WHEN A WEDDING ISN’T A WEDDING

(EDITORS The first question contains a word that might be offensive to some readers. )

DEAR MISS MANNERS: How do you feel about a bride who has a bridal shower and a reception but a week later is not married? She and her groom have said vows and exchanged rings several times in different locations but have failed to get a license. They just haven't had time for that bull

. Her own words.

She uses the term married, and many people at the reception believed them to be married. She keeps saying that they will go and get married in the courthouse, but I'm beginning to doubt that.

I feel as though I have been taken advantage of for gifts. If she had just had a commitment ceremony and called it what it seems to be, I could respect that and not feel like the whole thing is a joke. I feel embarrassed for her. Am I just becoming an old prickly lady?

GENTLE READER: As an old prickly lady herself, Miss Manners is amazed that someone didn't think of this sooner. It picks up on scary trends that have developed over the last decade:

1. Staging "weddings" independently of the actual act of getting married.

Two kinds of legally married couples usually do this: Those who got married when it was convenient for tax or other purposes, but want to replay the ceremony in front of their friends at the delayed wedding reception, and those who were married some years ago but are now feeling cheated because it wasn't the showy wedding of their dreams. More rarely, it is done as a sort of road show in difference venues for different -- as they call them -- audiences.

2. Trolling for presents or, more frankly, donations. Miss Manners carries on endlessly about the vulgarity of what we shall call social begging on the part of people who are not destitute but shameless and it still keeps growing.

She congratulates your friends on reaching a new low.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been out several times with a charming gentleman acquaintance. I delight in his company, and the preponderance of the evidence indicates that he feels similarly -- he introduces me to his friends, his correspondence is always thoughtful and droll, and he always accepts my invitations for future engagements.

However, I am always the initiator of said engagements. There are several plausible benign interpretations for this -- for instance, I know the city better, and the cup that is my social calendar often runneth over, so he may be politely deferring to my schedule. Or perhaps, because I like to plan ahead, I've just always beaten him to the punch, as it were.

Nevertheless, doubts are beginning to niggle. Should I infer from his lack of initiative that he is not interested? Should I wait for him to contact me? Should I raise the issue in conversation? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

GENTLE READER: A gentleman who is not interested in a lady does not generally see her every chance she suggests, write her droll yet thoughtful letters and introduce her to his friends.

So surely your real question is how you can get him to reciprocate your invitations. By asking. Miss Manners does not think it forward for a lady to say, "I'd love it if you would plan something you'd like us to do together."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm a volunteer writer for a publication with a subscription list of 10,000, and I write profiles of leading citizens who serve as role models for others in their attempt to make a difference in their local communities.

For the last six years, I've made ordinary people look like the "gods and goddesses" that many already think they are, and the pieces have featured their portraits in color, pictures of their families and events that they host.

However, I'm stunned that, to this day, I've never received a note or call thanking me for my positive portrayal of their lives following publication.

If someone favorably profiled me in a magazine, I would at least call or send them a bouquet of flowers in appreciation for the time it took to write and edit the piece, complete the layout with photos for the printer, and help with distribution. I once knew a Congressman who kept his House seat for three decades simply by writing notes and thank-you's to his constituents on a regular basis.

Perhaps there's a lesson here to learn. Civility is dying: "Please" and "thank-you" are no longer common vocabulary words, and even those who are so-called leaders in their communities fall short of common courtesy. Am I expecting too much of others?

GENTLE READER: Yes, if you expect them to thank you for portraying them favorably. They think you captured them accurately, with a few exceptions that anger them, and that they did you a favor, allowing you to glimpse life on Mt. Olympus.

Miss Manners does not disagree about the appalling decline in such courtesies as writing letters of thanks. But in what Miss Manners was pleased to call real journalism -- back when the idea, at least, was to portray people objectively -- letters of thanks were not expected.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a friend who has two daughters. Every time she has a birthday, she sends the guests a list of presents that she wants for her daughters.

She then proceeds to tell the guests that if they buy something not on the list to provide the gift receipt so she can return it just in case she doesn't like what they gave.

Should I say something to her about her rude behavior or just delete the e-mail? I am really annoyed, and several other people are too. She just seems so ungrateful and controlling about the gifts her daughters can or can't play with.

GENTLE READER: Parents are allowed to be controlling in connection with their children's play, for as long as they can get away with it, which is not very long.

The problem here is that your friend is trying to control grown-ups. Generous grown-ups, at that, who are only trying to please her daughters.

But you would be doing that, too, if you chastised her.

Just delete the emails, as you probably do with other solicitations. But if you want to maintain a relationship with the daughters, Miss Manners recommends celebrating their birthdays by taking them out for treats -- without their mother, if she will allow it.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have heard you and others say that a woman should not use her own first name after "Mrs." So Sarah Jennings, married to William Jennings, is Mrs. William Jennings. But in my town, I notice all the 17th- and 18th-century tombstones list Mrs. Sarah Jennings and so on.

If this form is common now and was common 300 years ago, how can it be wrong just because it was disliked 100 years ago?

GENTLE READER: That happy sigh you hear is of Miss Manners' satisfaction at being confronted with an Aha -- Caught you! question to which she knows the answer.

So please be seated and take notes.

Now -- why do you suppose that "Mrs." is followed by a period?

Correct. It is an abbreviation. Of what?

Of "Mistress."

No laughter, please. This was a respectable title for several centuries. You remember Mistress Quickly from your Shakespeare class, and how she became Mistress Pistol by the time you got to Henry V.

Was she Pistol's mistress?

No, no, let us not indulge in unseemly speculation about what might have gone on with Pistol or, for that matter, Nim, Bardolph, perhaps Falstaff himself, and heaven knows who else behind the scenes in the Boar's Head Tavern during the various parts of Henry IV. In Henry V, she is Pistol's wife and therefore Mistress Pistol, even if she keeps her maiden name professionally.

You see, the title of Mistress was used for both the married and unmarried, just as its equivalent, Mister, was and still is. (Miss Manners has often observed with some bitterness that the masculine titles, Mister and Sir, have remained unblemished over the centuries, while the female ones, Mistress and Madam, took on dirty meanings.) Seventeenth- and 18th-century tombstones can also be found in which Mistress is also abbreviated as -- get this -- Ms.

That's right -- using Ms. for both the married and the unmarried is not a modern feminist invention. No disrespect is intended in the old or the modern usage.

Later, two other abbreviations of Mistress, Miss and Mrs., took on distinct meanings: Miss meaning unmarried, and Mrs. meaning "wife of..." Therefore, Mrs. would not be used with the lady's first and last names, because it would make no sense to call her the wife of herself.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Folks I know want to join me for dinner at a private club I belong to. Can I ask them to pay for their dinner and drinks?

GENTLE READER: Your club should be considered an extension of your home, and of course no decent person (although Miss Manners is aware that the other kind exist) would charge a guest at his home. You pay, as if you were entertaining at home.

Of course, once you think of it in that light, you may not be eager to dine with those who are so presumptive as to invite themselves to be your guests.

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