I typically try to post to my blog at least once each month, but I didn’t get around to it last month. I was too busy with a different writing endeavor: finishing off the thank you notes from my wedding.
After all of the excitement of the wedding and the honeymoon, writing thank you notes definitely felt like work. I admit I procrastinated, but I still managed to get them all in the mail just over a month after the wedding. Words cannot describe how happy I was when I dropped them off at the post office!
The weird thing about going through a wedding is that you gain all of this knowledge and experience, but, ideally, you’re never going to have to use it again. Since I will hopefully never need to write scores of thank you notes at once again, I’m sharing a few of the things I’ve learned here, in the hope that it might be helpful to someone else.
It’s ok to buy cheap thank you notes.
It can be very tempting to buy thank you notes that match the rest of your wedding stationery, and it’s fine if that’s what you want to do, but don’t feel like you have to. I bought two 50-packs of thank you notes from Target for about $20 each. They looked nice, and because they’re not too wedding-themed, we can continue using the extras for other occasions.
Don’t write the return address by hand.
After writing all your thank you notes, the last thing you’re going to want to do is write a return address on each envelope. If you’ve used your printer for envelopes before and trust it, you can give that a try, but it wouldn’t be my first choice for this, as envelopes can easily cause a paper jam in home printers.
If you and your partner are planning to stay in your current home for a while, I highly recommend buying a self-inking return address stamp. It’s so easy to use, it will make you want to send more mail! If you’re planning on moving soon and don’t want to splurge on a stamp that will be outdated before long, printing return address labels is low cost way to save time and spare your hands the extra work.
Use Trello to stay organized.
You’re going to need some sort of list to keep track of which notes have already been written and which ones you still need to write. I liked Trello for this because it’s easy to customize it to fit your workflow, and if you download the mobile app, you can use it to start drafting notes whenever you have a spare moment, like if you’re on the bus or waiting for an appointment. Having the notes pre-written in Trello makes it really quick to write them by hand later, and some of Trello’s other features, such as labels and custom fields, can help you have all of the information you need for your thank you notes in one place.
If you’d like to give it a try, check out me guide on how to use Trello for thank you notes.
Show off your wedding photos.
If you’ve already received your wedding photos, why not share them with your loved ones? We ordered these website inserts that matched our wedding invitations (I know, I know, I just said above that you don’t have to do that), but you could definitely print something similar yourself on cardstock. We changed the first line of the template to “view our wedding photos at” and the second line to the URL where our guests could view the photos (which was a page on our wedding website that linked to the photographer’s site). You may want to use a URL shortener to make it easier to fit on the card and for your guests to type out!
I also love the idea of actually sending a picture with a thank you note. I once received a note that included a picture of the bride and groom at their wedding, holding up a “Thank You” banner. I loved it! I kept it on my refrigerator all year long and still have it. We didn’t do that for our wedding, but since we got some of our wedding pictures back pretty quickly, I decided to send our guests pictures that were taken of them at our wedding, if we had any. Obviously, this is easier for your wedding party and immediate families, but we also had lots of fun pictures of people dancing. It was fun to pick out the different pictures, but sending the same picture to everyone certainly would have saved time.
Our thank you notes were small enough that we needed to print the photos as 3.5” by 5” in order for them to fit in the envelopes. This is a pretty common size for thank you notes, but it’s not so common for photos, and it can be hard to find a place that will print them that small. We ordered ours from Nations Photo Lab with good results.
Don’t forget your vendors.
You certainly aren’t obligated to write thank you notes for your vendors, but if you feel like they did a great job, it doesn’t hurt to send them a note of your appreciation. I actually found these to be the most fun thank you notes to write. While many of the gifts may start to blur together, the contribution each vendor made to your wedding was unique and really impacted both you and your guests. It’s a little easier to gush over the delicious cake or the beautiful flowers than it is to enthuse over your new set of towels, even if they’re really great towels and you really do appreciate them.
Because these thank you notes are less of a requirement, they’re also extra-appreciated. Several of my vendors reached out to me later to thank me for thanking them! It made me feel warm and fuzzy and forget about how cramped my hands were from all that writing.
That said, writing a thank you note isn’t a substitute for posting a review. If your vendors were awesome (or, you know, not), make sure to let other people know on a review site like The Knot, Wedding Wire, or Yelp.
Take breaks!
When you find yourself misspelling “Crate & Barrel” in your thank you note to your new brother- and sister-in-law, put down the pen and go do something else for a while. Your hands and brain will both appreciate it! Writing a note that’s sincere and legible is more important than getting them in the mail a day or two sooner.
Writing thank you notes can be a lot of work, but when you take a step back, it’s important to remember that it’s an opportunity to show your appreciation for those who have loved and supported you and your new husband or wife. So don’t stress, and let the ink and the gratitude flow.
Have any favorite tips for thank you notes? Please share them in the comments!
Caity Thinks 