DEAR ABBY: After reading the following item in the newspaper, I no longer hand-carry gifts to weddings:
"Two gentlemen, handsomely attired in tuxedos, appeared at a fashionable wedding at a country club. The guests on the bride's side assumed the gentlemen had been invited by the groom's family, and the guests on the groom's side assumed they had been invited by the bride's family. The tuxedoed gentlemen took charge of all the wedding gifts by placing them on a table near the cloakroom. During the evening, the gentlemen transferred all the wedding gifts to a van, and that's the last anyone saw of the gentlemen -- and the gifts." -- TRUE STORY, PALM BEACH, FLA.