DEAR MISS MANNERS: My son is engaged to a wonderful, well-educated young woman from a conservative family, and my husband and I love her dearly. The church wedding is still months away.

The bride-to-be decided that she wanted to purchase her wedding dress from a charity so she and her mother attended the event (they asked me to go along but I couldn't on that date) and purchased a dress for an amount equal to what they would have paid in any store. The dress isn't white (or any shade of white), but it is gold. The dress itself was once a beautiful dress and probably expensive, but now it looks worn and the gold color looks like something that would be worn for a second-time bride.

When she showed me and wanted my reaction, I couldn't lie; I was shocked that she would select this dress as it is totally out of character for her. I'm afraid my reaction and subsequent urging to select another dress has caused hard feelings.

Many will be attending the wedding who do not know the bride, and I feel they will definitely get a different impression of who she really is. It truly hurts me to see her wear this dress. Her mother likes it because it is "different." I have apologized to the mother for my reaction and have tried to explain how my husband and I can't help feeling the dress is so wrong.

My son who is so laid back and wants no problems says he could care less what she wears and wants me to be quiet, so now I feel like a complete heel but can't help dreading an event that should be one that I am looking forward to. I know the family of the groom has little to say about the wedding but is it too much to ask that the bride wear white? We didn't try to tell her what dress to wear, we're simply ask that she not wear that one. Were we being totally out of line?

GENTLE READER: Yes. You are ruining your relations with a wonderful, well-educated and beloved future daughter-in-law and her family, to say nothing of what you are doing to yourself -- over a costume.

Beloved as the white wedding dress may be to many, brides are not required to be in uniform. Time was when ladies were married in their favorite dresses. Then Queen Victoria married in white, and the rush was on.

Furthermore, the symbolism soon turned ugly. The vulgar idea got around that white dresses offered a peek at the history of the body inside -- or rather, the promise that it had no such history. Not a few wedding guests were given to speculating about whether the bride was "entitled" to wear white.

What with white now being worn by fourth-time brides, pregnant brides and brides who are attended by the couple's own children, Miss Manners thought that at least she had heard the last of that. But now you are suggesting that the guests will think the less of this bride because of her dress. If so, it is they, not she, who will be exhibiting bad taste.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: When my husband and I were visiting his childhood home, we had dinner with a couple he has known most of his life. The wife was a bridesmaid in his first wedding, when my husband was in college and met and married his first wife. It did not last long. He and I have been married 30 years.

The wife of this couple proceeded to tell us that my husband was not the first choice for a husband in his first marriage. Apparently, the woman was dating two men at the same time. She wanted to marry the other guy, but he married someone else instead. She ended up marrying my husband and of course divorcing after two years or so.

I was appalled at the story. Not that it happened but that this so called "friend" would tell it to us over dinner with other people at the table. I was shocked and still am.

I wanted to say something to her at the time but could think of nothing to properly tell her how rude she was in telling that story. We are supposed to see them again next month and I am dreading it. Please tell me what I should have said and what I can say to her next month. My husband thinks I am making too much of this but it makes me mad every time I think of it.

GENTLE READER: When this happened, you could have said, beaming at your husband, "I'm enormously grateful to her. She made it possible for me to have my first choice."

Miss Manners is only sorry that while that would have smoothed over the embarrassment, it would not have sufficiently taught discretion to your rude hostess. But anyway, that moment is past. If you must see them again, you could open the conversation by announcing cheerfully, "Mary Sue, this time we want to hear an embarrassing story about your past."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My niece has begun a new career as a financial adviser with a well-known investment/brokerage house. She has been given extensive training and informed that she must produce a certain volume of business in a specified time to make the cut.

She emailed a copy of her "complimentary consultation/introductory bio" letter to her personal mailing list.

Alarms went off and I replied: "Most of us who have lived past our teen years have had the uncomfortable experience that a friend in a new sales career is looking at us as a possible client rather than as a friend. Try to avoid creating that feeling in your friends (they tend to last longer as friends that way)."

She is, I'm sure, offended. Just how far over the line have I gone?

GENTLE READER: All the way across contemporary thinking, to what Miss Manners hopes will eventually be out the other side.

You, Miss Manners, and civilized people believe that the best use of money is to support personal life. Others believe that the best use of personal life is to make more money.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: We live in the South, where entertaining is allegedly more relaxed. However, sometimes I wonder about the mixture of styles that I see in dressier dinner table settings.

Can you explain the proper use of "chargers" on the table? When are they appropriate? What is their real use?

I think that they sometimes appear ostentatious when there is not really room for them or when the main course is not hot. I have been told that I am "old fashioned" to think that a place setting requires space instead of being crowded with every conceivable piece of china or silver or crystal that a hostess can provide.

GENTLE READER: Can we cross the people who say that with those who condemn hostesses as "old fashioned" if they use any table implements not made of paper or plastic?

Then, maybe, we would get guests who would keep their complaints to themselves. (Miss Manners trusts that you only thought your complaint and did not air it and thus provoke a counter-complaint.)

In any case, a charger is a service plate that is set at each place instead of the dinner plate, and thus hardly takes up any more room. A rimmed soup plate or a smaller plate with another first course may be set on top of it; then both are removed and replaced by the dinner plate for the main course.

From your reference to a hot main course, Miss Manners suspects that you and your critics are under the impression that the service plate remains as the bottom layer while the dinner plate is plopped on top of it. If so, you are all mistaken, which is another reason for you to refrain from criticizing one another.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, we had a marvelous time and our party was in the papers. We received many congratulatory cards with the newspaper clipping enclosed.

We did receive one quite different. The lovely card had a handwitten note of carefully selected congratulations with the following: "as you continue to celebrate this time in your life, if you haven't already done so, now may be the time to establish a family heritage by preplanning your final arrangements...."

She offered a 25 percent reduction and supplied her business card since she was the family advocate for a new local memorial cemetery.

We first thought it was very tacky, then laughed and thought she was quite enterprising. What do you think?

GENTLE READER: That you should not trust your "final arrangements" to someone whose idea of good taste is to congratulate you on your good fortune with the suggestion that it can't last much longer.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the proper way for a child to address adult cousins?

I think it sounds inappropriate for my children to call them by their first name and awkward to call them Mrs. Smith or Mr. Jones. I had to deal with this growing up and was always told to address them as aunt or uncle in which they are not. Please help.

GENTLE READER: Certainly. They should be addressed as Cousin, as in "Cousin Hortense" and "Cousin Gregory." Miss Manners would invite you to ask her a harder question, but not if it involves how Cousin Hortense's son by her third marriage is related to Cousin Gregory's daughter's uncle on her father's side.

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