Substitutions Not Usually Acceptable

Dear Miss Manners: If you and your spouse are invited to a function and you respond that you both will attend, is it permissible to take someone else if, at the last minute, your spouse cannot attend?

Would it be the same if it is an invitation for a wedding, dinner party or just a party in general?

Gentle Reader: How can you be sure it wasn’t your spouse whom they really wanted and that they wouldn’t be doubly disappointed if you showed up with someone else?

Now, now, Miss Manners isn’t trying to be mean. She just wants to shock you into remembering that hosts make up their guest lists by selecting people they want to see - not (as guests seem to imagine) because they need a certain number of bodies to fill the space and don’t much care who they are.

The idea of making substitutions is unthinkable for weddings - notwithstanding the fact that you and many others have thought of it. Then, of all occasions, the hosts especially want guests who mean something to them and have a genuine interest in the occasion - not strangers who naturally regard it simply as a chance to go to a party.

Miss Manners admits that on informal occasions there might be some leeway. If you accept an invitation for yourself and decline it for your husband, you could say, “but I’d love you to meet a friend of mine, whom I might be able to bring along, if that would be convenient.” You might even suggest that for a dinner party, provided you know the hosts well enough to be sure they won’t be embarrassed to say, “We’d love to meet your friend some other time, but why don’t you just come to this alone and we’ll ask someone else we wanted to fit in.”

But that must happen at the time the invitation is issued. If your husband has accepted an invitation to a dinner party or a wedding, the only proper reason for him to find himself unable to go at the last minute would be sudden illness. In that case, you ought to be nursing him, instead of running around partying with someone else.

Dear Miss Manners: Try as we might, my husband and I cannot find a nice answer to the question, “We’re coming to the coast and we’d love to see you. Can we stay with you a few days?”

We have used every white lie in the book - other plans (reply: “Don’t worry, we will just stay at your home”), not enough room (our vacation house is large and they know it), busy (“We’ll entertain ourselves; just go about your day” and they sit in front of the TV for 12 hours, never leaving the house).

It’s not that we have only oafs for friends. These people are professionals or the children of same whose parents ask ever so politely if they may visit.

We are private people who simply enjoy good music, philosophy and, most of all, each other’s company sans others. I’d really like to ask these people where they get their gall, but I had a mother who always allowed the other person to save face.

Gentle Reader: The answer is, “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry. Unfortunately we can’t have you then.” Period.

Not: “That’s the weekend of my family reunion, and I’ll have 27 people staying here.” And certainly not: “Where do you get the gall to think we’d like your company better than no company?”

Miss Manners understands that you feel you have tried saying no and that your desperation arises from people arguing back. But the difference between Miss Manners’ answer and yours is that she has offered no argument to which your oafs - ah, friends - can offer counterarguments.

If one of them has the gall to demand a reason, the reason is, “Because I’m afraid it’s simply impossible.” As indeed it is to entertain such people.