Pregnant Bride-To-Be Imposes A Nonalcoholic Party Policy

[conuly]

DEAR ABBY: My friend Nan is planning her wedding and asked if I, along with our friends, would be bridesmaids. Fast-forward a few months: The bride-to-be is now pregnant. We're having our first get-together as a bridal party, and she wants us to serve only nonalcoholic mocktails for our girls' night in. I asked the maid of honor if we could have the option of alcohol, and she said no because that's what the bride wants.

Is it rude to drink in front of a pregnant bride? Obviously, I will honor Nan's wishes, but I'd like a second opinion. Should this no-alcohol policy be in effect for all pre-wedding events (shower, bachelorette party, etc.)? I feel we're all adults and should be able to make our own choices. It's not as if we're going to get wasted at these things. Your thoughts, please? -- PERPLEXED BRIDESMAID

DEAR BRIDESMAID: In most cases, it is not considered rude to consume alcohol in front of someone who is abstaining, although many people choose to refrain, too. In this case, the bride would not have specified that she wanted no alcohol served if she was comfortable with her bridal party drinking when she couldn't join in. Her wishes should take precedence.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2286018

Comments

[conuly]

Whether or not it's rude to drink in front of somebody who can't, it's generally considered impolite to bring your own booze unless instructed to do so*. If you can't socialize for a few hours with your friends without drinking, whether or not you get "wasted", then you either need new friends or you need to seek help for your alcohol dependence.

* I don't think there are any medical conditions or religions that would require one to drink alcohol when others are not consuming, but if so that's obviously the exception here, just like it's okay to bring your own food if the food being served is truly unacceptable, but it's usually not okay to bring it just because you prefer pizza to burgers.

[movingfinger]

The Winston Churchill Prescription comes to mind, of course...

[movingfinger]

If "you're not going to get wasted," then you'll enjoy a well-crafted mocktail as much as anything with a couple shots of vodka, Bridesmaid. If you feel that you need alcohol to have a good time, then maybe step back and examine that.

[jadelennox]

yes, so much this.

[onlysmallwings]

The bride is an adult who has made the request of her friends to not drink at her party/parties. The decent thing to do, if you're still friends with Nan, would be to respect that request and not drink at her party/parties.

[conuly]

Yup! There is literally nothing stopping LW and all her boozy buddies from going and getting wasted immediately after the parties end.

[melannen]

There is also a difference between "someone who is abstaining" and "the guest of honor", LW. It is not rude to drink around an abstaining person; it is definitely on the edge of rude to plan a party around an activity the guest of honor cannot participate in. I suspect you are closer to the second category there than the first.

It would also be pretty rude to plan a surprise cocktail hour birthday party for your friend who can't drink, when you could have planned a party that was actually things they could enjoy, instead. It would be rude to plan a bicycle outing as a retirement party for your friend who just broke his hip. Think about it like that.

(Yes, unless the wedding is more than nine months away I am afraid you will also likely have a non-boozy bachelorette party and a non-boozy bridal shower, and probably also a non-boozy baby shower, although of course it is up to the GoH whether she decides she would enjoy watching her guests drink after all. The wedding is a little bit different, because it has many more important things than drinking going on for the guests of honor, although there are still plenty of dry weddings in cases where the bride or groom or sometimes a parent or close friend can't be around alcohol. I promise they are still weddings.)

If you cannot see yourself enduring multiple hours of socializing with these people without being able to drink, for whatever reason, maybe you should consider bowing out of the bridal party, since that seems to be one of the things expected of this bridal party.

[adrian_turtle]

There's also a difference between "someone who is abstaining from alcohol" and "someone who has made an explicit request for a dry party." FFS, she's the guest of honor! It's hard for her to say "I don't like bars, I'm staying home."

More generally, I believe polite behavior should be based on courtesy towards the people you are actually in the room with, not some abstract imaginary community-standard person. If you're having a party in honor of somebody with morning sickness, who asks to not have broccoli on the menu? It's rude to serve broccoli at that party. It doesn't matter how many OTHER parties where it might be polite to serve broccoli. Or how nutritious a vegetable it might be.

[melannen]

I mean, I do believe it is possible for brides to make explicit requests of their wedding party that are rude or deeply inappropriate (see: several entire websites for examples.)

And they don't have to all give up drinking with the friends group for the entire pregnancy just because she does; if the bride demanded that, it would be on the edge of unreasonable (although it would certainly be sweet if they did!)

But, yeah, ffs, she's the guest of honor and it's a perfectly reasonable request!

[watersword]

Did ...did Dear Abby have a non-terrible answer????? Like, not "good" but not actively terrible?

Excuse me, I need to go check the local trees for stuck pigs.

[minoanmiss]

I know! Are they throwing snowballs in Hell?

[julian]

Dear LW: This party is not in your honor. Cope.

[swingandswirl]

Pretty much.

[jadelennox]

I actually do consider it rude to drink in front of anyone who's abstaining if it's because they're an alcoholic or have family alcohol issues (assuming you know, and are socializing in small groups), and think it's a sign of societal unhealthy obsession with alcohol that this isn't taken as a social given. And if I were out one-on-one with someone who liked drinking but was prohibited from drinking because of health issues (including pregnancy), then yes, I'd find it rude to drink. But I know these are miniority positions.

But in any case, yes, goodness, LW, get over your damn self.

[eleanorjane]

I'm not saying I disagree with you, but I'm curious about And if I were out one-on-one with someone who liked drinking but was prohibited from drinking because of health issues (including pregnancy), then yes, I'd find it rude to drink.

If you were out with someone who was coeliac, would you feel obligated to avoid gluten too?

[naath]

With gluten if a friend was in the habit of complaining mightily that they HATE their enforced gluten free diet then, no, I would not stuff my face with bread in front of them. Because rubbing people's nose is their misfortunes is rude (I have no need to consume bread, you're medical needs may differ). It would depend of course on the friend. If I was visiting their space I would certainly not expect them to provide glutenous products.

It would depend of course on the friend.

Alcohol (and other drugs) are different because they affect social interactions though; being the only sober person in a room of drunk/stoned/high people is kinda terrible, especially if you want to partake and can't.

[jadelennox]

As a person with a wheat allergy, I have actually though about this many times!

Alcohol is weirdly the center of so many cultural norms for socialization, in a way that wheat just isn’t. So to be more precise, I don’t find it rude to drink a glass of wine with dinner around someone who is pregnant — assuming equivalent tasty beverages are available to the teetotaler— but I would find it rude to go out to dinner and have multiple cocktails, or to meet at a bar because my non drinking friend could have a coke, or some such. If alcohol is acting as the social lubricant for the evening, then come up with a social lubricant available to everyone.

The equivalent for me as a person with a wheat allergy is that I am fine when my friends eat wheat in front of me, but get cranky when someone proposes we go out to a bakery or a bier garden, because the entire social event revolves around something I can’t participate in.

(These days, in fact, very little is excluded from wheat avoiders, which comes back to that “assuming equivalent tasty” thing above. If the bakery has delicious GF cookies, that’s different from them only offering a single prepackaged stake GF brownie. A restaurant that has exciting and fun mocktails is different from one which lets teetotalers choose between a Pepsi and a glass of water.)

[eleanorjane]

Those are really good analogies - thankyou :) I realised after the fact that I had sort of framed my comment like a bit of a gotcha - not my intent; I'm just trying to puzzle out why we treat alcohol so very differently.

Because yeah, in my experience, people treat "drinking in front of an enforced non drinker" (addiction issues aside) very differently from "eating ice cream in front of someone who can't eat dairy", and I'm just trying to unearth my own unexamined assumptions around the idea.

[sporky_rat]

Not the OP, but yes, because cross contamination.

(I have a deathly strawberry allergy to the point of sliced strawberries being on the table will make me react, I'm Very Careful with food allergies and illnesses.)

[eleanorjane]

Oh yeah, food allergies with that level of sensitivity deserve extremely careful handling from everyone. And it's enraging how many people dismiss or minimise (or outright disbelieve) the allergic when they're trying to, you know, stay alive.

[mommy]

The bride is the guest of honor, and she cannot drink alcohol. It is incredibly rude to demand that her party contain an activity that she is unable to participate in. This feels like a very obvious point of etiquette to me? I don't understand why the letter writer needs a second opinion here.

[conuly]

Probably because she's an alcoholic and wants Dear Abby to... I don't know, to SAY SOMETHING.

[ambyr]

Oh, I don't think she needs to be an alcoholic for this scenario to occur; my experience, as someone who keeps an alcohol-free house for personal reasons, is that perfectly normal people with perfectly normal drinking habits can go absolutely batshit if told they can't drink for a single evening, even if under normal circumstances they often go days or weeks without a glass of alcohol.

I don't understand it, but it's true.

[lilysea]

I'm a life-long non drinker, and I'm not sure I agree?

I mean, I don't thinking drinking should be the focus of the evening,

but the guests having one drink seems ok, even if the guest of honour can't.

[mommy]

It's a bridal party, which makes the bride the focus of the evening. She can't drink, so a party celebrating her would become very awkward if alcohol was supplied, especially after she expressly said she didn't want alcohol present. The guests can have a few drinks on their own time after the party if they want to, though.