Thank you question

[tanyak]

I''m writing my thank you notes and I realize that I have a growing list of people who didn''t bring gifts to the wedding. The vast majority of these people gave us gifts at our coed shower and they served as wedding gifts (common practice around here). I wrote thank you notes for those and got them out two weeks after the shower. The shower was one month before the wedding. Do I still need to send another note to just thank these people for attending the wedding? I also have another group of people who didn''t give any gift at all, but I feel like they should get some kind of thank you from me anyway.

I''m not upset about not getting gifts/more gifts at all. I just wanted to ask because it seems nowadays, thank you notes are often linked to physical gifts or acts of kindness. I''m not sure of the etiquette in these case.

Thanks!

 

[monarch64]

I''m not sure there is an etiquette "rule" for this situation, but I would say go ahead and write a thank you to those who didn''t give you a gift, but still attended the wedding. You might say something like "thank you for sharing our celebration," or "thank you for joining us on the occasion of our wedding." I think it is a nice acknowledgment that people did take time and effort to get dressed up and come to see you get married...and if you didn''t get a chance to mingle with them during the reception or greet them in a receiving line, this is a good way to let them know you knew they were there.

 

[Maria D]

I don''t think you can ever err by sending a thank-you note, but I don''t think it''s required if you didn''t get an actual gift (other than "the honour of their presence"). Kudos to you for getting your shower thank-yous out so quickly!

Interesting practice of shower gifts serving as wedding gifts. Is it unusual to not receive a gift at all? Just curious.

I''ve had the experience of being thanked for attending the wedding when I DID give a gift that somehow the couple never received. It was nice to get the thank-you because then I knew for sure that it wasn''t that they just hadn''t cashed the check -- they didn''t get the check!

 

[larussel03]

I think a simple "thank you for sharing our special day with us" is suffecient...we got those from a couple that we bought gifts for (I think they may have written out the thank you cards before leaving for their honeymoon, so it was a pretty generic, although specific to us as they knew us card) and we were happy with that

 

[tanyak]

Date: 9/30/2006 11:19:27 PM
Author: Maria D


Interesting practice of shower gifts serving as wedding gifts. Is it unusual to not receive a gift at all? Just curious.

It is a bit unusual. Only two sets of guests did it, but they both drove fairly long ways (2.5 hours and 6 hours). I hadn''t seen either in ages, so just them being there was gift enough.

I ended up sending them thank you notes for coming in the same batch as my thank you for the wedding gift notes.

For those who gave gifts at the shower and not the wedding, I''m holding off with the notes. I got writer''s fatigue and everything was starting to sound the same.

I also feel kinda of goofy sending them. These are my good friends who I have dinner with every week. We''ve met up several times and talked about the wedding and the good time everyone had. Seems a little weird to send a note now. I don''t know.

 

[ellaila]

I''m running into a similar problem, so I empathize! We got married two weeks ago, and there are two couples that we are very good friends with who did not give us gifts at the wedding -- one said, "We forgot your gift, we''ll mail it when we get home!" and the other, far as I know, didn''t say anything. So I guess for the latter couple, we''ll just send a "Thanks for being with us on our special day!" card, but I''m not sure what to do about the other one. How long do we wait for the gift before we just send out a "Thanks for being with us!" card?

I hate to sound like it''s all about the gifts because it''s totally not -- I didn''t even have a shower, so really this was not about gifts at all! I just don''t want to send people cards now and then have to send another card if we wind up getting a gift from them in a week or two -- I''m getting darn tired of writing out cards as is!

Also, because we had a small wedding, we got a lot of checks/gifts from people who weren''t invited (mostly parents'' friends), and I''m getting so stumped on what to write to them! I kept wanting to say something like, "Sorry we couldn''t have you at the wedding" but I wasn''t sure if I should rub it in their faces that they weren''t invited! So I started going with a generic "Our sincere thanks for your lovely/generous/blah blah blah gift and well wishes -- they both meant so much to us! Hopefully we can get together soon and share stories with you from the wedding!" I don''t love it, but ... eh. People will read it and then throw it out anyway, right, so I''m trying not to go too crazy with these!

Fun, fun, fun!

 

[tanyak]

we got a lot of checks/gifts from people who weren''t invited (mostly parents'' friends), and I''m getting so stumped on what to write to them!

Oh, this happened to me, too! My husband and I used to work together, and I left a couple of years ago. I have some really, really good friends there, and it was dicey deciding who to invite. We ended up inviting the people who we hang out with a lot, of course, and then some older editors that we''re friendly with. But obviously, we couldn''t invite everyone. We ended up getting gifts from a couple of folks who weren''t invited. In fact, one gave us the most generous gift we got from a single person (aside from our parents), a $100 check. We were floored! In my thank you''s to them, I basically said thank you for the kind and generous gift. It was so thoughtful of you to think of us. But yeah, it does put you in an awkward spot.