Integrating WordPress with Your Website, styling issues

I am integrating my wordpress blog posts into the homepage of my static site and I am running into a small problem. I am using ‘the_excerpt()’ for bringing in a short intro to each post but that text is not picking up the styling that I am giving it on the static homepage, it instead keeps the style from the wordpress blog. It does the same thing if I use ‘the_content’.

The confusing part is that my titles and dates pick up the right styling from the homepage.

I am using the following markup to try and style the excerpt:
<p class="serif"><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>
The style sheet is linked to in the header of my homepage

Any help would be greatly appreciated.