The Lady Guide to Modern Manners: 6 June
Dear Thomas,
With the wedding season once again coming into view, I’m depressed by the prospect of the inevitable Wedding Present List. The worst is when you click online to buy a dinner plate for £150. There’s not even a picture of it. The whole process is so clinical. Is there an alternative?
Sonia Mitchell, Liverpool
Dear Sonia,
In recent years, I’ve experienced Wedding Lists that were too basic and functional, suggesting little confidence in the forthcoming marriage, and others tending in the opposite direction: the £150-a-plate category, indicating a fairly horrifying power couple.
A kind of alternative is offered by Ayesha Vardag, a prominent divorce lawyer, and Stephen Bence, who marry later this month. This couple doesn’t want things, they want a honeymoon. So, you can buy them flights to San Francisco (£800 each) or a night in The Fairmont San Francisco (£280). If you’re interested, as I’m sure you are, you can read all about it at www.vardagbencemarriage.com
I’m very glad I’m not going on this honeymoon. It sounds like a relentless round of brunches, lunches and dinners, a marathon of happiness in hotel suites. But if that’s what they want… Even so, much of the media criticism of these nuptials has been spiteful. But their requirements are not so excessive. Air tickets are for Business Class, not First, and brunch at Brenda’s in San Francisco is only £45. I might give it to them myself.
Inevitably, a Wedding List reflects the aspirations of a couple. But to ensure they don’t get 30 toasters and 16 hideous vases, what other way is there? In the old days, people used to give antiques, inevitably one-offs. Now people don’t want them. My mother, married in 1956, was given a good Wedgwood vase and a top-class jardinière with a damaged leg. Maybe she didn’t know that she wanted these things and would keep them by her for 57 years.
At about the same time, another bride was asked by a friend of her mother’s what she would like for a wedding present. ‘That pendant you’re wearing,’ the bride said. So the lady took it off and gave it to her there and then.
But we’ll have to live with the Wedding List. There could be an improvement in their presentation. It’s unforgiveable if there’s no picture of what you’re buying. Ideally, the couple should write little messages, explaining why they want all this stuff and what they hope to do with it. Ms Vardag and Mr Bence come up trumps in this department, with colourful descriptions of what Brenda’s offers for brunch and indeed their whole intended trip joyously displayed.
Come on – let’s wish them well.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
Strange. All this chimes in with what I was saying last week. It would be wrong to sneer at anyone concerned with the niceties of how to arrange cutlery, but I can’t see that you’re giving the right message to children by focusing on these matters. There’s a danger of confusing good manners with snobbery and daintiness.
Young people need their confidence boosted in other areas – how to hold a conversation, how to conduct themselves on a bus, how to stand up straight, how to speak clearly, how to stop texting, how not to be frightened of everything and everyone.
With the wedding season once again coming into view, I’m depressed by the prospect of the inevitable Wedding Present List. The worst is when you click online to buy a dinner plate for £150. There’s not even a picture of it. The whole process is so clinical. Is there an alternative?
Sonia Mitchell, Liverpool
Dear Sonia,
In recent years, I’ve experienced Wedding Lists that were too basic and functional, suggesting little confidence in the forthcoming marriage, and others tending in the opposite direction: the £150-a-plate category, indicating a fairly horrifying power couple.
A kind of alternative is offered by Ayesha Vardag, a prominent divorce lawyer, and Stephen Bence, who marry later this month. This couple doesn’t want things, they want a honeymoon. So, you can buy them flights to San Francisco (£800 each) or a night in The Fairmont San Francisco (£280). If you’re interested, as I’m sure you are, you can read all about it at www.vardagbencemarriage.com
I’m very glad I’m not going on this honeymoon. It sounds like a relentless round of brunches, lunches and dinners, a marathon of happiness in hotel suites. But if that’s what they want… Even so, much of the media criticism of these nuptials has been spiteful. But their requirements are not so excessive. Air tickets are for Business Class, not First, and brunch at Brenda’s in San Francisco is only £45. I might give it to them myself.
Inevitably, a Wedding List reflects the aspirations of a couple. But to ensure they don’t get 30 toasters and 16 hideous vases, what other way is there? In the old days, people used to give antiques, inevitably one-offs. Now people don’t want them. My mother, married in 1956, was given a good Wedgwood vase and a top-class jardinière with a damaged leg. Maybe she didn’t know that she wanted these things and would keep them by her for 57 years.
At about the same time, another bride was asked by a friend of her mother’s what she would like for a wedding present. ‘That pendant you’re wearing,’ the bride said. So the lady took it off and gave it to her there and then.
But we’ll have to live with the Wedding List. There could be an improvement in their presentation. It’s unforgiveable if there’s no picture of what you’re buying. Ideally, the couple should write little messages, explaining why they want all this stuff and what they hope to do with it. Ms Vardag and Mr Bence come up trumps in this department, with colourful descriptions of what Brenda’s offers for brunch and indeed their whole intended trip joyously displayed.
Come on – let’s wish them well.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
WHAT TO DO ABOUT… SNOBBY CHILDREN
Readers have been writing in, complaining that their offspring are growing chronically aspirational. ‘Don’t say “serviette”, Mum,’ they trill at mealtimes. ‘It’s “napkin”.’ It turns out more and more schools are hiring etiquette consultants, for a fat fee, to run ‘sessions’ on the subject – in my day they were called ‘lectures’. But the emphasis is on how to lay the dinner table, where to put the cheese knife, and what posh words to use. Apparently.Strange. All this chimes in with what I was saying last week. It would be wrong to sneer at anyone concerned with the niceties of how to arrange cutlery, but I can’t see that you’re giving the right message to children by focusing on these matters. There’s a danger of confusing good manners with snobbery and daintiness.
Young people need their confidence boosted in other areas – how to hold a conversation, how to conduct themselves on a bus, how to stand up straight, how to speak clearly, how to stop texting, how not to be frightened of everything and everyone.