DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am happily engaged to be married soon. I would like my wedding and reception to be a true celebration with friends and family who love us and wish us well, but I have a very limited budget.

To that end, I have resorted to a buffet-style luncheon to be eaten on paper products rather than china and silver. I will use traditionally worded, plain ivory invitations; however, they will be printed, not engraved, and will not include that superfluous bit of tissue or (you will be happy to hear) those monstrous response cards. I will have only one attendant, and family and friends are helping prepare the food, cakes and decorations. When you have recovered consciousness, perhaps you could reassure me that I am not a disgrace to well-mannered brides everywhere.

My distress, which is quite acute, stems from my feeling suddenly that etiquette is the purview of the well-off, of which I am not a member. As a well-mannered Southern girl, I desperately want my ceremony and festivities to be proper and feel that perhaps I am operating outside those bounds. Please help.

GENTLE READER: The proper thing for you to is to help Miss Manners up off the floor first. She fell into a faint all right, but not over the idea that you are violating etiquette by not having a big vulgar expensive extravaganza of a wedding.

What sent her crashing -- her smelling salts, please; there's a dear -- is your notion that etiquette is some sort of luxury cultivated by the rich. You must have met very few of them.

Etiquette has nothing to do with gaggles of chorus-line bridesmaids, groan-producing dinners, endless revelries and the other over-done ingredients of the debt-ridden wedding. The simplest weddings are, in fact, the most likely to be proper.

For example, engraved invitations are merely the traditional substitute for handwritten ones. Rather than printing imitations of engraving, the more charming, not to mention cheaper, alternative is to write them out by hand.

The greatest improprieties occur when bridal couples ignore the comforts and convenience of their guests in their efforts to aggrandize themselves. (When you hear the announcement, "After all, it's our wedding," you may be sure that a plan of that nature is underway.)

Miss Manners trusts that your friends and relatives volunteered to help with the cooking, rather than being assigned to do so. And when she suggests firm plates and flatware, she is not hoping for a commission from the sale of china and silver -- any reasonably attractive ceramic and metal will do -- but rather thinking of how nasty it is to eat from paper.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been invited to a Sunday brunch hosted by my lady friend's parents. What is the proper gift for a mature male to bring as an expression of appreciation? They do not drink alcohol, nor do I know anything personal about them. I do not want to ask my lady friend, as I want it to surprise her also.

GENTLE READER: Flowers. Miss Manners considers it more flattering to be assumed to appreciate beauty than to be in need of a drink.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend of mine died last week. Going through my address book today looking for someone else, I came across my deceased friend's name. When is it appropriate to remove it, or is it a matter of dealing with grief?

GENTLE READER: How could it be rude to remove a telephone number that is no longer useful to you, when the person concerned will never know?

That is the practical answer. Yet Miss Manners is well aware of how it feels. Piety toward the dead may not be reasonably defensible, but it is an important part of the human condition. So the answer is to leave it there until the pang it gives you to remove it is manageable, which could be sooner, later or never.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I've a question that's bothered me for years -- perhaps more philosophical than etiquette -- but I'll let you decide.

I'm house pianist at an elegant dinner house, and the other night a customer gave me a request and was enjoying himself as I played, but his date seemed unhappy that he was not engaged in CONVERSATION.

Is the sole purpose of dining out just to engage in conversation, or cannot people enjoy the ambiance?

I realize, Miss Manners, that this may not be an either/or question, but I've noticed many people cannot enjoy the ambiance that an elegant dining house offers, but choose nonstop conversation.

I love good conversation, but maybe I'm just being too idealistic when it comes to a dining experience. Where is it written that LISTENING cannot be as enjoyable as TALKING?

If people cannot enjoy themselves when they dine out, something is terribly wrong. Was the gentleman who made the request to me that out of line? Again, I've noticed MANY situations like that through the years, and I would like to hear what you think.

GENTLE READER: You belong on the concert stage. This does not refer to your musical talent and skill, which Miss Manners has not had the pleasure of observing. But it is on the concert stage that you would have the silent attention you want.

In a restaurant, what you are playing, no matter how good you are, is background music. Some people may choose to listen raptly. Others may prefer to converse. Some may choose to listen raptly while their dates would prefer to converse. This is an etiquette problem, but it is one between them.

Miss Manners is not sure there is a philosophical angle to this, but neither is conversing during so-called background music something that can be classified as rude. It is just in the nature of restaurants that many people go there to talk.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When my husband and I went to a steak house for dinner, my husband informed me that it would be rude to ask for steak sauce (which I always use when I eat steak). I have never heard of this before and, in order to not embarrass him, I ate the whole dinner without my A1 sauce. Can you please tell me if he is right or wrong?

GENTLE READER: Your husband has visions of an enraged chef storming out of the kitchen wanting to know who was insulting his exquisite taste by dousing a foreign substance on the dish he had so carefully prepared. Somehow, Miss Manners doubts it.

It is rude to ask for something to alter the food seriously when you are dining at someone's house, and it may be unwise to do this in the sort of restaurant where it is not unusual to congratulate the chef. Or where the chef can see you from one of those glassed-in kitchens. But not in an ordinary steak house.

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