Talk to me about Thank You's

[hoofbeats95]

We opened our gifts today. The wedding was last Sat. We were lightly talking about thank you's. I wanted to do photo thank-you's. They seem to more popular and acceptable. My MIL got rather bitchy about it and said that it's only acceptable to my generation and the older generation wouldn't like it. We had a photo booth at our wedding and it was huge hit. My Granny even rocked the pimp hats and was in the booth many times! My husband and I took a photo holding a "Thank You" sign. I wanted to use that photo and one or two more of us from the booth. I thought it would "fit" in with our wedding and people would enjoy it. My husbands sides with his Mom and insists that someone like his grandma would prefer hand written. And of course who is going to write these? Not him I'm sure! And to be honest I'd put a nice message on the photo card like "Thank you for sharing in our special day . . . " etc. etc. If I had wrote it I'd probably say the same thing. I don't really like listing the gift that was given in the thank you. Or is that something that is expected?? So what is the scoop? Am I wrong here? Would it be tacky to do a photo thank you? We aren't talking like 50 thank-you's, we had 400 people invited, so 150-200 thank-you's maybe. I'm not trying to be lazy here though. I really like receiving photo thank yous myself and it never offends me. I like seeing the photos. What do I need to do?

 

[sillyberry]

I'm confused - are the thank-yous cards with photos on the front, or are they just photos with you holding a "thank you" sign?

If the former that folds open for you to write a message, then that's fine. I know a lot of people love the photo thank-you cards.

If it's the latter where you're letting the picture speak as the thank you, then I don't think that's appropriate. I really think each gift needs a hand-written thank you card, ideally referencing how you and DH can't wait to use the dishes/went to a nice dinner with their gift/love the picture frame and it's holding a beautiful wedding photo. I like knowing that they know what I sent.

As for who writes the thank yous...take that up with DH. If he wants handwritten thank you notes, he really should expect to split them with you. It's unfair for one party to be expected to write them all. Now, if he wants to bargain with you (you write the thank you notes, I take over X for you), that's up to you as a couple.

 

[Haven]

This isn't what you want to hear, but:

I think it's very tacky to send out pre-printed thank you notes. To me, what you'd be saying is "I don't feel like taking the time to send you a proper thank you" and it just seems very ungrateful. You might as well skip the thank you notes all together if you aren't going to actually hand write them, if you ask me.

I sent out over 300 thank you notes for our wedding and showers, but I was happy to write each and every one of them. Our friends and family took the time to choose and send us the gifts, the least I could do is send them a real thank you note.

You could have cards made with photos in them and a space to hand write the thank you note, though, if you really want to use the photos. I've seen people do that before.

 

[hoofbeats95]

The inital plan was that the photo cards would not open. THey would be more like the photo cards that people send for Christmas. You have some pics on there, but then you have a printed message. THat message would say something like "Thank you for sharing in our special day". I hadn't really thought that far yet. We have WAY more money gifts than anything else. So I'd just be saying over and over "Thank you for the gift of money". I guess I can look for ones that open and maybe have a happy compromise. I don't know. I hate doing the wrong thing, but I personally love the photo thank yous.

On the other side, we do have some note cards provided by the people that did our invites. I could write those out. They have our names printed on the bottom. They match our invites. The quesion I have about that is, with our first names printed on the card, do we also actually sign them? Then the names are there twice? lol I'd prefer to not use these, but if it's what is appropriate then I will I suppose.

 

[hoofbeats95]

This isn't what you want to hear, but:

I think it's very tacky to send out pre-printed thank you notes. To me, what you'd be saying is "I don't feel like taking the time to send you a proper thank you" and it just seems very ungrateful. You might as well skip the thank you notes all together if you aren't going to actually hand write them, if you ask me.

I sent out over 300 thank you notes for our wedding and showers, but I was happy to write each and every one of them. Our friends and family took the time to choose and send us the gifts, the least I could do is send them a real thank you note.

You could have cards made with photos in them and a space to hand write the thank you note, though, if you really want to use the photos. I've seen people do that before.

I don't "want" to hear anything specific other than what people think. In my area photo thank you's seem rather common and acceptable. If it isn't the case then I need to know. Thinking quickly I'm probably better off to just save the money and use the thank-you notecards we were given from the company that did the invites.

 

[sonnyjane]

The inital plan was that the photo cards would not open. THey would be more like the photo cards that people send for Christmas. You have some pics on there, but then you have a printed message. THat message would say something like "Thank you for sharing in our special day". I hadn't really thought that far yet. We have WAY more money gifts than anything else. So I'd just be saying over and over "Thank you for the gift of money". I guess I can look for ones that open and maybe have a happy compromise. I don't know. I hate doing the wrong thing, but I personally love the photo thank yous.

On the other side, we do have some note cards provided by the people that did our invites. I could write those out. They have our names printed on the bottom. They match our invites. The quesion I have about that is, with our first names printed on the card, do we also actually sign them? Then the names are there twice? lol I'd prefer to not use these, but if it's what is appropriate then I will I suppose.

I agree that you should do handwritten cards that you open with the fun picture on the front. You really should do handwritten thank-you's on the inside. You also don't have to say "thank you for the money", you just right "thank you for the generous gift", etc. That's a bit less tacky in my opinion. And yes, you will have to write it all out, but it is what's appropriate.

I did my thank-you's through Wal-Mart - just picked a few pictures of our wedding and put them on a card that was blank on the inside. It was super cheap - like $0.20 a card, and you can pick them up at your nearest location, and even have them do just one so you can see if you like it first before you print a bunch. You should sign your names, not have them printed.

 

[hoofbeats95]

I agree that you should do handwritten cards that you open with the fun picture on the front. You really should do handwritten thank-you's on the inside. You also don't have to say "thank you for the money", you just right "thank you for the generous gift", etc. That's a bit less tacky in my opinion. And yes, you will have to write it all out, but it is what's appropriate.

I did my thank-you's through Wal-Mart - just picked a few pictures of our wedding and put them on a card that was blank on the inside. It was super cheap - like $0.20 a card, and you can pick them up at your nearest location, and even have them do just one so you can see if you like it first before you print a bunch. You should sign your names, not have them printed.

The thank you cards that came with the invites have our first names printed on the bottom. Not printed in a size like you sign- larger like the names are part of the design of the card. Does that make sense? I can post a photo tomorrow.

I looked at Walmart's website and I can't find any folded cards that cheap! Not even close.

 

[sonnyjane]

I agree that you should do handwritten cards that you open with the fun picture on the front. You really should do handwritten thank-you's on the inside. You also don't have to say "thank you for the money", you just right "thank you for the generous gift", etc. That's a bit less tacky in my opinion. And yes, you will have to write it all out, but it is what's appropriate.

I did my thank-you's through Wal-Mart - just picked a few pictures of our wedding and put them on a card that was blank on the inside. It was super cheap - like $0.20 a card, and you can pick them up at your nearest location, and even have them do just one so you can see if you like it first before you print a bunch. You should sign your names, not have them printed.

The thank you cards that came with the invites have our first names printed on the bottom. Not printed in a size like you sign- larger like the names are part of the design of the card. Does that make sense? I can post a photo tomorrow.

I looked at Walmart's website and I can't find any folded cards that cheap! Not even close.

Ahh, sorry for the misinformation. I just went back to Wal-Mart's site and you're right. I was confusing the price of the photo-cards (that I send out for Christmas that don't fold) with the price of the ones we had for our wedding. Our wedding ones were closer to $1.10 (it was 3 years ago) per card and we used them as wedding announcements (we eloped) rather than thank-you cards, so we only sent out about 50. Then I sent out hand-written cheaper cards without photos to thank people for sending gifts after receiving the wedding announcement.

 

[Haven]

I didn't mean to offend you by saying I was about to say something you didn't want to hear, Hoofbeats.

It sounds like a good compromise would be to have folding cards made with your picture on the front and space to write the thank you note on the inside.

I wonder if any brides have done anything similar and can give you some good resources for reasonably priced photo thank you cards. Anyone?

 

[wannaBMrsH]

We did what Haven and Sonnyjane have talked about...we had one of our wedding photos in front and it opened up to a blank space and on the back side had our names and home address.

We only had 45 guests at our wedding, but we sent out over 175 thank you cards as we received wedding presents from many people who couldn't attend-my co-workers, DH's co-workers/business associates, friends of our parents, etc. DH and I actually both wrote notes on ALL cards (he even wrote some in Spanish to my parent's side of the family!) because it really was as Haven said, they took the time to choose and send us a gift. The least we could do was sit down and drink a bottle of wine while we wrote our thank you notes!

Also, I sent shower/bachelorette thank-you's on the last of my single-name stationary separately. I like the photo thank you cards, and I think people do enjoy seeing those, but I agree that a hand-written note still can't be beat. We used Office Max to do our thank you notes, we fit two cards to each 8x10 sheet and they cut them for free. We had 125 in English and 50 in Spanish and the total cost including envelopes was around $60 or so. That was almost two years ago. Good Luck and I'm sure you will love the cards you choose to get!

 

[choro72]

We used Vistaprint.com. We uploaded one of our pictures to the post card and handwrote loooong messages on the back. They were all stuffed in envelopes. For guests that we don't know, I just wrote something generic (thanks for the generous gift, it will help us furnish the house blah blah blah) but they were still all handwritten. DH wrote messages for his friends and I wrote for mine.
In a nutshell, I think photo thank you cards are awesome, but the thank you messages must be handwritten. Good luck! It was very stressful.
If you use vistaprint.com, be sure to unclick the advertisement options at the end.

 

[mary poppins]

You and/or your husband should write thank you notes. If you want to include a picture, have the picture printed on folded cards or use the cards you already have and include a picture inside. Sign your names even if the card already has your names printed in it.

Thank you for celebrating our special day with us. Also, thank you for your generous gift. We plan to use it towards . . . .
There are plenty of sample things to say in a wedding thank you card online if you can't think of variations.

One important factor in acknowledging gifts, other than expressing gratitude, is assuring the gift giver that you received the gift. A picture alone doesn't accomplish that and is also impersonal. You have a lot of notes to write, but you and hubs sitting down and doing five a day each can knock it out in no time.

 

[turboflgrl]

I have actually never received a hand written thank you for any of the gifts I've given to anyone - wedding or not - other than my best friend and that was for her maid of honor gift! Haha

For our thank you's, we did a photo post card of us holding a banner that spelled out "thank you" on high quality paper that had a pretyped message on the back. That went to everyone that attended the wedding. However, not everyone gave a gift - less than half of our guests did - so I went out and bought nice thank you cards that were blank on the inside and personally wrote each gift giver a personal message thanking them for their gift.

Overkill? Possibly. But I think I covered all the bases this way..lol They get a pic of us thanking them for their attendance and gift givers get an additional thank you for their lovely gift

 

[missy]

Hey Hoofbeats, congrats on your wedding last weekend! Enjoy being a newlywed

We wrote each card personally thanking each guest(s) for their specific gift. My dh shared in this task and I see no reason yours cannot help you write the thank you notes. I mean, he is benefiting from these gifts as well as you isn't he? In fact, my dh and I individually signed each thank you card as well. I felt it was the least we could do since our guests shared in our happy day and were very generous with their gifts. I see no reason though you cannot send photo thank you cards and write an additional note on each one. If you can find a photo card that flips open which I am sure exists. Anyway, congrats again and all the best!

 

[iheartscience]

I'm with your MIL and everyone else in this thread. I think sending a generic thank you card like that is very rude and I'm probably around the same age as you. Taking a few minutes to write a personal note is really not that difficult. Your husband can write to his family and friends and you can write to yours-that's what me and my husband did.

We had to send out at least 150 or so thank you cards between the wedding and the shower and it didn't take long at all-just a few days. We just sat down and wrote out 20 or 30 a night until they were done. You write essentially the same thing in most of the cards so it's really not difficult to get them done.

If it costs too much to get photos printed on a card that opens, just buy regular thank you cards. You can get wedding-ish ones at Target and Wal-Mart for not much money at all.

 

[sunnyd]

I'm with your MIL and everyone else in this thread. I think sending a generic thank you card like that is very rude and I'm probably around the same age as you. Taking a few minutes to write a personal note is really not that difficult. Your husband can write to his family and friends and you can write to yours-that's what me and my husband did.

We had to send out at least 150 or so thank you cards between the wedding and the shower and it didn't take long at all-just a few days. We just sat down and wrote out 20 or 30 a night until they were done. You write essentially the same thing in most of the cards so it's really not difficult to get them done.

If it costs too much to get photos printed on a card that opens, just buy regular thank you cards. You can get wedding-ish ones at Target and Wal-Mart for not much money at all.

Yup. Hubs can write to his family/friends, you can write to yours. You NEED the handwritten part though, something simple like, thanks for being part of our special day, thanks for the generous gift (if money) or name the actual thing so it doesn't sound generic. Bing bang boom done.

 

[sillyberry]

sunnyd! how nice to see you!

 

[rhbgirl24]

We did photo cards, however they were bifold, and I wrote hand written notes inside....

 

[Future Mrs. Sterling]

I have received a "thank you photo" that doesn't fold, but it had a hand written message in felt-tip pen on the back of the photo thanking me for my gift, so it covered both bases. I have also received just the generic photo with no message and I think it's rather impersonal. If I were attending your wedding and going to receive a thank you photo, I would want some sort of hand written message along with it - either as others have mentioned by having it fold inside a card, or on the back of the photo. Just my .02!

 

[mrscushion]

hi hoofbeats, I think you've heard this from enough ppl already, but I really think you need to handwrite your thank-you or you run the risk of being perceived as impolite.