DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was invited to a wedding by a family who chooses to have no other contact with me. With the invitation came a bridal registry, most items being chances to finance aspects of the couple’s overseas honeymoon. I added up some of the other small choices on the registry, wrote a check for that amount and sent it with regrets that I wouldn’t be able to attend the wedding.
The check went uncashed for six months. Then I received a thank-you card with my check enclosed, thanking me for my good wishes, but with the suggestion that I donate this money to a charity of my choice. I chose not to respond to the couple in any way. Your response?
GENTLE READER: Well, we can rule out the possibility that these people were insulted by being offered money. Miss Manners despairs of thinking that such delicacy still exists. Certainly not among people who blatantly asked their guests to pay their wedding bills.
Returning a present to its donor is also a traditional insult, although that, too, seems to be forgotten by those who ask their benefactors to try harder to please them.
In this case, it does seem that an insult was intended, which makes it all the more odd that the family should have broken the estrangement by inviting you to the wedding. You were generous to send a present at all, but perhaps they thought you hadn’t given enough money. Miss Manners agrees with you that they seem the right sort of people from whom it is wise to be estranged.
(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)