Dear Carolyn: Last spring we attended the wedding of my husband's best friend. When we visited the couple the year before, they threw out a couple of dates they were considering. When the fiancee mentioned the birthday date, my husband, the groom-to-be and I all said, "Oh, that's Jason's 40th." My husband and I don't know the bride very well.

So, months later I was surprised to receive a wedding invitation for … the birthday date. I feel they should've tried to secure a different date knowing the groom's best friend of 25 years was turning 40 that day. My husband has a congenital illness, so the fact that he even reached 40 was a huge deal.

I knew my husband was hurt.

Days before the wedding the groom asked my husband to give a toast. Jason gave a heartfelt, lovely toast but there was no acknowledgement, or a thank-you, or even something like, "By the way it's his 40th! Happy birthday!" Actually, the groom did thank him, but the bride never said thank you or happy birthday.

I'm still bitter about this whole thing, but my husband really can't let it go. I just need an outside voice to tell me, "Yes, that was rude. And she was rude."

STACEY

What if the outside voice tells you the bride may have been preoccupied, understandably and forgivably so, on her wedding day? Or that not everyone considers an adult birthday to be as big a deal as you and your husband do?

I can speak only for myself, but it wouldn't occur to me to avoid marrying on a friend's birthday.

I get that his illness gives his birthdays tremendous significance for you both. That, too, is understandable. It's also possible the bride is rude, possessive, self-absorbed.

In cases when you have reasonably strong feelings, though - or even unreasonably strong ones - it's best to say that outright: "Jason's 40th is a huge deal to us, so I hope you'll be able to choose a different date." Then you'd have had grounds to be all kinds of perturbed. Wedding dates, after all, are too often hostage to the availability of venue, vendors, parents, siblings, Grandpa, vacation times, favorable honeymoon fares and weather, and any number of priorities that aren't for us to deem legitimate.

And if you had seen this (theoretical) lack of apology or explanation as a grudge-worthy offense, then you and your husband would have owed it to his friendship to say something to the friend, before the event, to give him a chance to make it up to your husband somehow.

The way it actually played out, it appears you're both upset about this couple's failure to show respect for feelings you never told them you had.

And that's too bad, because this grudge appears already to have stomped on any budding affection you felt for the bride, which no doubt will weaken this quarter-century best-friendship, if it hasn't already.

It's time for your husband to decide: Was the couple's lapse really worth the price he's asking this friendship to pay?

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