I’ve been burned before where thank you notes are concerned, and I can still rattle off the names of each and every bride and groom who didn’t make with the gratitude. So many nuptial etiquette rules were made to be broken, but the one about sending thank you notes in a timely fashion is not one of them. Being that you have to send them out anyway, why not make your thank yous as easy on the eye as possible by ordering from San Diego-based Ink Drop Design?
You’ll probably need a gel pen to write on the darker ones.
As you can no doubt guess, we made our own thank-you cards as well. We took a photo I had taken of some flowers in a window box at the reception site (my FIL’s back yard) and a photo of my hubby facing the spray at Niagara Falls where we stopped for the night on our honeymoon and attached them loosely to plain white cardstock folded in half. We chose at random who got what photo, which were nice enough to be keepsakes on their own!
I wish I’d done something like that…maybe for future thank yous, I will. I just did not have the time pre- and post-wedding to be printing and gluing photos!
I had one bride tell me she had a year to write the thank-you notes. (Isn’t the rule that you have a year to send the present?)
I’ve had others tell me they’re too busy. Really? Yet you have time to watch American Idol?
I have no patience with someone who won’t send a thank-you note. If I go through the trouble to shop, package, and mail something to you (and not even get the pleasure of attending the wedding b/c I can’t afford the flight and hotel and/or don’t want to use the vacation time), then I want you to spend five minutes writing me a note (not an email, either). It’s not asking too much.
Darn tootin’, class-factotum! I’m with you all the way!
What IS the timeline, anyway? I was married on October 23rd, and between the post-wedding stuff, the getting-ready-for-Christmas stuff and the preparing-for-our-house-construction-in-the-spring stuff, I’ve been sadly negligent on the thank-you notes. They’re in progress, but I often find I can only do about 7 or 8 at a time before brainfart (and spelling errors) set in.
As well, where I’m sending these out in December, can I just include my thank-you message on the Christmas cards I’m sending to people (i.e. thank you for the lovely such-and-such, it was so nice to see you, it meant a lot, wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a happy 2008), or do I have to write out a separate card for each thing?
La Petite Acadienne: Most etiquette experts agree that the best time to send thank yous is as soon as you possibly can. Etiquette columnist Ceri Marsh is even more strict, and says you should give yourself no more than a week! Yikes! But the accepted rule is that you have three months in which to send out your thank yous, meaning you’re still in the clear.
You should definitely send separate thank you cards and holiday cards, as wrist-achingly tedious as that sounds. People LOVE getting personalized notes of gratitude. They love it less when that gratitude is combined with some other sentiment or message because it detracts from the unique beauty of the traditional thank you. Your recipients might even feel slighted because they think you’re trying to get out of thanking them properly! Better to risk a few spelling errors than to risk the ire of etiquette-aware loved ones.
I’ve been to a number of weddings and baby showers, given a fabulous gift that took much thought and effort, and to this day I haven’t received a TY. How rude! I see this as the worst thing anyone can do after getting a gift. I always make sure that I put my address somewhere in the card so that they know that I am expecting a TY card. lol
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NTB: That’s what newly married husbands are for. I set up the doc, printed the images out in sheets and he cut them out. He also wrote all of the thank yous for his family and I wrote the ones for my family. Since I wanted the pics to be removable there was only a dash of glue in the center, but certainly double-stick-tape would have been just as useful.
Then again, maybe I just have an exceptionally sweet husband willing to do pretty much whatever I need at a moments notice…? *grin*
Has anyone else received those horrible pre-printed thank-you’s? “[Bride] and [Groom] thank you for your very thoughtful gift which will certainly help them make their new home together.”
Really? You can’t manage to find a few nice words to say about a toaster?
And yes, all husbands should be required to write the notes to their side of the family and their friends/co-workers. No, I don’t care how horrible his handwriting is, they’re his family, and they love him anyway.
Goodness, no, Toni. If I did receive such an abomination, I think I’d send it right back!