DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a 24-year-old man, married two years to a wonderful, sweet, caring, compassionate, funny and all-around awesome lady. These are the reasons why I married her.

She is also drop-dead gorgeous. I'm not.

I can take some lighthearted kidding about that; I even kid about it myself. However, there are always some guys at work, parties, etc., who ask me about our sex life and why she married me over a nicer-looking guy.

I would never discuss this with anyone but my wife or perhaps a doctor, and find these questions appalling. I usually just mutter "Umm, that's a bit private," but all I get are more questions, laughter, etc. I know these guys think they are just being my "buddy," but I think they are acting disgusting. What should I say?

GENTLE READER: "What are you talking about? She tells me all the time how good-looking I am."

Miss Manners suggests pausing for a minute to let them think about that, because your buddies don't sound too swift. If no light goes on, you will have to add, "You mean it's not true? Then why would she say that? Do you think it's possible that maybe she just thinks so because she loves me? That ever happen to any of you?"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My friend's daughter is getting married a year from now. When I mentioned what the groom's family is responsible for, such as flowers for the attendants and the rehearsal dinner, she said, "Oh no, they are also responsible traditionally for all the alcohol served at the reception."

I realize that nowadays a lot of mothers of the bride expect and ask the groom's family for help, but to me that is not as it should be. So, can you settle the argument regarding the alcohol?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners fears that this situation is not going to get any better. You are all guessing wrong about something that is in a state of flux, and which requires goodwill and cooperation.

Your friend is in error about the alcohol -- does "his folks buy the booze" sound like a rule of etiquette to you? But you are wrong both about what the tradition was and about condemning it for having changed.

Traditionally, the bridegroom's parents paid for nothing. The bridegroom himself paid for the bride's bouquet and ring, boutonnieres for his groomsmen and the officiant's fee. All the entertaining expenses, including the rehearsal dinner, were borne by the bride's parents.

This may always have been unfair, but there was some thought of it as a last gesture before turning over all the bride's expenses forever to the bridegroom. At any rate, we now have been sensibly moving toward equalizing the situation, and it has become customary for the bridegroom's parents to give the rehearsal dinner.

Above all, it should be remembered that we are not talking here about a business deal, where certain parties receive certain assessments, but about families.

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At the highest levels of government, for work and during daytime ceremonial occasions, American ladies in official positions are now routinely wearing trouser suits.

(Well, at least senators, representatives and the ranking ladies who live or work in the White House are. You can never tell about those stylish justices.)

Miss Manners considers this an overdue triumph for decorum. The gentlemen are no longer subject to becoming overexcited by catching a glimpse of exposed ankle.

It is not often that she finds a sensible trend in the world of feminine fashion. Other such news -- heralding the return of what Miss Manners actually wears, such as hats, gloves and evening dresses with trains, rather than what she countenances in others, as she does the trouser suit -- typically amounts to nothing more than regularly repeated false alarms.

When the female equivalent of the male suit first began to be widely worn, it provoked outrage. Restaurateurs with fancy establishments declared that they would bar the door to ladies with the audacity to show up wearing pants. And that was in the first miniskirt era, when the same people had managed to accept the rapid retreat of hemlines -- apparently only with the proviso that that trend not be reversed.

At the time, Miss Manners refused to become aghast. The prescience of denouncing ladies' tailored trouser suits struck her as an invitation to join members of the French Academy, who had barred the Impressionists; and the first-night audience at Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring," whose musical sensitivity led them to tear up the theater. One does not recover from such reputations. And surely there is enough nasty business around to keep the discriminating busy without having to scorn what will soon come to be considered conventional, if not classic.

The grand restaurateurs' understanding of the gender factor in fashion did not improve after this defeat. When the law forced them to abandon their policy of hiring only males to wait on tables (with the notion that waitresses were better suited to simpler restaurants, where they could carry heavier trays for lighter tips), they dressed their waitresses in male formal dress, complete with bowties.

What this says symbolically is: We still have male service, but some of it is performed by male impersonators.

The difference between that and the female business suit, whether it has a skirt or trousers, is that the suit is an adaptation rather than an imitation. While benefiting from such advantages as freedom from worry of exposing various parts of the body to view and criticism and compatibility with low-heeled shoes, the suit retains feminine access to the full color spectrum and (with the addition of jewelry and scarves, and the addition or total subtraction of blouses) individualization.

More significantly, it provides that recognizably professional look that gentlemen have always been able to summon. In contrast, ladies were presumed to be present on official occasions only in a social capacity, and their prescribed wardrobes -- floaty dresses with whimsical hats for the most formal daytime occasions -- reflected this. Even now, there is an oddly reactionary tendency among young ladies to wear clothes to work that are amazingly, ah, social in original intent.

The trouser suit, in contrast, symbolizes seriousness. So do the skirted suit and the coatdress, if they are of decent length, and Miss Manners will personally stick with them -- despite that pesky problem of the provocatively exposed ankles.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been noticing more and more at various dinner parties that the place settings are being done in a manner that appears odd to me. Over many years I have always placed the knife with the sharp edge of the blade toward the plate.

Now in many cases I see that sharp edge pointed away from the plate. Is this the correct new place setting arrangement, or not?

GENTLE READER: What are you thinking? That the Etiquette Council met one fine day and issued a proclamation that from then on, everyone was required to reverse all knives?

Not likely. What Miss Manners finds all too likely is that fewer and fewer people know or care how to do things properly.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm afraid I've been rude, and I'm looking for forgiveness.

As a professional woman, I've had to put up with years of people assuming I must be the secretary, asking me to get them coffee and asking to speak to "someone with authority," as if that couldn't possibly be me.

Today, it happened one too many times. A company representative making a cold call to sell his products to my firm was referred to me. I answered my phone "Mary Smith," as I always do, and he proceeded: "Mary, this is Mr. Jones with the ABC Company, I'd like to speak to someone..."

Seething, I kept my voice level, but could not resist making my point -- that, as a salesman, it might be wise not to address someone by their first name and refer to himself with a title. I'm sure he had no idea what I was talking about, but I know I was rude. My question is, who was more rude?

GENTLE READER: Let's call it a tie. You both violated basic etiquette, and, as a result, you both missed your objectives. Miss Manners will attempt to smother a feeling of smugness that rudeness was its own punishment.

Had the salesman addressed you respectfully, he presumably would have obtained a hearing. Had you made your point without the rudeness of reprimanding him -- instead saying civilly, "I am the person in authority, and I prefer to be addressed as Ms. Smith" -- he might have understood.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My mother, who was just in a car accident, is much better now, thank God, but will be in the hospital another month. My wedding is in one week, and she is very upset and disappointed that she won't be able to come.

Would it be tacky to, after the ceremony, quickly drive to the hospital with my new husband in all our finery and show my mother just what we looked like and tell her all about it right then?

I'd like to show her our outfits, give her the flowers that decorated the church as well as my bouquet, and then give her the video taken of the ceremony. The guests can go to the house for the reception and start lunch, with my dad making a quick announcement about our delay. We would be gone about an hour tops.

Is it always tacky to leave your reception, even in this circumstance? What would Miss Manners do?

GENTLE READER: Make sure everyone got a glass of champagne and the explanation, along with an apology, and get them started on lunch -- just as you suggest.

The problem is not what Miss Manners would do if she were you, but what she will do now as herself. Having granted you an exception to the rule because of the unusual and emotionally compelling circumstances, she expects to watch helplessly as other bridal couples take this as license to keep their guests standing around doing nothing while they go off to have photographs taken and then make a grand entrance.

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