Each week, Miss Manners answers questions exclusively from the MSN audience on all of your etiquette dilemmas. (Have an issue you want help with? Send in a question today.) Read on for this week's hot topics:
DEAR MISS MANNERS,
I was married for two years when I was in my early twenties. Following my divorce, I soon met a new gentleman with whom I became very close rather quickly. We were married about six months after we started dating.
The problem is that because of our short courtship, I was reluctant to tell my new mother-in-law about my prior marriage for fear that she would think I was of the "love 'em and leave 'em" sort. Now that my husband and I have been married almost five years and I am fairly close with my mother-in-law, I feel bad for having never told her.
Is it necessary for her to know? I am concerned that it may come out at some point at some family gathering where my extended family meets her.
How do I tell her? The time never seems quite opportune and I am hesitant to make it seem bigger or more important than it is, though I do take marriage seriously and at the same time don't want to downplay the situation.
GENTLE READER,
"Well, you could wait until it comes out and then say, "Oh, didn't you know? I would have thought that Everett would have mentioned it before he brought me to meet you."
Well, maybe not. But treating it as a deep secret to be formally confessed is, paradoxically, the very approach that seems likely to Miss Manners to raise suspicions. How could your mother-in-law help thinking that there must have been something awful that made you hide the fact, and wondering what else about you she doesn't know?
Far better to throw it in casually, in relation to a relevant memory or bit of gossip, saying something along the lines of, 'I don't know if you know that I was married briefly before, when I was very young. I've almost forgotten, myself, now that I'm so happily married.'"
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DEAR MISS MANNERS,
I told a friend that I could attend her bachelorette party after she told me it would be a certain date and in a certain location, a location that is only a three hour drive from my home. She has now decided to change the location to a city that would require me to purchase a $250 plane ticket.
How do I politely tell her that if she goes forward with planning the party in the new (more expensive) city, I cannot afford to go and will have to decline?
GENTLE READER,
"As this is a different invitation from the one you accepted, Miss Manners gives you leave to make a different response. And it must be a polite one, omitting mentioning the bait-and-switch trick or your finances. A simple statement of regret that you cannot attend, along with your best wishes, will do."
Judith Martin's latest book is No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice. She is also the author ofMiss Manners' Guide toExcruciatingly Correct Behavior(Freshly Updated). She and her husband, a scientist and playwright, live in Washington, D.C. They have two perfect children, of course.
