One of the most overlooked aspects of wedding planning is writing thank you notes and cards.
Yet, you know they deserve thoughtful and timely thanks when you consider how much time and money your friends and family invested in planning your wedding day.
A wedding thank-you card is typically the last form of communication about your wedding that they will receive from you unless you plan on hosting a slide show when you get your professional photos back from the photographer. Leave them with a deep sense of appreciation for the efforts they made and a remarkable memory of your special day.
Order all thank you cards/notes at least two months before your wedding.
Ordering and receiving invitations and thank-you notes at the same time can save you time and money. Before your wedding, you may want to let people know that you are ‘not really’ or ‘almost’ married on the thank you cards.
Perhaps it would be worth investing in a small stack of generic thank you cards if you wanted to use one of your professional pictures on your thank you cards.
As soon as you start getting gifts, start sending thank you cards.
The wedding party, suppliers, and vendors will all need to be thanked after the wedding, but confirming that a gift has been received will ease the stress and make the thank-you list all the more manageable.
Most guests will understand if, due to the competing demands of the lead-up, you can’t send a thank you note within two weeks of receiving a gift.
It is generally accepted that thank you notes should be sent out within two months of the wedding.
Please keep a record of who sent what and when you got it.
When the kitchen table is piled high with only a few gifts, everything seems manageable. The cards aren’t likely to stay with the gifts for a few weeks, so sometimes the only way to figure out who gave you the crystal salad bowl is to use deduction (and a dated list).
Once you open the present, make a note of who gave what and when
Writing down their names, their addresses, list your guests if they attended, and the gifts they gave, using a simple spreadsheet can make things much more manageable.
Draft what you plan to say before you write it on the card.
A thank you note should include six main components:
- A greeting
- Reason for the thank you
- What you happen to be grateful for
- How you plan to use their gift if it is appropriate
- A Follow-up
- Closing
How Should You Write a Note?
The point of a thank you note is to make the receiver feel good. It’s personal and endearing to write a thank you card to express your appreciation for someone’s gift and company.
As stated before, if you are like most couples, you will probably find an example of a great thank you card that works with what you want to say and then use the exact phrases over and over again. Be sure that you take time to personalize your note by including small changes.
A mere 4% of you will write your personalized thank you notes, but don’t hate the other couples that find it more efficient to use similar wording.
Great Tips for Wording Your Thank You Card
- The first thing that needs to be done is to thank the guest for their wedding gift.
- You will want to use your imagination and describe how you plan to use their gift. Be sure not to be vague about it. You want you guest to know that you are talking about their gift. Instead of writing something like, “Thank you for our gift. We are excited to use it in our new kitchen.” That makes it seem like you are speaking about any gift. Instead, try something like, “Thank you so much for the wok. We are sure that it is going to make our stir-fry nights so much better.
- Only writing a card that is about four to six sentences is great for thank you cards that are not being sent to your family or close friends.
- Be sure to include a sentence about how much you loved seeing them at your wedding. Include things that you remember about them on your day. It could be a funny story that they told, how nice they looked in their outfit, or the fantastic dance moves they had.
- If you had a guest who sent you a gift but could not show up to your wedding, then make sure that you include your regrets that they were not able to attend your special day.
- You should also reference a future visit together and explain how you will use their gift. For instance, “We look forward to having you over for dinner using our new dishware.”
- If you were not that excited about the gift you got, try to write about their time at the wedding and less about their gift.
- Be sure to include a closing such as with much love or something similar.
