Your condescending attitude toward other freepers' valid comments makes it appropriate.
In the South, it is rude to invite a single guest of dating age and determine for them whether they deserve to bring the person they are dating or just want to bring. There are exceptions, but you generally don't do it. Don't invite them if there is not the budget for both.
As far as seating goes the main tables are *sometimes* placecarded at some weddings so crazy aunt Judy doesn't try to sit next to the bride, and the wedding party gets to sit at the main tables. In general, however, people form their own groups. Weddings are celebrations down here, not opportunities for Emily-Post-wannabees to nitpick other people's arrangements.
The Junior League mentality rules here in the South, at the Memphis Country Club and University Club especially, and never have I been to an old money wedding that was as sterile as the one you described.
As far as the article, it is very tacky to crash a wedding, though I have been drug into strange wedding receptions before by family and felt welcome.
The Yankee wedding standard is not universal. You try showing up at my wife's grandmother's Sewing Circle and telling the southern ladies there that my wife's wedding was in poor taste. They'll find something wrong with your outfit and your grammar and have you begging for mercy before you can get out the next sentence.
Oh, that's considered rude in the North too. At least among my family and friends. But then maybe we're just not aware of the universal rules of wedding etiquette...
These rules, I wrote of, aren't peculiar, regional, out of the ordinary.
And since you bring up the Junior League, my daughter and many of her wedding guests, whose weddings she was either a member of the bridal party, or attended, would also pass muster.
These aren't "YANKEE" rules and unless you want to call everyone a YANKEE, who doesn't live in a few Southern states, then you're over reaching. Are Californians YANKEES? Are people who live in Ill. YANKEES? Are people who live in Arizona YANKEES? Are people who live in Texas YANKEES? I've been to weddings in all of those places and all of them have used the same rules I've mentioned.
And it's also valid, then for me, to make comments as to the obvious rudeness of other. What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander and you should get off your high horse. I didn't say that other people her would be heavily criticized for their lack of clothing sense or their accents; but YOU did. Nor that they and their weddings weren't up to snuff re JUNIOR LEAGUE ( ROTFLMSO ! ) criteria, but YOU did and were way off base on that one, to boot. LOL