Oh Steph!

With alcoholic family members at the wedding, I'd seriously consider giving the reception partyers drink chits rather than open bar, with maybe gift certificates for those who don't want the chits, because virtue should be rewarded.

Ugh, drinking can be so fraught.

With alcoholic family members at the wedding, I'd seriously consider giving the reception partyers drink chits rather than open bar, with maybe gift certificates for those who don't want the chits, because virtue should be rewarded.

I don't think drinking is inherently non-virtuous. Even if it's alcoholics doing it.

I have been to dry weddings because of (non-reformed) alcoholic parents, and one of the many reasons Tom and I eloped was to avoid having to deal with that stuff. It was just too hard and I knew that I didn't want to deal with it at all.

At my cousins' b'nai mitzvah a few months ago, I got carded. It was ridiculous. I didn't have my license with me, since I was in a fancy dress with no pockets and a little tiny purse, so I just put in the purse the things I thought I'd need. I told the bartender that I was 32 and had been legal to drink for over a decade, and I even went and found my mom and several other older relatives who would vouch for me, including the mother of the b'nai mitzvah kids, but no good. I looked too young, so no ID, no drink.

with maybe gift certificates for those who don't want the chits, because virtue should be rewarded.

I don't think drinking is inherently non-virtuous. Even if it's alcoholics doing it.

Yeah, I have a serious problem with "rewarding virtue" in this context.

I think Theo meant that it's virtuous to abstain if you're purposely trying to. Just like it would be virtuous to abstain if you were trying to stop smoking, or eating a lot of refined sugar. Virtue can mean "a commendable quality or trait," and in that instance it would be willpower or perseverance.

I meant rewarding virtue as in giving the recovering alcoholics a nice present if the drink chips are useless to them. (And it might as well also be offered to anyone who'd rather have a gift certificate than a drink.)

I rarely drink alcohol, most of it tastes awful to me -- I don't refrain from any sense of 'virtue.'

I still find the use of virtue to describe it as problematic. I don't think my sister not drinking is especially virtuous. It just means she's been able to maintain her sobriety, more or less, like a diabetic who is controlling their blood sugar levels.

While I know this was not your intent, I think framing it as a virtue trivializes addiction.

I should have put quotes around the word the first time. It was meant in an air-quotes sense.