DEAR MISS MANNERS: Reading the 1903 wedding announcement of an antecedent, I wondered about this statement: “Cards have not been sent.” What did this mean in a 1903 newspaper social announcement?
GENTLE READER: The items in question would have been engraved cards of admission, to be presented for entrance to the wedding venue -- used only at weddings where there would be reason to think that the uninvited would be pressing to get in.
As apparently cards might have been expected, and your relative had to deny using them, that must have been some wedding.
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