LEBANON — Miss Manners would be so pleased. Friday's Garden Party, hosted by the Lebanon Conservancy Foundation, promises to whisk attendees back to an era when flirting was an art, small talk a skill and correct attire a must. After all, when one is wearing one's dress whites, gauche behavior is simply unthinkable.

        The event, held to celebrate Lebanon's bicentennial and to raise restoration funds for the city's 1808 Nixon-Brant house, is a 1920s-theme party that will allow participants to pretend they're in the Hamptons, rubbing elbows with figures out of The Great Gatsby. Four vintage “motorcars” will transport partygoers from a parking area to festivities at The Pillars without so much as smudging the passengers' whites.

IF YOU GO

If you go    • What: Lebanon Conservancy Foundation Garden Party.     • When: 7:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m. Friday. • Where: The Pillars, 119 Cincinnati Ave., Lebanon.     • Tickets: $70 per person, which includes the Bicentennial Home and Garden tour on Saturday and Sunday. Reservations are requested by Monday.     • Information: 934-5661.

        What! You want to attend and have misplaced your white garden party duds?

        You have an advocate in Bill McGurn, a conservancy member. After the party committee chose the theme and floated the idea of asking everyone to wear white clothing, Mr. McGurn was concerned that potential attendees would be turned off by the requirement.

        “I could just hear wives saying, "I want to wear my white dress' and the husbands saying "I don't have anything to wear,' and deciding not to come,” he explained.

        So he developed a tongue-in-cheek “White Attire Exemption Certificate” and a checklist of possible reasons an exemption might be needed. Those excuses include: “Did you attend the Queen Elizabeth II birthday party and your whites did not come back from the cleaners?” and “At a state dinner at the White House, did you lend your whites to someone who identified himself only as an ex-Enron lobbyist?”

        So, for $5 extra and a promise not to play croquet (one simply doesn't play croquet in a dark jacket), a partygoer may be attired in any color.

        Conservancy member Gerald Miller is furnishing the garden party locale and is credited for coming up with the theme.

        “I have a book about great parties,” he said. “I also thought about the movie of The Great Gatsby; people tell me that my house looks like the one in the movie. We're using the cars to transport people because there's not enough parking on my property.”

        The event begins with a champagne reception on the terrace, continues with a buffet supper under the marquee (for those gentle readers who may have misplaced their dictionaries, that is a canopy tent), and concludes with a Jay Gatsby-Daisy Buchanan look-alike contest by the pool.

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