Now that all is said and done, it’s time to write your thank you cards. Whether your loving friends and family gave you a gift, a gift card or an envelope full of cash, and whether you liked the gift or not, common etiquette states that you must send a thoughtful, hand-written thank you card for everything that was received.
When it comes to sending out thank you cards or notes for your wedding and bridal shower there are a few rules. After your bridal shower, you will be expected to send out your thank you cards within the following two weeks. Since most showers are held two weeks before the wedding, I recommend getting all of the cards in the mail before the date of the wedding, that way you will have less to worry about on, and after, the big day. For wedding gifts you will be granted a full month to get your thank you cards sent out, so they won’t interfere with your honeymoon and newlywed phase, I call this honeymoon forgiveness. The cards must be hand-written and should not all be generic duplicates of each other. Most importantly, while you should thank your guests for the specific gift they gave you, in the case of cash, you should never mention the amount of money they gave you, it is seen as impolite.
Some tips I have from my recent experience of going through the process are, take your time, writing a few cards a day will help you avoid becoming overwhelmed. Work with your new husband but remember that the majority of the gifts were probably chosen with you in mind, so give the poor man a break. Type or write out your message before scribing it into the card you plan to mail out, this will help you avoid spelling mistakes and rambling. It will also help you write more neatly. Make sure to use a dictionary or spell check. Check off each person as you go so you don’t forget anyone. Develop a basic format for writing every card, but make every card unique. Lastly, be personal when writing; tell everyone how to intend to use their gift or how much it means to you.
Here are the basic “templates” I developed for writing my thank you cards.
For gifts:
Dear (their names, as they appear in the card with their gift),
Thank you for (their specific gift). (How we intend to use it or an amusing anecdote about how we have used it already.)
Thank you,
(Our Names)
For gift cards:
Dear (their names, as they appear in the card with their gift),
Thank you for the gift card for (where it is for). (What we plan to, or have purchased with the gift card.)
Thank you,
(Our Names)
For cash:
Dear (their names, as they appear in the card with their gift),
Thank you for your generous gift. (Where and how we plan to, or have already used the money.)
Thank you,
(Our Names)
I encountered a delicate etiquette situation when I was writing a thank you card for a family who had given us money and a gift; this is how I handled it:
Dear (their names, as they appear in the card with their gift),
Thank you for your generous gifts. (An anecdote about how we have used the gift.) Thanks to you, we were able to purchase (what we purchased with the money).
Thank you,
(Our Names)
Some couples choose to have a custom thank you card made to include their wedding picture. Our wedding was small and intimate, so most people have a slew of personal pictures they took with their own cameras and it just is not economical to have custom cards done up, because of this we choose to print our wedding picture and send it with the thank you card to our guests who were not able to make it but still sent a gift, for example, grandparents who were too ill to make it.