Your wedding was magical, the honeymoon was euphoric, and the over looming responsibility of thank you cards is now torturous. The party is over and it’s time to thank your loved ones for their generous gifts. Where do you begin? Lucky for you, I am in the same boat and have come up with an easy and effective game plan.

Create/ Organize Lists

Depending on the size of your wedding, you may have anywhere from 50-200+ wedding thank you cards to write out. Make it easy on yourself and get several lists going. One of these should contain an itemized inventory of gifts that were sent to you. Most companies, such as Bloomingdales, will give you a print-out showing the gift and sender. Your second list should contain an itemization of cash/check gifts. You will create this spreadsheet yourself, preferably in Excel to keep it nice and organized. It especially helpful to compare these two side by side with the attendance roll of everyone invited to the wedding. I found it most helpful to condense my lists, using my wedding-attendee roll to mark off whether they gave money/gift or not. This method allowed me to be positive as to who did or did not attend, whether they gave a gift, and how to correctly word their thank you. The last thing you would want to do is to thank Sally for coming to your wedding and for her awesome gift, only to realize that Sally never made it to your wedding! Stay very, very organized.

Establish Thank you Templates

Let’s face it. If you are writing more than 100+ thank you cards, you are going to want a formula of some sort. This does not make you any less grateful; in fact it just makes you smart. A template will ensure your point comes across clearly while ensuring your time is managed efficiently. Below I have attached sample wedding templates that I found super helpful. These are outsourced from “Apracticalwedding.com:”

Template for when you receive cash gifts:

“Dear Preston and Cristina,

Thank you so much for attending our wedding! We had the best time, and were so happy you were there. We are so appreciative of your generous gift, and look forward to [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][adding it to our new car fund, using it to put a down payment on a house, adding it to our honeymoon fund, etc]. Thank you again for joining in the celebration of our marriage.

With gratitude,
Lorelai and Luke”

Template for when you receive non-cash gifts:

“Dear Lexie and Mark,

Thank you for coming to our wedding! It truly would not have been the same without all of our family and friends there. We were so happy to receive [the gift], and we look forward to [options: using it for years to come, having it brighten our home for years to come, cherishing it as a beautiful wedding memento, make toast with it, etc].

With gratitude,
Jesse and Cèline”

Template for attendance only:

“Dear Anthony and Stanford,

Thank you so much for attending our wedding! It was such a delight to see you after all these years. We wanted to take a moment to send you the warmest well wishes and let you know how happy we were to see you there.
With gratitude,

Rory and Logan”

Template for when they send a gift but could not attend the wedding:

“Dear Britney and Christina,

We are so sorry you weren’t able to make it to our wedding. It was a wonderful day, and you were missed. We wanted to make sure we let you know how much we love your gift, and we thank you for sending it.

With gratitude,
Justin and JC”

I found it very helpful to write thank cards to my closest friends first before delving into a more generic template. This got my thoughts flowing and allowed me to loosen up. Check off each person as you go to make sure no one is forgotten. Also, remember that the templates are there as a guide; you don’t have to write each thank you verbatim. This would only make your thank you writing task that much more daunting.

Addresses and Postage

You’ve finally completed all of your thank you acknowledgements and now have come to the realization that you have to write out every name and address as well as your return information! Yup, I did too. There are a few ways to go about addressing the people you are thanking. You can print out labels, you can handwrite, or you can hire a calligrapher. I went the handwritten route, but it is completely your preference. For my husband and my return information we had a stamp made. This tool saved time as well as my sanity. Once you have completed addressing your envelopes, you simply have to stamp!

I hope this blog was helpful to you! Wedding tasks that seem easy to accomplish can sometimes end up becoming gruesome to execute. What do I say? How do I do this effectively? How do I do this in the most efficient way? At the end of the day, saying thank you isn’t the hard part; the writing of hundreds of thank you cards is. [/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]