HitchDied

Wed Abbrevs I H8

| 14 Comments

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.

14 Comments

  1. I always think that about “STDs” too! I always get momentarily confused and think that all the wedding talk has gone strangely off the rails when I read that one.

  2. BMs – for bridesmaids. Your bridesmaid is not a bowel movement. Thanks.

  3. Haha, I really didn’t like “MOH” for Maid of Honor, but I’ll take abbreviations any day over misspellings! If I see “walk down the ISLE” one more time on a blog, I will shoot myself. (Unless the couple in question is literally getting married on an island. Then I will give them a free pass.)

  4. Most wedding words make me feel a little sick in my mouth.

    Abbreviations…please no. (Lots of full stops, yes!)

  5. Love it. I had no idea hat half the abbreviations are for anyway. I used “OOT” many times for out of town bags and because The Candyman had no idea what I was writing about, we just started calling them Oot Bags. We got a kick out of that (we’re easy) and started saying the abbreviations, which kept us laughing most of th etime. Like I said, we’re easy to humor.

    Oh, and someone sent me a nasty rant one time and called me a “Lier.” I decided a person who didn’t have a command of the language didn’t deserve a response. :)

  6. ha ha they are all pretty bad. I am guilty of using bout though but it is only after I spelled the full name wrong 900 times (yes thats right I’m not attempting it here either and I’m too lazy to copy + paste yours)

  7. Thank you so much for pinning down why “e-ring” always sounded so off to me. It does sound likes a NuvaRing with sparks. Electrified for his pleasure.

  8. Pingback: Polar Bears in the Boys Room | HitchDied

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