Thank You Cards

In my area we do not write thank you notes to those who attended, only those who gave a gift. The thank you for attending is done when you go table to table at the reception.

View Quoted Comment This is the same as what I've generally heard as well.

Also, yes, your fiance should also help with writing the thank you cards. It is his wedding to. My husband wrote out the cards for his family and his friends, and I wrote them for mine.

Also, it's fine to use the same general wording. We did. It's not like people will be comparing notes.

View Quoted Comment Oh interesting! That would make it a lot easier. We should definitely do that, too. It’s just what I read. I have no idea lol. When in your reception did you do it?

I have the best handwriting so I'm writing all of them. I'm still sending out thank you cards since they came with the invitations anyway. It's a nice gesture but it's not required for every situation.

There is no specific time window other than immediately. No one will be comparing cards to see who gets the better message. They only care that they receive one promptly.

Even if you donate any physical gifts you receive, you do need to accept them with a prompt thank you note. Many people do not gift cash so they will find something you may not want and can’t return. That still needs to be acknowledged. Even for cash only, The reception is a thank you for guests attending and you don’t need to give cards for that because that is what your receiving line does.


Fiancé needs to contribute to thank you notes. Bad handwriting is not a valid option to get out of doing it.

Thank you notes aren’t necessary for people who didn’t bring gifts. My husband I both wrote them- mine for my family and his for his family. We also did it immediately which takes a big burden off.

I would say strongarm your fiance into taking care of his side because you are a Team. My husband just finished his last night with his poor handwriting at the (embarrassing) 2 month mark. But now our last duty is complete! We did not do table-side pictures or a receiving line, so we sent thank-you cards with printed-out pics to all who attended, starting with those who sent early gifts but couldn't make it. It is better to order as many thank you cards +20% additional so there is less delay. Incidentally, my mother recently received a photo thank you card with no personalization, not even her name except for the envelope. This was from a young bride and my mom is a childhood friend of the grandmother. I would not advise this format at all and hope it's not a new wave of poor etiquette.

It might be... I've seen a lot of printed out "Thank You" cards lately. We may do the table-side pictures, if we don't have that many tables. Right now, if we have 100% attendance, we are poised to have 18 tables and that just seems like we'll be visiting tables all night long if we did that and won't actually be able to enjoy the party.

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Perfect! That makes it easier than having to think about the many different ways to say the same thing. Would it be a bad idea to just pre-write a bunch of these "Thank You" cards now? I'd have 3 different flavors of it: attendance only (no gifts), those that donated to charity 1, and those that donated to charity 2. Plus, I'll have some blank ones if people decide to just give cash or an item. Then, all we have to do is write names at the top for a majority of them. Is it also mandatory to have these written? Although, I don't mind slowly writing them while binging on Netflix or something, but it would make it easier if I can print out most of them and just handwrite the names on top.

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I probably wouldn't type them because that makes them seem way more generic than if you hand write a generic note. You could pre-write some, but with that there's a chance you end up writing way more than you would need to after the fact because more people might do one thing over another.

View Quoted Comment Having them pre-typed and you just sign your names comes across like a generic corporate mass mailing or spam. It doesn’t have the heartfelt sincerity that a handwritten note does and many people would prefer no card over a pre-typed one. But they are expecting thank you cards. Writing them while you watch tv is perfect.

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That's true and I think I'm fine with that because I won't feel the pressure of getting them done in a smaller time frame (especially if they have to be handwritten), if that makes sense. It will feel more just "grab-n-go" when the time comes that I have to actually send them out instead of being me being like, "Babe you need to write a thank you note to so-so" over and over the months leading up to the wedding and after. Cost-benefit for my sanity.

Your wedding is next year right? You still have some time to schedule thank-you cards, so don't worry. I wanted to add, if you are having a Filipino-Chinese wedding like I did, you may have guests who will gift you big cash despite your plans for charity. Then these guests will follow up with you just to make sure their card or red envelope didn't get lost at the wedding. So evermore specific thank-you cards are important. Best wishes.

View Quoted Comment That’s so true… I wonder if I should have a box for cards/money 🤦‍♀️ I probably should. I’ll add that to my list of things I need. Our wedding is 39 Filipino (about 18 households). So, we do have a good amount that can be “generalized” (still handwritten though). I honestly just don’t want to have to worry about writing the thank you cards every few days for weeks until the wedding. I want a more “grab-n-go” system if I can generalize a majority of them, just write their names on top, and stick it in the mailbox. It would have been okay if I hired a coordinator and I don’t have to worry about other details, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to pay another $5000

View Quoted Comment A card box is definitely a good idea. Some people bring physical gifts and others only bring cards and you need something to collect them in because no one wants to carry them around for hours.


Look on Thumbtack.com for a day of coordinator because most are very inexpensive compared to full planners and are worth their weight in gold.

View Quoted Comment I would definitely have a card box.


Also, the thank you cards are written after the wedding, so it's after everything else is already done. I'm not sure how many guests you are having, but we had 115. The thank you cards are 1 per household, so we probably had about 65 cards to write. It honestly took a total of like 3 hours when factoring all the time. Each card takes maybe 2-3 minutes to write and address. Unless you're having like 1000 people at your wedding, it isn't as daunting a task as it seems.

View Quoted Comment I have a DOC. Just not a full coordinator

View Quoted Comment Hmmm now I’m confused. A few people above have said that you need to send them as soon as receive the gift so like when people put something in the registry or something. So, based on that, I was under the impression that I’ll be writing thank you cards frequently throughout the weeks leading to the wedding. Which also means I’ll have to constantly remind my fiancé to write his thank you cards as his family/friends get stuff in the registry. Getting him to do his side of the guest list was like pulling teeth, so I’m assuming this will be worse. I’m not having a bridal shower so it’s not like I could just send them all at once after the bridal shower.

View Quoted Comment While you may have a handful of people sending you gifts before the wedding, the majority either give cash at the wedding or contribute to a registry close to the wedding date. If someone contributes within a week or so of the wedding, it's ok to just write the card after the wedding has passed (people understand that the week/2 weeks leading up to the wedding are insanely busy).


If you were having a bridal shower, that is a whole other set of thank you cards.