were his accessory, said fiance has this habit of not telling me about parties to which he has been invited and to which he wants to bring me as, I suppose, a date, until it's time to go.

3.) It's embarrassing, people, to have other guests see that I'm not on the evite, and to either ask me why or to have them whisper ostentatiously about your party when I'm within earshot; or to have people not see that I'm not on the evite, and to ask me if I'll be at your house this Saturday, at which point I ask "Huh?"

4.) It hasn't been since high school that I had occasion to sit around going "well, I'm not on the list, but I'm totally a part of the group... aren't I? So I should consider myself invited... shouldn't I? But if I were invited I'd be on the list... wouldn't I? Other girlfriends get their own invitations... don't they?"

Maybe I read too much Miss Manners, but all this strikes me as terribly rude. This has happened more than once recently. Which is the only reason it bugs me so, and the only reason I bring it up here. Consider it a public-service announcement: when inviting guests to a party, the "and guest" convention is appropriate only when there is no partner, or you don't know the partner's name, and even then, etiquette demands that you make every attempt to discover it. This becomes even more important at formal affairs, where the old-fashioned etiquette says that if your name (or "and guest") isn't on the envelope, you aren't invited, no matter if you're wife, child, or Siamese twin.

The alternatives include hurt feelings, awkwardness, scheduling snafus, overwrought and indignant and totally off-topic screeds on your friends' websites. In other words: drama. You don't want that, do you?

... oh, stained glass? Well, see, winter has arrived, and the basement is not heated, and that's where the workshop is. So. I cut some glass for the transom project last weekend and then I got cold and then I vowed to buy a space heater. At some point. Is the plan.

Posted by Michelle on December 01, 2002 03:59 PM