Marriage With vs. Marriage To

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good afternoon. This is Moya phoning from Vermont.

Hello, Moya. Welcome.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

Well, I have a question. This is in relation to wedding invitations.

When my parents issued my wedding invitation, granted 38 years ago, it read, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter, Frances Moya, with Lutzius Dominic.

Now, the invitations I’ve received since from Europe or Australia are still mainly with the preposition with. But I have noticed also the preposition to.

And I was wondering, is one correct and one incorrect or are both equally acceptable?

I see. And why do you want to know? Are you getting married again?

No, I’m not. My son is.

Your son is.

So have these invitations been printed yet?

No, they haven’t.

And if I find out that the future wife’s parents have already printed them and they are not as I think they should be, I will keep my mouth shut.

Good start there.

If they haven’t been printed, then I will suggest one over the other or leave it up to them if both are equally acceptable.

I see, Moia.

Okay.

And is the bride’s family from this country?

Yes.

And so is my son. He’s a genuine Yankee.

I see.

And you are British of some sort.

Well, I was born in England and grew up in Sydney, Australia.

Okay.

I see.

Well, I would have to say that in this country, I’ve always seen it as the marriage to or the wedding to.

Grant, what about you?

Yeah, same here. I’ve been doing some looking around online just now while you were chatting.

I find that consistently the case, even in etiquette guides, as far back as 100 years ago, that was the recommended wording in the U.S.

Okay, well, perhaps then it’s a European influence.

Well, yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

I mean, it sounds like Spanish.

It sounds like a literal translation of Spanish or French.

No, because I also have a dear friend who married the chief of protocol. They’re now retired. And she’s English. He’s German. But when their daughter got married about five years ago, the wedding invitation, because I looked it up, also had with.

Oh, really?

I do find it in etiquette guides for Indians, South Asians, and they tend to prefer the with as well.

Oh, how interesting.

So that might suggest that there’s a nice little linguistic division that you’ve discovered there between the North American usage and the rest of the, let’s say, the Commonwealth countries, perhaps.

Because this also happens a lot, you know, in everyday English here. I mean, with pronunciation and with also the use of adverbs, I’ve noticed that you more and more leave the ly of an adverb, unfortunately. You know, and they sort of say he did it beautiful instead of beautifully.

Right. Think different.

Yes.

Anyway, well, thank you very much. As far as you’re concerned, it is basically in America the preposition to is more commonly used.

Yes, but here’s the thing. If you wanted to go ahead and use with, I think you would be fine. You might get some people to argue with you, but I think either one works.

There’s a question here that you ask yourself, who is doing what to whom or who is doing what with whom? If it sounds like Jane is more important than Joe or Joe is more important than Jane, sometimes somehow the with to me kind of makes it sound like they’re equal partners in this. Whereas if you say the marriage of their daughter Jane to Joe, it sounds as if he’s the passive participant and she’s the active participant.

Well, you agree with my other son’s PhD girlfriend who said that the word with, in her opinion, was more egalitarian.

Yeah, I could hear that.

Yes.

So, well, anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time. Thank you very much.

Well, it was our pleasure, for sure.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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