Wed Abbrevs I H8

I use abbreviations all the time.  In law, it’s unavoidable: the style guide for legal writing mandates hundreds of abbreviations.  And even though I’m not really a lawyer right now, I still need to abbrev sometimes, like if my tweet¹ goes over 140 characters.

But wedding writers need to cool it with the abbreviations.   Now.

I get it. Wedding vocabulary is chockablock with long, hard-to-spell words.  Like “engagement” and “boutonniere” and “mother-in-law.”  But I literally just clocked it and I was able to type all three words in just over five seconds.  Even though I misspelled boutonniere the first time.

“E-ring” sounds like an electrified form of birth control.  I read “bout” and think about a boxing match, not a lapel decoration. I always hallucinate an F after “MIL.”

I can barely handle calling the women in my bridal party “bridesmaids,” but I still do sometimes because “the women in my bridal party” truly is a mouthful. But wedding magazines’ insistence upon shortening it to “‘maids” is disturbing. It makes it sound like you’ve got a cabal of spinster servants following you around in matching not-matching-but-color-coordinated dresses.

The jokes about “STDs” are too easy to make. [Here's one: Joking about abbreviating "save the date" is like herpes: it never goes away.]  Why can’t we just stop calling them “STDs”?  And didn’t we all decide to call herpes, etc. “STIs” back in like, 1997, anyway?  Get your abbreviating act together, people!

Finally, in the name of all that is holy:  “Invites” is a VERB!

Please. For the sake of my sanity: take a break from brevity.

¹A warning to anyone considering following me on Twitter: only about 5% of my tweets are about weddings. And I sometimes use the re-tweet button that everyone but me hates.