Wedding season is upon us, bringing as it does all those quirky little etiquette niggles.
I didn't think I was a big stickler for rules, but running my eyes over a list of most loathed faux pas, according to a new survey by Debenhams, I found myself nodding in outrage at the crass behaviours.
The survey was commissioned following an internet furore over a photograph which showed a proposal at a wedding. It shows the bride, furnished with fixed grin, looking on as the best man takes to the floor to make a dramatic proposal of marriage to his sweetheart in the midst of the wedding breakfast. Classy.
Apparently, the ultimate faux pas is a bad taste best man's speech. Aah, the speeches. I take my posh hat off to the poor sods that have to get up there and do them, but who hasn't sat with their toes curling and telepathically beaming "Please stop now" to some wanna-be comic who has mistaken deafening silence for a licence to continue.
I was a plus one at a wedding which took a turn for the surreal when the father of the bride's long and rambling speech included an extended free-styling segment featuring two of her dog-eared childhood toys "talking" to each other, prompting stunned guests to check their drinks.
Turning up in a similar dress to the bridesmaids is also regarded as beyond the pale. While accidental clashes are one thing, a calculated clash is something else. I know one fellow guest who demonstrated a reaction straight out of Single White Female when she was not among the chosen ones. So irked was she, that she dubbed herself "honorary bridesmaid" and sported a dress in an identical shade to the official attendants and the same shoes.
Guests who arrive late is another bugbear. I still flush with shame on recalling one wedding where we almost missed the ceremony. It was a Friday wedding and I had been unable to get the day off work. Instead of declining the invitation, as logic would dictate, I accepted anyway and sneaked out for an "afternoon meeting" (dear Ed, not from this job you understand). After executing a nifty Superman change in the loo, myself and a chum got ourselves to the venue 30 miles away just as the bride stepped out of her carriage, prompting a desperate sprint up the 100 stairs to the door. I spent much of the short civil ceremony concentrating, not on the lovely couple, but on not keeling over from a risky combo of no lunch and my ill-advised exertions to be there.
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