To be upset at how many people turned up to my dad's funeral in casual clothes?

[Wheelchairbarbie]

My dad died last month and the funeral was yesterday. It was an unexpected death and very very painful for us all to lose him.
I don't know if I'm wrong and I shouldn't be focusing on it but I can't stop thinking about how many people came to the funeral yesterday just dressed as though it was a random day in Tesco.
Women in strappy tops and tight, short dresses, men in jeans or jogging bottoms, some not even clean, trainers and flip flops everywhere, hair in messy buns, it was all there.
I felt so upset that they didn't seem to think him or we were worth the effort.
I've never seen funeral guests dressed like this. I've always put on a black dress, spent time over my make up, worn nice jewellery and heels, maybe even a pashmina and a hairpiece. I'm only 35?

AIBU to have found it so upsetting?

Sigh. I think you might be quite confused about life if this strikes you as in any way a valid comparison.

The Ritz staff are employees, with a uniform they are required to wear as part of their job. Just 'being present' isn't their job.

People attending a funeral are not the employees of the chief mourners.

Weddings, christenings and birthday parties are usually invitation only and can stipulate a dress code. We don’t invite people to funerals so they are not comparable.

I feel the same way. Of course it is natural to grieve when someone you care about dies. Perhaps leavened with a sense of relief when someone is finally released from suffering, but I can't see anything else to be very happy about. The whole "don't be sad, they wouldn't want you to be sad" is toxic positivity and not very helpful to those who are mourning.

Absolutely agree with all of this and the whole thread of quotes. Some people have become scared of grieving, as if you can just skip the sadness. (See also, the trend for people to say they don't want a funeral at all.) But grieving and feeling sad is necessary so you can process it and move to the next part of remembering the happy times. If you skip the sad part, the sadness doesn't go away, it just gets repressed and comes out in other ways. It's a type of mass lack of emotional intelligence. And the rituals of funerals help us in that process.

I think - as someone who seems to have had a summer of funerals - that people’s dress will tend very much to depend on how the attendee knew the deceased, and how the deceased presented themselves to the attendee.

OP says that many of those whose clothing was more casual were fellow drinkers in a pub, and their wives. A context in which OP’s father may well have presented himself casually, even scruffily, and in which the ‘standards’ she perceived may not have bern evident at all.

OP would have liked all the mourners to have the same perception of her DF’s character and preferences as she did. That’s normal. Equally, some of the mourners may have been surprised that the casual, jovial, welcoming man they knew at the pub had a very formal, conventions-focused daughter.

One of the fascinating aspects of a funeral is hearing stories from all sorts of different people, who knew the deceased in any number of different ways, that shed light on all sorts of aspects of their personality that the immediate family may have had no knowledge of.

OP, I am very sorry for your loss, and know that grief can express itself in many different and unexpected ways. I hope that in time, you remember how many people loved your father and wanted to pay their last respects.

So you're comparing a casual outfit to a funeral as having sex in front of children, because that's a much more sensible comparison is it? Glad you cleared that up! Jesus wept!

The whole point of a dress code is to define the code if it’s out of the normal code. The default funeral code is black, formal. Any other dress code must be defined but not the cultural norm.

I don’t think that default funeral wear IS black and formal.

For a church funeral service, possibly - though ime for the funerals of the elderly churchgoing, ‘Sunday best’ (usually not black in sunmer, often eg summer florals for women, in a range of non-vivid colours, and shirt & trousers, neither black, for men) is much more normal.

For a crematorium or similar, I don’t think there is a standard dress code at all.

But the chief mourners, ie the people who are most bereaved and grieving this loss, are invariably the ones to set the tone for the funeral, So no one has them at gunpoint to enforce a football strip/bright colours/feather boa and comedy glasses dresscode or a celebratory tone, unless that is what they want. If the deceased indicated a preference for a celebratory vibe, they have the option of fulfilling his/her wishes or not.

If a funeral is a 'celebratory' one, we have to presume it reflects the wishes of the bereaved people organising it, rather than worrying about them being pressured into it by some third party.

I think it would have been safest for IP to specify, if it was something that mattered to her - and if she would, as it seems, prefer fewer ‘correctly dressed’ mourners to a larger number who paid their final respects in what they thought would be suitable and acceptable for the deceased. Note that often, many of the mourners don’t know the family in order to gauge ‘what the surviving family would prefer’. They can only gauge it on their individual perception of the deceased - which as I said earlier, may be very different.

I went to my sister's in-law's funeral in a church. I was there to represent my family - not being close to he rinlaws and not being accustomed to English funeral services, I dressed conservatively but all the old ladies were in florals and rain coats, sort of stuff my mother would have worn shopping - I was surprised by how informal it was - I looked a little too corporate. I have also come across funerals where black is only for the immediate family only and wearing black to a funeral where you aren't immediate family is seen a bit performative.
You might want to argue neither of these are correct but the suggestion is that there's a norm is not the case, ime. If you want mourners to wear black and you are going to get upset if they don't, then save yourself the tears and specify.

They can only gauge it on their individual perception of the deceased - which as I said earlier, may be very different.

And like I said earlier, this is why etiquette and social norms exist...so that people don't have to guess, make a subjective personal judgement and risk being offensive or upsetting. If the people holding the event want to make an exception then of course they can, but if they don't then a default code applies and it's very easy to stick to.

You'd have to have lived under a rock not to know the default code for dressing for a funeral.

A job interview or a wedding/christening/anniversary party is not the same as a funeral as you are inviting specific people to a specific event. Most funerals are open to all that want to come and pay respects.

In your specific social environment, that may be the ‘default code’ - and therefore, like the OP, you might be really surprised to find that it genuinely isn’t the default everywhere- even in ‘conventional’ circles such as the rural / suburban elderly churchgoing, the code is in practice NOT black and NOT over-formal.

You are continually missing the point, which is that etiquette is not my specific social environment, or anyone else's. The whole point of etiquette is that there are rules on how to dress and act, so that wherever you go, unless you hear otherwise, you know what to do and how to behave appropriately. It transcends each individual circle as the default. That's the point of it.

You may have gone drinking in the pub with a guy, but you are not drinking in the pub with him now, you are marking his death, and you'd have to be an absolute clodhopper not to realise it's a different occasion. Perhaps his family said they wanted you to dress like you're going down Wetherspoons but if they didn't, assume the default and wear something plain, dark and on the smarter side. It's not hard. It's so strange that some people are all over alternative dress codes when they come up but are suddenly so confused and offended and unable when it's the default one.

Had to google in case I was going mad for a second there, but nope - seems pretty clear to me that there is a social norm/ expected dress code and just because your Uncle Bob or next door neighbour wanted football kits of everyone wearing turquoise, that remains an exception to the norm rather than the established, long accepted norm.

People making out like it's a choice of having people there appropriately dressed or having fewer people there - it's so obtuse! Why can't people just turn up dressed looking reasonably smart, not in stained jogging bottoms or with too much flesh on display? I can't think of a single reason, despite the incredible and reaching list of excuses given here, for anyone not to manage that.

I've been to a funeral 9 months pregnant in a heatwave, I still managed to source a black dress that met basic standards, bought inexpensively in a supermarket. When my mum was dying herself of cancer and having to be taken in a wheelchair, in pain and with none of her own clothes fitting her anymore, she attended her friend's husband's funeral looking appropriate and well put together. So sorry if I don't buy the 'well it's comfier for them' excuse.

Ah, no, you are missing mine.

There is no default. Genuinely, there is no default. You may think that YOUR convention is THE default (to be fair, a very common position), without that being true.

I was brought up where the default was that no women attended funerals. Had I remained where that ‘micro default’ was the default, yes, I would have carried into late adulthood the belief that that was THE default. It does’t make it true.

I think that wearing reasonably smart, tidy clothing, in sombre colours unless specified otherwise by the family, to a funeral is not just the default code in one specific social environment, @cantkeepawayforever - it is the default code in very many social environments.

A relative of mine turned up at a funeral with a skull handbag. Honestly are some people so stupid you have to explain that this is not appropriate ? 🤷‍♀️

Those saying it’s not a big deal are the type that attend funerals looking a bag of shit. No respect for the dead, the grieving or for themselves.

Agree with the op. You dress smartly in black unless told otherwise.

Ugh, I can't simplify it any further. Etiquette exists and is a thing, no matter how much you say "no it's not", which is all this post is. You may not like it, you may not agree with it, you may wish to abolish it, and over time it can change, but it simply absolutely is, however much you deny it.

You actually admit it; first you say there's no default and then you immediately mention a past default, even calling it a default. It's changed, because times do change, but etiquette still exists. And it still isn't appropriate to wear whatever the fuck you want - dirty joggers, strappy tops, swimsuits or belly dance costumes - to a serious and sombre occasion with grieving people.

The PP who talked about people being really obtuse on this was so right.

Etiquette is time- and place-specific, though, not unchanging and for all time.

YANBU. I agree, I’m a similar age to you and would wear a smart black dress, my husband would wear a suit. I’m sorry for your loss.

That, however, is not what the poster specified. They particularly said plain and black.

I have, unfortunately, had a summer of funerals. Over the hundreds of attendees, I would say that ‘reasonably smart and tidy’, interpreted for the individual, covered almost everyone, and for those it didn’t, age, infirmity, mental state, illness or disability made their clothing entirely irrelevant.

Plain and black? About 3 people, and in one of those 3 it appeared strange and performative from a very minor attendee.