Miss Manners: Choose your own ring? Nice notion

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it appropriate for the woman to pick out the style of engagement/wedding ring that she has to wear on her finger for the rest of her life? Or should the man pick it out without any hint?

The ring could be ugly or not suit her personality. It will save her the pain of having to wear an ugly ring and be secretly unhappy about it, right?

GENTLE READER: You make a sensible point – one that hasn’t a chance of being implemented.

That is because of the modern invention of the Mandatory Surprise Proposal. It is now obligatory for a young gentleman in this situation to plan an elaborate scene in an exotic place, designed to shock and surprise a lady with whom he has probably been living and debating marriage for years, by falling to his knees, whipping out a diamond ring and blurting out a proposal.

But (Miss Manners hears you ask) isn’t this the old-fashioned way, charmingly revived?

Not exactly. As old-fashioned gentlemen tended to lack the intimate courtship opportunities of today, marriage proposals were not mere formalities, and the surprise was sometimes in the response. Unless he had a family ring to offer, a suitor would be foolhardy to invest in jewelry before being sure of obtaining the hand.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A woman I know insists that it’s “proper etiquette” to stick postage stamps on envelopes that are being hand-delivered. Surely this can’t be right! She may have some vague idea that hand-delivery looks cheap, as if you’re only trying to save money on stamps. I feel it’s the other way around: Hand-delivery is a luxury. And what a terrible waste of a stamp.

GENTLE READER: Unless you think of it as saving the Postal Service.

Traditionally, you are right that hand-delivered letters have been considered more important. As Miss Manners recalls, a stamp used to mean that you were trying to save the cost of employing a footman to deliver it.