Proper To Cut All Ties, Despite Cost

Dear Miss Manners: Our family recently experienced the breakup of our daughter’s engagement. The future groom called the whole event off. Of course our daughter was devastated - his actions were cold and callous.

We’re in disagreement with him right now because we feel that total reimbursement for all deposits should fall on his shoulders, most of which are nonrefundable or, at the very best, contingent on rebooking. His family has not one cent invested in the matter, and, of course, feel their son is correct in his opinion. Our daughter did give back the engagement ring, which he claims is his personal property, therefore, we feel that he should also pay for the wedding dress in return. The material has been cut and full payment is due.

He tells us that it is nowhere written that he owes us anything. I feel he is in the wrong and would like to know if we are correct in our thoughts. He also feels that demanding reimbursement is our way of ruining his life. We just want to handle this properly. Please advise us since we just want to be fair.

Gentle Reader: But you already have the best of the bargain. You got back your daughter’s future.

Miss Manners understands that you would like some financial compensation as well, and supposes you might find a lawyer who would try to get it for you. The law did once offer compensation for breach of promise, and current feeling favors turning pain into cash.

But etiquette takes the opposite view: that no self-respecting person would want to accept anything from a cad and that a lady should not only return the engagement ring but spurn any participation in obligations that her own family incurred.

Before you reject this no-doubt quixotic approach, Miss Manners suggests you calculate what repayment would cost your daughter in the way of public embarrassment and private humiliation. Rather than put her in the position of appearing both jilted and greedy, you should put her into that dress - dyed and refashioned to make a splendid ball gown - and allow her to plunge back into social life, unsullied by sordidness, to meet a genuine gentleman.

Dear Miss Manners: A family member and I brought separate trays of finger sandwiches to the wake of a close relative. Toward the end of the wake, I asked the funeral director to combine the remaining sandwiches on one tray, with the intention of transporting the leftovers to the family gathering following the funeral.

Upon returning to pick them up, I learned that the entire tray of sandwiches was taken home by the other party. I was appalled.

Was I presumptuous and out of line in treating the food tray as a gift to the bereaved family, or was the food tray, in fact, not to be considered a gift? Had the leftovers not been combined, was the other party correct in taking them back for themselves?

Gentle Reader: Out of respect to the dead, Miss Manners begs you to stop being appalled over the possession of a few leftover sandwiches.

Supplying sandwiches for the wake is a thoughtful thing to do, but it is hardly a gift. The idea is simply to spare a newly bereaved family from housekeeping chores, such as making meals for themselves, offering hospitality to those who attend funeral events and pay condolence calls, and running errands.

That you wanted to take the remaining sandwiches to the house for after the funeral is a reasonable idea, but so is the idea that the other relative presumably had, of clearing away the leftovers from the site of the wake. The likelihood that this person - who in fact made many of these sandwiches in the first place - saw a chance to wolf down free goodies does not seem great to Miss Manners.