Etiquette for Monogramming Silver

An ornate silver pattern handle requires that the monogram either be placed on the back of the flatware or in the functional end of the piece. This rare Versailles sterling pattern caviar spade has the owners’ last name’s first initial prominently in the functional end above.– Whether or not she is to receive her flat silver all at once or purchase it a setting at a time, the bride should choose her pattern and monogram as soon as her invitations are out, so friends who wish to give her silver may match their gifts. 

The bride's family usually gives her her flat silver, and the groom's family gives the silver tea service as a wedding gift.

If having a silver tea service will create a storage problem in small quarters where it can’t be on display, the groom's family might better give a china service or, perhaps, broadloom if that is a paramount need of a young couple on a slender budget. It is nicer, of course, for both families to give enduring things such as silver or fine china, but many young couples would prefer checks to use only in part to start purchases of silver or fine china on a budget basis, adding to their stock as their living quarters and their social activities grow.

Whether or not she is to receive her flat silver all at once or purchase it a setting at a time, the bride should choose her pattern and monogram as soon as her invitations are out, so friends who wish to give her silver may match their gifts. She may register her silver pattern and that of her china and glass at shops from which it will probably come. This will be of much help to her friends. Silver serving dishes and platters don't necessarily match the flat silver but should be in a harmonizing style. Loveliest are the old Sheffield platters and serving dishes, plated of course on copper, but there are many modern pieces in sterling or, more usual, plate, in a variety of classic patterns that complement flatware.

If it is out of the question for a bride to have even a starter set of sterling, a fine quality of plate in a simple pattern will do. But, given a choice between a complete set of even the best plate and a four-place setting of sterling, the wise bride will chose the sterling, adding to it on anniversaries and other gift-giving times. Sterling is a permanent investment requiring no upkeep or replacement. It always has a company complexion and will be just as acceptable and beautiful twenty or thirty years after the wedding.

Styles in silver are fairly stable. Heavy embossed or repousse silver, which is hard to clean, is better avoided for the simpler, more modern, patterns. But if you have inherited heavy, heavily-decorated silver, it is heartening to know that you can still add to your set, as the great silver- smiths still produce for these familiar open-stock patterns. And often you can pick up extra forks, spoons, and knives at auctions or old silver shops. In fact, a friend of mine, with no family to give her silver and a slim budget on which to start, deliberately chose one of the lovely, decorative old pat- terns, buying it secondhand, and from time to time picks up six spoons or a dozen salad forks in antique shops and elsewhere at half the price they would be new from the silversmiths that have been making them for a century. And, as with all fine sterling, their beauty increases with use and the years.

A dozen of everything in all-sterling flatware is ideal, but a young bride can do very well with four- or six-place settings consisting of dinner knife, dinner fork, salad fork, butter knife, teaspoon, and dessert spoon. The teaspoon will be used for consommé and cream soup, for desserts in small. containers, for grapefruit or fruit cup, as well as for tea or coffee. The dessert spoon will do for soups in soup plates and for desserts served on flat plates. She will need two tablespoons and two extra dinner forks to serve with, a carving set, a cake knife and, of course, after-dinner coffee spoons.

If her budget is limited she should avoid purchasing flat silver that is. teaspoon will be used for consommé and cream soup, for desserts in small containers, for grapefruit or fruit cup, as well as for tea or coffee. The dessert spoon will do for soups in soup plates and for desserts served on flat plates. She will need two tablespoons and two extra dinner forks to serve with, a carving set, a cake knife and, of course, after-dinner coffee spoons.

If her budget is limited she should avoid purchasing flat silver that is used only occasionally fruit knives and forks, oyster forks, ice-tea spoons, fish forks and knives, cheese scoops, and the like. If ancestral silver is to be used, it is probable that some of these things will be missing anyhow and substitutes will have to be found.

A word of warning to the bride who rejects offers of sterling silver when she marries in favor of household furnishings she feels she needs more. If you don't get your sterling now, you may never get it. Once a family starts growing, its constant needs too often absorb funds we thought would be available for something so basic as sterling. So we “make-do” over the years with ill-assorted cutlery, deceptively inexpensive because it wears. out. Then come the important little dinners, as a young husband gets up in the world. We push a chair over a hole in the living room rug, put a cushion under the pillow of the sofa with a sagging spring, and distract the guests' attention from the picture-less walls by charming flower arrangements. But there is nothing that can be done about the shabby flatware, which, somehow, is still with us, even though it was bought just to tide us through the first year in the tiny apartment. But then, of course, the baby came.

Never again in her lifetime will a girl find her family and friends in such a giving and sentimental mood as they are at the time of her wedding. At no other time will it occur, very probably, to any of them to give her so much as a silver ash tray. But at the propitious moment they think of sterling silver as the gift for the bride as part of her dowry as it should be. So, though she starts married life without as much as a roasting pan, she should be able to lay her table if it's only a bridge table with the kind of silver she'll be proud to see on whatever table the future has in store for her.

Right from the start, it is the wife's task to set the tone of the family's living. And one's everyday living should differ very little from that presented to guests. We are all strongly influenced by things around us. What family doesn't deserve the sight of an attractively set dinner table, even when guests aren't present?

Should gifts of silver be monogrammed? The bride should decide how she wishes her silver marked, then, if it is given her in a complete set, it arrives already monogrammed. If friends give her flat silver from a chosen pattern, it is better to send it unmonogrammed, in case she receives many duplicates. Hollow ware and trays should be sent unmonogrammed to make them exchangeable.  – From The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette, 1952

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