DEAR MISS MANNERS: A good friend of mine has been dating a man for 10 years. Their relationship has had its up and downs over the years. He considers himself a real man's man and has always been keen on marrying her.

After so many years, she finally agreed. He, however, insists that they live together for a year first, and if things are fine between them he will then buy a ring. He has, on two separate occasions, told her he would move in with her. He changed his mind both times without a plausible explanation.

My friend owns her place, owns her car, has great credit and is pretty much financially secure. He is the total opposite. He is still renting after 20 years of working, does not have a car or hold a license and has major credit problems.

She still loves him. After the past couple of setbacks with making arrangements for living together falling by the wayside, she now prefers marriage. She still wants to marry him.

However, at this point, she wants to get engaged first before living with him. He wants to live together before getting married because he said it would be more economical for him. What do you think?

GENTLE READER: That she will move in with him, but that you need not worry about getting them a wedding present. The gentleman may not be decisive, but he is apparently persuasive.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We live in a condo, and our guest room also serves as my office. I invited friends to stay with us for a time that would have originally been three nights.

After setting the dates, they asked to extend to five nights for the purpose of getting a cheaper plane ticket. (They're not poor!) I reluctantly agreed. That was my first mistake, but to say "no" would have seemed insensitive to their potential economic savings.

The day before they were scheduled to leave, when I was already climbing the wall from being displaced and also constant entertaining and sight-seeing, they asked to stay way into that last day, as they had a late flight. I made up a lie that we had to be somewhere late that morning to get them out of the house and gave them some alternatives where they could spend the day.

I think I got caught in my lie. In the future, how should I handle a situation where I commit to a stay (three nights is long enough in our situation) and then the guests want to extend and then extend again?

GENTLE READER: But why lie, when you have such a good excuse? Why didn't you reply to the first request, "I'm so sorry -- that's my office, and I need to get back to work?"

Miss Manners does not profess the sort of crude and callous morality that considers it a sin to say "I had a lovely time" if she didn't. But false excuses are foolhardy, as you have discovered. And even if you hadn't had a good excuse, none would have been necessary. All you need to have said was, "Oh, I'm so sorry. It was lovely having you here, but alas, three days was all I could schedule with you."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: As a U.S. government employee, I often take official delegations to foreign countries. While in these countries, my group sometimes hosts receptions where we pay for the food and drink and the meeting place.

I recently encountered a situation where the U.S. embassy in Country X attempted to dictate the dress for the reception as well as its duration. This was not a country with which I am unfamiliar, as we have hosted the same type of reception there for many years.

The embassy eventually dropped its attempts to control our reception, but I feel compelled to ask your counsel: Can the embassy do this? The invitees at the reception were a combination of local business people and government officials. I should also add that I told the embassy that they could invite some people if it would be to their advantage to do so.

Do the normal rules apply here, or are they suspended when we work overseas and with the government?

GENTLE READER: Dicate dress? Are we talking about a ban on flip-flops and T-shirts with anti-American slogans? Or a requirement that the ladies cover all but their eyes?

Probably neither, but Miss Manners knows better than to take a position on dress codes until she knows what they are and when they apply. She has received too many letters on the subject from teenagers who are indignant about the injury to their civil rights when they are not permitted to attend school displaying the body parts of which they are most proud.

Certainly a United States embassy can insist that people entering it not be dressed in such a way as to undermine the dignity of the venue. For that matter, so can any American restaurant or boardwalk souvenir shop that puts up a sign saying "No shirt, no shoes, no service."

But, of course, what specifically meets the criteria and what does not is subject to wide interpretation and, we hope, peaceful and polite negotiation. That you were able to have the code removed suggests that you took this option successfully.

The particular code you were originally given may well have been unreasonable. The mere existence of a dress code is not.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My fiance and I are both in our early 20s, eagerly awaiting our wedding date. We have made a decision to wait until our wedding night before "going all the way."

We both come from moral families that uphold traditional views on sex and marriage. Knowing my future in-laws' views on such matters, should they have the right to question our intentions or the physical part of our relationship? Is it really any of their business?

GENTLE READER: No, but they will anyway. Miss Manners recommends blushing, looking down and mumbling, "I'm sorry, but I was brought up never to mention such things." Tears and running from the room would help.

Your fiance will have a harder time, since they brought him up, but he can plead that discussing that would be a violation of the old-fashioned modesty that he treasures in you.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: We have dinner parties and BBQs at our home several times a year. We usually cook most of the food, and we ?have several friends who offer to bring dishes.

?Recently, some guests have taken to stopping at the ?grocery store and picking up packaged food. We ?strongly prefer that only homemade food be served in ?our home. We realize this is considered old fashioned, ?but it is our personal preference.

I have not said ?anything to my guests for fear of appearing ?ungracious. What is the best way to handle the ?situation, short of banning guests from bringing food ?altogether?

GENTLE READER: Sorry, but there is no polite way to say, "Bring me a higher quality of food" or "You were supposed to put some actual work into this."

Mind you, Miss Manners is in total sympathy with your desire to control what you serve your guests in your own house. But she is also sympathetic with dinner guests who no longer feel that they can enjoy a night out without working for it first or that they can even travel to a party without a container of food sloshing around on their laps.

Both problems can easily be solved: You serve only home-cooked food in your home; and you make it clear that they don't have to cook or shop for you. (Some will do so anyway, but you must be equally firm when you thank them, in saying that you will enjoy that later.)

But if you still insist on not banning contributions to your dinner, you are stuck with serving them, eating them and pretending to like them.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Which of the following would be the more correct to say after I perform a wedding ceremony?

1. "It is now my pleasure to introduce for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Robert and Dr. Doris Smith."

2. "It is now my pleasure to introduce for the first time, Mr. Robert and Dr. Doris Smith."

3. "It is now my pleasure to introduce for the first time, Dr. Doris and Mr. Robert Smith."

GENTLE READER: The first is certainly the most arresting, as it sounds as if you married a threesome. But Miss Manners is afraid that she doesn't care for the others, either. With the names separated, one can't help noticing that Mr. Smith has been Mr. Smith all along (or at least since he became old enough to graduate from being Master Smith), and there is no first time about it.

Perhaps the time has come to drop this little announcement, which always struck Miss Manners as more suitable to show business than to a religious ceremony.

She supposes you could say "the Smiths" or "Dr. Smith and her husband" or "Doris and Robert Smith," but these all sound forced. And anyway, what are you going to do about the newly married Dorothy Jones and Roland Smith?

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