DINNER ETIQUETTE
An invitation to dine should be accepted or declined promptly when one is visiting in France. And one may not decline unless one has a very good excuse, such as having a previous engagement, or being called away on the day set for the dinner.
It is considered polite to arrive twenty minutes or a half-hour before dinner is served. If it is a formal and elaborate dinner, evening dress should be worn; but afternoon or semi-evening dress is appropriate for the informal dinner. It is not at all incorrect, if one is in doubt, to ask the host or hostess whether one should wear full dress or not. It is certainly wiser than to make oneself conspicuous by wearing different dress from all the other guests.
In France, the order in which the guests proceed to dinner is as follows: the host leads the way with the woman guest of honor, or the most distinguished woman guest, on his arm. Directly behind him follows the hostess on the arm of the masculine guest to be honored; and they are followed by the other guests, who proceed arm in arm.
According to the latest dinner etiquette in France, coffee is served for both the men and women at the dinner table. But when the dinner is very large and fashionable, it is still customary for the women to retire to the drawing-room, where the hostess presides over the coffee-urn. When men and women leave the dining-room together, they resume the same order as they observed when they entered it.
The American who is a guest at a formal dinner in France should pay a call upon the hostess within a week's time. This call is known as the "visite de digestion."
FRENCH WEDDING ETIQUETTE
Weddings are occasions of solemn dignity in every country, but in France they are perhaps more dignified than anywhere else. Here no rice and old shoes are cast after the bride and bridegroom—it would be considered a most shocking thing to do. Good wishes, politely expressed, are the only good-by offerings of friends and relatives.
There are usually two ceremonies to be celebrated at the French wedding—first the civil, and later the religious, marriage. At the civil wedding, which is held two or three days before the religious ceremony, only a few intimate friends and relatives of the two families are present. But the ceremony at church is a very important affair and all friends and acquaintances of both families are invited to attend. Those who cannot attend should send cards of regret to the bride's parents.