Miss Manners: I’m told I should be nice and pretend it’s a real wedding

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have now been to three (!) weddings where I found out that the couple was already married and just going through the motions.

Miss Manners: I say it’s OK to ignore a knock at the door. My neighbor doesn’t agree.

Miss Manners: He said he Googled me and was sorry to read about my career

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Miss Manners: Should I pretend I didn’t see the news about my relative’s misdeed?

Miss Manners: We’d been dating for months when I learned the creepy truth

The first was a couple who had gotten legally married weeks prior to the wedding so he could go on her health insurance.

The second was an older couple who said they’d never had a “real wedding.” That made me think they hadn’t really been married all along, but it turns out they had been; they just hadn’t had the kind of event they’d wanted.

The last one, which sent me over the brink, was our college friends. Since our larger friend group is now spread out in different cities, this couple traveled around, repeating the wedding ceremony to “save people the expense of traveling.”

My mother asks me why I care if people want to make fools of themselves, and why I can’t just “be nice” and celebrate with my friends. The answer is because I’m expected to go along with this farce and play the Wedding Guest: dressing up, sitting through it all, congratulating them, and — here’s the main part — spending serious money to buy them something from their registry list.

In fact, I’m expected to do all of the above many times over, if I go to their pre-wedding (but post-marriage!) parties, which I try to avoid.

Am I right or wrong?

GENTLE READER: You are certainly right that people are now using the word “wedding” to refer to the party associated with the marriage ceremony, rather than — as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, and dating from Old English — the act of getting married.

Thus the festivities you mention — no doubt including the heroine’s white dress and the pastry chef’s white iced cake — are considered to be the weddings.

And you are right that in cases where the party is, so to speak, divorced from the legal ceremony, the guests generally overlook that omission. If you read about the splashy so-called weddings of celebrities, you must have noted that the guests scrupulously refer to the already married couple as only affianced until the reenactment has taken place.

Miss Manners can understand your reluctance to play a supporting role in this rerun. The emotional component of witnessing the establishment of a marriage is missing.

You need only politely decline to attend. Nevertheless, you should recognize that many people have transferred their concept of cementing a union from the ceremony to the celebration. Should you care about such people, you might attend.

Perhaps it will help if you think of it as merely a delayed wedding reception or an anniversary party, without the pretense that you are witnessing a marriage ceremony.

Dear Abby: My husband gets upset over a $5 discrepancy, and I know it’s not about the money

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Dear Abby: We girls may have to resort to violence against this rude boy

Asking Eric: The neighbor mom is making weird requests of my college-age son

Harriette Cole: My career just took off, and I don’t know if I should follow my fiancee

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the appropriate name to use on an envelope containing a letter to a widow? Mrs. John Doe, Mrs. Ellen Doe, Ms. John Doe, Ms. Ellen Doe?

GENTLE READER: What this lady called herself before, Miss Manners cannot guess. Everyone has an opinion about the correct address for ladies, and everyone is indignant when others’ choices are different.

But Miss Manners can relieve your anxiety about widows: They are addressed exactly as they were before their husbands died. However that was.

Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, [email protected]; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.