Miss Manners: The dinner guest brought food and got snippy when it wasn’t served

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My sister likes to throw dinner parties. She goes all out with her best dishes and crystal, along with the menu.

Often people will call and ask what to bring, but my sister always tells them she only wants the pleasure of their company.

Some guests will still bring a dish. My sister always acts like the dish is a hostess gift. She thanks the guests and tells them how much her family will enjoy it.

On one occasion, a first-time guest brought a dish. She told my sister she had brought it not for my sister’s family but to be served to the other guests. My sister told her that the menu was set, and that she would put the dish in the kitchen until the guest was ready to leave so they could take it home.

During the meal, when another guest was complimenting my sister on the food, this guest announced to everybody that she had brought a dish that my sister was not going to serve. My sister ignored her comment and answered another guest’s question.

Since the dinner, this woman has been telling people how rude my sister was not to serve the food she brought. Her comments have upset our mother. She wants my sister to apologize to this woman.

My sister sees no reason to apologize. To make my mother happy, I said we should ask you. Was my sister rude?

GENTLE READER: Well, there are traditional dinner parties, where the host supplies the meal and the guests may or may not bring little presents — sometimes food treats — to be used at the discretion of the host. And then there are cooperative dinners, where each person brings part of the meal.

This sounds more like a food fight. Rather than trying to please the host, the guest planned a hostile takeover. And afterward, when she should have been expressing her thanks, she chose to spread insults.

No, your sister was not rude. She did her best to handle it politely. But there are circumstances under which an apology is due, even from an innocent person.

So Miss Manners believes that your sister should apologize — not to her rude guest, but to the other guests, for having been subjected to such an unpleasant scene.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it permissible to combine the thank-you notes for wedding gifts with the thank-you note for attending the ceremony itself?

Additionally, is it OK to delay the thank-you notes until we return from our short honeymoon? We are leaving the day after the celebration.

GENTLE READER: You will be relieved to hear that it is not obligatory for hosts to write thanks to their guests for their attendance. But Miss Manners imagines you will be less pleased to hear that you should have written thanks for those presents as each one arrived.

She does not accept the excuse about the delay because of the honeymoon. Nor would she accept the excuses that would follow — about arranging the household, getting back to work and so on. Just please sit down and write — now. Your generous friends want to know if their presents arrived and if they pleased you.

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