How many of the currently practiced wedding traditions apply to gay unions?

As many or as few as the individuals involved decide, of course. Miss Manners lives in hope that anyone getting married will decide to avoid the greedy and silly practices that have become so commonplace in today's wedding extravaganzas, but she is not holding her breath.

What surprises her is how puzzled people are when what they call the "roles" within the wedding party do not match the genders of those whom they wish to cast.

Oddly enough, this does not seem to be as much of a problem in regard to wedding principals who do not match the traditional definitions. State legislators enjoy working themselves into a lather over that issue, but Miss Manners has noticed that such couples have been using the sensible and (she would think) obvious solution of presenting themselves as two brides or two bridegrooms.

Not so in regard to assembling a wedding party. Gender is considered to be such a defining characteristic of giving the bride away, or serving as maid of honor, best man, bridesmaid and groomsman that most weddings maintain the division to the exclusion of other qualifications.

Yes, Miss Manners notices that gender is built into those titles. But it gets ridiculous when a fatherless bride reaches for a male to give her away even though she was never his to bestow. Or a bridegroom's sister is excluded because the bride already has too many bridesmaids to match up with the groomsmen.

Even when exceptions are considered, Miss Manners is apt to get giggly questions: "If my best man is a woman, should she wear a tuxedo?" "I'm giving my bridesmaids pearl necklaces, so if I have a male friend with them, do I give him one for his girlfriend?"

Oh, stop. What purpose would be served by having her wear masculine clothes or by giving him a feminine present?

A small lesson in social history seems to be in order.

The Anglo-American wedding format that is more or less current didn't really begin until Victorian times. Before then (and long after for those who had neither the funds nor the habit of lavish personal ceremonies), couples, perhaps accompanied by a few relatives and friends, merely donned their best clothes, and, after the formalities of the marriage, returned home for a festive midday meal.

As more prosperous people expanded the occasion, they did so to fit the circumstances of the time. A bride was more likely to have a father than a mother (childbirth being a perilous business), and even in a two-parent family, a father who believed himself (the silly man) to have total control over his daughter.

And in those days, neither bride nor bridegroom had any trouble explaining being "just good friends" with a person of the opposite gender, because they weren't.

Thus it was that the father of the bride gave her away because her fate was in his hands. Her attendants were all female, because her friends were, and similarly, the bridegroom's attendants were all male.

Even Miss Manners has noticed that life has changed somewhat. She is all for retaining charming old traditions, provided the deeper meaning is not sacrificed to superficial considerations.

If a bride wants to retain the symbolism of being given away, it should be by someone to whom she feels she belongs. Certainly, it could be her father or stepfather, or both parents, or a guardian. But if she was reared by a single mother, she is the person to do it.

Miss Manners is afraid that the notion of "roles" has led those who plan weddings to believe that they are theatrical producers who must assemble male-female couples: the bride with her father before being matched with her new husband, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen being matched with one another.

In real life, this is hardly worth sacrificing the real qualification for being in the wedding party, that of having the closest ties to the couple.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What would our 19th-century etiquette forebears think of the modern notion of hitting "talk" on the cellphone while in a public restroom, shouting against the background noise of liquid flowing?

GENTLE READER: Probably "My stars! Indoor privies!"

Readers may write to Miss Manners at MissManners@unitedmedia.com, or via postal mail at United Media, 200 Madison Ave., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10016 or (in black or blue-black ink on white writing paper) to Miss Manners, in care of this newspaper.