Wow, people can be so rude! When you’re in wedding-planning mode, you have a lot of wonderful things going on in your world, and you might be caught very unprepared for anyone – much less your friends and family who you care about enough to include on your guest list – to trash-talk you, make unrealistic, selfish demands, and post inappropriate, rude responses to your social media news. When you wake up to find that someone has posted “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” or “Stop being a Bridezilla” on your Instagram, you’ll likely see red…and someone has to hold you back from posting a flaming response to them on your social media for all to see. Somehow, it doesn’t feel good enough to just delete the rude comment. You want to make them suffer like you have. You want tears. And an apology. But that’s not going to make it any better. It will, in fact, only make it worse. You’d either be taking the bait set by a very unfulfilled person, or you’d mistake a poorly-chosen expression for bait. And the junior high-school level dramas will fly out of control. While it would be wonderful if everyone around you would be well-mannered and blissfully happy for you all the time, not everyone has a great capacity for happiness. And some people just don’t have well-defined politeness muscles. Should you analyze them further than that? If you want to be frustrated and think about them for way too long, sure. It doesn’t do any good to look at a rude person and try to diagnose their issues, or chalk up their rudeness to them being jealous. And it definitely doesn’t do any good to call up all of your friends to talk about the rude thing that person did, riling them up and stressing everyone out. So count that as your #1 What NOT To Do tip: if someone is rude, don’t talk it to death. Just let it die quietly while you’re on to better things and happier people. That said, it’s important to remind yourself NOT to respond in certain ways when people act rudely around your wedding details, or about you, your partner, your friends, or your family: 1. A guest who has received your invitation addressed to Mr. & Mrs. ____, calls to say she knows that you’re having an Adults-Only wedding, but she doesn’t want to leave her kids with a sitter, so can she get a ‘pass’ and bring them to your wedding? Some alternatives to this are saying, “None of the relatives have met my kids yet, and since this is the only time everyone will be together for a while, I’d like to bring them.” And “I don’t trust the hotel babysitters. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to little Tommy, right?” Rude, rude, rude. What NOT To Do: Don’t give in. Whatever you do, don’t give in. Because other guests who honored the rules of your invitation (that Mr. & Mrs. ____ without ‘And Family’ means the kids aren’t invited) will be super-angry that they took all the steps to get someone to watch their kids, maybe drove an extra hour out of the way to drop the kids off at a relatives’ house, and so on, and then there at the wedding are someone else’s kids. They’ll feel slighted, and rightly so. It will look like you played favorites. So stick with your No, and tell your partner to stick with the No as well, so that no one tries to play you against each other, another Rude tactic. And tell your parents, too, since rude people will try to work the parental manipulation angle. No kids, Period. And don’t offer to pay for a sitter. Because every guest will hear about that, and they’ll want it, too. Or be angry that you, again, played favorites. 2. A guest who asked for a +1 and responded that the +1 was attending, therefore causing you to pay $100+ for that guest, shows up at your wedding without the guest. And with a sob story about him being a cheating loser, or her not returning his calls that morning. What NOT To Do: Don’t send that guest a bill for the no-show +1. Sounds crazy, but people have done it. And it becomes a Thing in their circle for years and years. While it’s unfair to have to pay for a no-show at your wedding, the sad fact remains that most weddings have a few no-shows. And there’s no polite way to recoup that money. What I did at my wedding is tell the manager to give my Photographer, Videographer and Deejay the ‘real’ meal – the guest meal, not the vendor meal. So my awesome vendors got to feast on filet mignon and sea bass, instead of a basic chicken dish with broccoli. Your experts work hard for you, and any guest’s no-shows can turn into a nice thing for them. 3. You posted on your Facebook or Instagram page a photo of the two of you at your cake tasting, and one of your wedding guests posted a comment of ‘Take it easy on that cake…you have a dress you have to try to get into!” What?! Try to get into? Rude, rude, rude. Or, you posted a photo of your dream wedding venue that became available. It’s a castle, and you GOT IT. And there’s that rude guest commenting, “Of course you did. You get everything.” Ouch. What NOT To Do: Don’t start typing a ferocious reply. Take a deep breath. It might be a sloppy comment, or an autofill issue. Your guest might have meant to say, “You deserve to get everything” or some other comment that’s actually not as rude as what made it onto your post. So chalk it up to autofill when you can, and let it go. Don’t comment right back at her, “WTF?” or ‘Rude much?” Because everyone from your wedding guests to any work friends you’re friended to will see your response as rude, or knee-jerk, an attack. If the comment is hurtful, or you think that guest will be more embarrassed for others to see her comment, just delete it without sending a message to say you did so. She’ll see the comment gone and either apologize, or not get the battle she may have been hoping for. You made the problem disappear with one click. And if that person keeps posting sour comments, you can always block her, or him. Some people want to be clowns, and some people want to wreck your day. And some people are just clueless. Leave them all to their day, and get on with yours. 4. You mention to an also-engaged guest that you just ordered the most gorgeous wedding cake, and she says she’s having two wedding cakes. And Buddy Valastro is flying to her destination wedding site to make them for her. Whatever. Her one-upper ways aren’t going to get to you. What NOT To Do: Don’t call her a one-upper, since she’ll delight in knowing she’s annoyed you. And don’t talk to her anymore about your wedding plans. She hasn’t earned the right to get inside scoop about your big day. And for your own peace of mind, again, don’t spend any time analyzing her. It might be that she’s jealous, and it might be that she’s one of those people who just auto-responds to everything with a story about herself. Rude, still, but not your problem. 5. One of your guests hasn’t responded to your invitation by the RSVP deadline, and when you call to ask if she’s attending, she gives you the old, “I’m not sure yet.” What NOT To Do: Don’t uninvite her. That may seem like a good solution for her and for other rude guests, but uninviting people is a top What NOT To Do. Because the uninvited person tells everyone, and soon you’re getting calls from her friends, or from your mother, saying you’re the rude one. She can’t help it that she’s so busy with work, or that her contractor just said her kitchen remodel will take another three weeks. Again, whatever. Just give her a new deadline of a week, which you’ve hopefully built into your headcount delivery date for your caterer, explaining that you have that deadline and have to meet it. Tell her to let you know ASAP, and wish her a good night. So there are some of the top rude situations you may face, and let’s get down to an unpleasant-to-admit fact: what the person says might not be as rude as you think. You might just be so worn down from other people making decisions about your day, or pushing you for what they want, that it hits a nerve with you. That’s normal when wedding stress gets elevated. So when anyone acts rudely, just take a breath and tell yourself that you might just be making too much of it. And DON’T call a half dozen of your friends, or grind your fiancé down, to find out if you did. Just chalk up anything that’s not too rude (like saying ‘We’re taking bets on how long this marriage will last,’ or something awful like that) as the person being socially awkward or not in a good place right now. And then, again, get back to being happy about all the wonderful things you have going on right now, and all the wonderful people who are happy for you.