A gentle reader asked Miss Manners for advice about wedding invitations and etiquette when one of the bride’s parents is a MTF transsexual. Among other things, the mother of the bride was concerned that an appearance of her ex-husband would overshadow the wedding.

Besides a considerate use of pronouns, Miss Manners offered some gracious and sensible advice:

People are going to notice anyway. If there is a party the night before, you might consider taking your former husband around and reintroducing her to your circle so that the guests can get over the surprise before the ceremony and focus on that event rather than its provenance.

The rest of it is not difficult, Miss Manners promises you. You should treat your daughter’s father – and that this person did father her does not change retroactively – with dignity, but you needn’t offer explanations. A formal invitation would come from “Mr. and Mrs. Clive Carvington and Ms. Catherine Tyson,” and an informal one would be as a letter from you saying that you, your husband and Annabel’s father, Catherine Tyson, would be pleased … etc.


Judith Martin, you rock!

So gentle readers, please email Miss Manners (the address is at the bottom of the article) and let her know that you appreciate her educating all of her readers that transsexuals are worthy of respect and deserve common courtesy. We need to praise people when they do right by us just as much as we need to protest when when they don’t.