Over the past two years I’ve probably drafted over 300 thank you notes. Between our engagement parties, my bridal showers, our wedding, and baby showers, we’ve received a lot of gifts. And I’ve written a lot of thank you notes.
I am in the Junior League, so I’m supposed to be a professional thank you note writer, right?
The good news is that I love to write thank you notes. I find it therapeutic. I sit in front of the TV or turn on the iPod dock and listen to my favorite music. I hold my favorite pen and pull out some gorgeous stationery and thank each person or couple in the most personal way and go on and on about the importance of the gift they gave us.
Here’s my question of the day: if you don’t know the person that gave you the gift but your husband does, should you go ahead and write the thank you note? Or wait for him to do it?
Timeliness is very important when it comes to writing thank you notes, but it’s also difficult to write a personal thank you note that shows your appreciation for the gift giver and the gift if you don’t know that person.
My dear husband isn’t quite as interested in the hand written note as I am, unfortunately. Emily Post herself suggests organizing a household thank you note writing party with baked goods, yummy drinks, and an organized set up of thank you note writing supplies.
How do all of you get your significant others to help with thank you notes? Or do you just do it yourself?
I totally do it myself..because no one could ever read my hubby’s hand writing!
I did it all by myself. My hubby said he would help, but never did and I didn’t have time to wait on him. I usually phoned and asked him about a family member or friend I wasn’t sure about… for the most part though, I knew most of his family & friends so that really helped out a lot! =)
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I wrote out 90% of our engagement party/wedding gift thank you notes myself. Somehow, I even get stuck writing thank you notes for gifts my husband receives for his birthday… which are in no way intended for me! As a doctor, he has the classic illegible doctor’s handwriting, and very little patience for spending his free time writing thank you notes, so I just do it on his behalf. The few he did write out were just basic “thank you for XYZ, we love it, we can’t wait to do 123 with it” etc., type notes… and personally, I don’t like those. If I’m going to write out a personal note, of course the thank you is important, but what is far more treasured is a little update about life and regular communication!
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I write Evan out a list of no more than 5 people at time and put it into a baggie with the corresponding number of note cards and then pop it in his briefcase. He is MUCH more apt to perform the task at work – for him, home is for relaxing only at this point (relaxing = lay on my bum and watch sports). He will write the notes and bring them back to me for addressing and mailing! Works 87% of the time.
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I literally write down on a piece of paper the name of the couple and the gift and sit it in front of my husband and WATCH him do it. (He LOVES that). At least it gets done in a timely fashion and you’ve familiarized yourself with who gave you what and can mention it when you see them next…
The day after our wedding shower in Jonathan’s hometown, we sat down and wrote all of the thank you notes together, about 50/50. The people who received Jonathan’s thank-yous went ON and ON about how special it was! (Probably because boys write very honest/humorous thank-yous. One that I remember: “Dear so-and-so, Thank you so much for the beautiful dinner plates. Of course, up until now I have been just fine with paper plates, but Leslie insists that we need real dishes. So in that case, Thank You!”) I would split up the list and try to tackle them together!
I just do it. It gets done faster, neater, and then I don’t have to sit there and help him come up with things to write. He just doesn’t get it. 🙂
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I love writing thank you notes too. I’m actually looking forward to writing out my bridal shower and wedding ones within the next couple of weeks! I’m so happy to hear that someone enjoys it too. I always picture the receivers face and hope they are smiling when reading my note. As for my significant other, I am the writer. He is just not into it, so I always just do them all.
I’m a big thank-you-note-writer too 🙂 I write all of ours, even if it’s someone that only my husband knows. (It would take him forever to write, and I kinda enjoy it 🙂
I write them for everything. My husband reminds me to write them for “his” people, but I sign both of our names.
I just mailed out the ones from our son’s birthday party, a month ago..total slacker!
Julie @ Angry Julie Mondays last blog post: The Circus is Coming to Town
For the wedding, I had him help me write the thank you’s, but we divided the list in half. Sometimes I wrote thank you’s to his family and people I’d never met. The point is that you’re a couple, a team, and that means writing thank yous for people that arean’t “your” people. You use the gift too I’m sure. His birthday is the only time he writes his own thank yous. I handle the rest.
I have always written ‘our’ thank you notes. If I waited for my hubby to do it, they would never get done. Usually, I’ll include a message about hoping to meet them, hope to spend more time with them, etc., within the note…still, I wish my husband would do it instead!
My husband–without being prompted–wrote thank-you notes to his relatives and friends for our wedding gifts. In fact, he got his notes done before I did. I should note (ha ha) that I am a terrible procrastinator and he is not, so that had a lot to do with it.
However, when his mom’s friends gave us a shower, I wrote all of the notes, because it was considered “my” shower, even though I’d never met most of the ladies that attended before.
So I guess I don’t have any real advice, but I would say that it’s really tedious to write a bunch of notes in a row, so I’d suggest writing 3-5 a day until you get it done. (We only had 78 guests at our wedding, so it didn’t take long to finish the notes.)
honestly if the gift came from someone mr. m knows but i do not, then he has to suck it up and write the thank you note. how else do you think we got our wedding thank you notes out so quickly haha?
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I’ve written every last TY note…from engagement to wedding, and everything in between over the past 3 years of marriage. He’s a #’s guy, not a writer. I probably just take care of them out of fear more than anything else! Although, I do usually make him write the notes for his Mom and Sister…won’t get into that one 🙂
my hubby helped write our wedding thank you notes – to his friends that i’d never met. however, my mom told me that when it comes to baby gifts that i had to write all of them. i’m not sure why… so i did (still am). let’s face it. if i asked him to help now it may never get done!
It did all my thank you notes for our wedding myself. There is no way I could have ever convinced my hubby to sit down and write them.
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I’m having major thank you note angst right now, because we ordered standard stationery that will enclose a photo of us from the wedding holding a thank you prop. So here we are, nearly a month after the wedding with a stack of thank yous ready to mail, but without our wedding photos! I’m annoyed because I expressly told our photographer from the beginning that I’d need that single photo right away, so could she e-mail it to me and then take her time with the others. The thought that guests are wondering if I received their gift or if I’m simply not going to thank them is driving me crazy.
The actual note-writing part? It’s all mine, I’m afraid. I’ve already done mine and am waiting to see what happens with “his” thank yous, but I have a feeling I already know! I actually don’t mind, because I do enjoy it, but in principle I would like him to at least make an effort. 😉
Maggie @ Eat, Drink, Marrys last blog post: Gifting each other
We just finished sending out our wedding thank you’s today actually! I wrote all of our thank you’s for two reasons:
1. The hubster’s hand writing is so awful that at times I even have a hard time reading it!
2. I wanted to make sure people knew how deep our gratitude was…versus the hubster who is a “Thank you for the _____. We really liked it.” kind of writer. 🙂
Best of luck thanking all for the many gifts…
Ed and I haven’t had to do any major thank you note writing as a couple, so I don’t have a great answer for this. However, for his birthday last year when I told him how my friends had helped to make his surprise party happen, he suggested himself that he send them a thank you note, and he’s pretty good about thinking to send people thank you notes when the need arises. However, he does like for me to tell him what to write- so if it was someone I didn’t know, then I don’t know what the letter would be like!
If it’s someone you don’t know, then they are going to know if you wrote the note and it’s not as personal as it would be if it had come from Todd himself. However, I like to get thank you notes out in a timely manner, so I see your dilemma. In that case, if Todd absolutely can’t get into writing the note, then I’d go ahead and send one that is generic because even that is better than nothing!
I hope this is somewhat helpful, but it may not be!!
I’ve written every single thank you note for wedding gifts we have received so far. I have a feeling I will be writing all of the ones for gifts we get at the wedding too! It’s going to be hard since I don’t know some of the guests too well! If I wait for Jeff to do it, they will be done at our one year anniversary which is unacceptable to me!
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I totally write our thank you’s! We got married May 4 and I got them all written w/in the last month, I just have to address them all now. (YUCK!) But if I left them for the hubba-bubba to write we would never get them out! So I just write them and leave a little blank space for him to sign his name! It works much better this way and they get done in a timely fashion! 🙂
-Kristin
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Hmm, tricky. I’ll put out the supplies and have him sit at the kitchen counter while I cook dinner one night. If executed properly, he gets it done and we don’t have any arguments 🙂
I write all of ours. If I waited on the Mr. to do it, people would forget what the note was for before it ever graced their presence!
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Our wedding thank you notes were written in a pretty timely fashion, and B did help. The problem has been the gifts from his family/friends that have trickled in later. It was like pulling teeth to get them written (and I did half of them). I’m so glad it’s OVER! I’ll gladly write all the baby notes, but we had set the wedding rule down long before the wedding occurred, and I wasn’t about to give in (yes, I can be stubborn).
I am unusually blessed with a husband who knows the importance of being truly grateful for gifts and for showing appreciation to the giver. He wrote thank you notes to everyone on his side for our couple’s shower and wedding. I read a few of them (out of curiousity) and they were GOOD! He needs to be careful or he’s gonna get the job of doing all of them when we have a baby!
My husband likes to write the thank you notes himself. He has some practice from writing professional thank you notes for job interviews and personal references. The problem is getting the timeline. He has good intentions he just gets distracted and busy. The solution is to just sit down and do them together.
LOL! I just do it myself so I KNOW It’s done and I don’t get him whining about it!
I truly love writing TY notes, too. It’s a lost art!
For our BIG undertaking of TY notes [the wedding] Nate and I divided up the guest list according to family, and so we each did about half of them. It makes more sense to me to have a helper do this task, and that way the guest gets to hear from the person who they know the best, too. Nothing like a little teamwork on this one!
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I write all of our thank you notes. We’re getting married in about two months, and I have written every note for each and every shower and wedding gift, even those from “his side.” I don’t mind- I find it relaxing.
Also, my fiance and I are both from the deep South, and I worry that some of the more traditional old ladies, if they got a note from fiance and not me, would think that I am not grateful or that I don’t know to write thank you notes.
In the end, it’s been rewarding. I’ve had several note recipients actually tell me how much they enjoyed my note!
I don’t have a significant other so take this with a grain of salt. If you love to write the notes (and it sounds like you write really lovely TY notes), I think you should just go ahead and do them. After expressing thanks and mentioning the gift you could write something like “I’m looking forward to getting to know you better” and/or “Todd tells me that he enjoys doing _____ with you” and/or “Todd has known you so long through ______, that we should have you over for dinner.” Just my two cents.
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I wrote all of the thank you notes for our wedding showers, but after the wedding I asked him to write the thank you notes for his side of the family. He diligently completed and mailed numerous thank you notes, and I thought everything was working out great until I found out he had essentially typed a thank you note form letter, printed it out and folded it up inside a blank notecard. Yikes! Not exactly what I had in mind. Moving forward, I will handle the thank you notes in our family! ; )
I always did them myself, and signed both of our names. Most people know men don’t write the thank you notes when it comes to weddings and babies. They’ll just be happy to get a thank you note! People just don’t follow etiquette on thank you notes like they used to.
I, too, love pretty paper and writing notes to my loved ones. My husband, on the other hand, not so much. After our wedding, I wrote all the thank you notes, with the exception of those to his grandparents. He enjoys writing them. The other 75 thank you cards to people from his side were all written by me.
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When we had all of our wedding + then baby thank you notes to write, I would give my husband 3-5 empty notes, a list of who he had to write to, a nice pen and a beer. I told him just to sit down and write them quickly and then he wouldn’t have to write any more for a week. Most of the time it worked. Good luck.
I do all of the thank you notes for gifts to “us.” For my husband’s birthday, he wrote the thank you notes from him (on stationary I purchased with the address/gift list I printed!).
I write all the Thank Yous in our house. My husband said he would but too much time went by. I usually try to be more formal if I don’t know the gift giver.
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I may or may not have stolen a copy of The Lively Art of Writing in high school. This is my confession.
In my defense, it helped me in college. I chuckled when I read the title of your post!
For our wedding gifts Lee was in charge of writing the ones for relatives I’d not yet met and co-workers. They weren’t quite as timely as those I wrote but they were finished long before I expected.
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My husband wrote all of the thank you notes for gifts from family and friends of him and his family. Somehow, I managed to convince him I would be super stressed if I had to do it (note: I did all of them for gifts we received prior to the wedding and asked him mom for a bit of info on each person I didn’t know). We popped in a funny movie, opened a bottle of wine and did our thank you notes one Saturday afternoon!
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Definitely do it myself. Sadly it would never get done otherwise and I also am a stickler for timeliness. I think most gift givers are so happy to receive the notes and understand the time it takes to write them, whether its from the directly related/affiliated party, is no biggie. What would REALLY be helpful and earn some points back for lack of help is a hand massage!
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I definitely do them all myself — asking him to do it is like a chore! Plus, he writes in all caps, and I just cannot have that 🙂 I think its just easier, and takes a lot less time to do them ourselves..
PS – I’m doing JLC this year!
I listed NOT receiving thank you notes on my post today as a pet peeve of mine. Then I find this – How delightful and encouraging! xoxo
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Even if they sit on his desk for a month, I insist that my husband write them in his own penmanship ( i put post its with the to whom and for what). I also do this with my boys. I believe that it is insulting for someone who has taken the time to find and buy a special gift to receive a thank you from someone other than the person they were thinking of. Those are my practices…
Nathalie
Dolce Dreams
I find that writing thank you’s to my fiance’s family is a great way to introduce myself to them. If it’s someone you might have to see later on like family or close friends, there’s nothing sweeter than doing it yourself. If it’s a frat brother or someone only marginally close to your significant other, I say make the man do it!
I usually do them all. Matt writes really fantastic thank you notes but he waits much longer than I like to do them so I usually just do them myself. I do usually make him sign his own name though…so does that count as helping??
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I did ALL the thank you notes, except for 3 that my husband insisted he wanted to do. I had to bug him and bug him for weeks about those 3 he just had to do, until eventually I just did them behind his back, lol. I knew (and was correct in knowing) that he would never get around to them.
Just get the quick bio from husband or MIL. In my case, at least, it’s a lot less work that way.
I write all of them. My husband’s handwriting is pretty illegible. After our wedding, we had a trade off: I would write thank you notes while he cooked dinner. I thought that was pretty fair! After the deluge of engagement and wedding related gifts, however, writing thank you notes here and there does not seem like a big chore – and I love stationery and writing anyway – so I just do them all.
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For the wedding and engagement gifts, I wrote the majority of them. Now with the baby notes, I am only writing our mutual friends and my family. Other than that, it is up to him. And I have to admit, he does a great job on the notes… most of the time getting them out before me!
Speaking of…we got your thank you yesterday!! I LOVE the stationary! I’m pushing for some of my own 🙂 So cute!
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I’ve never known my husband to write a thank you note in his life. Sad right, but he’s male so that’s an excuse we’ll use to forgive him.
If I were in this situation, I would ask my husband what he would want to say to this person in a thank you and then paraphrase it and sign both of your names. That would probably be the best route because I’m guessing that getting him to write it won’t happen.
Good luck.
I do all the thank-yous. ALl of them. Even for Hubby’s birthday, I’ll write a little note – from both of us of course! Hubby has NO interest in thank-yous and doesn’t really understand the need. (If I told them thank you in person or on the phone, doesn’t that count? Um.No.)
I sure can promise you that our kids will be writing their own!
I am borderline obsessed with getting my thank you notes out a few days after the gift is received. And since we are in the midst of showers, parties and the beginnings of wedding gifts coming in everyday, I have told my sweet fiance to step aside, make sure I am equipped with stamps at all times and I will do the rest. I guess practically having Emily Post recited to me my whole life has made me this manic about thank you notes!
And on a side note, I have followed your blog for a while and have loved all of your posts about your wedding and now that adorable baby boy of yours. Now that I have a blog of my own, I thought I’d stop by and say hi!!
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Well after the wedding was over and I counted how many thank you notes needed to be written I came up with a plan. I was going to write them to my family, friends, co-workers and the bridal party and he was going to write to his side. The only thing is, I got mine taken care of in a very timely manner and he was still writing his a month later!! At least it saved my hand some….after writing a good 5-10 in a row, my fingers are shot!
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I’m giggling as I read this, because we have the exact same issue in our house. The person closest to the gift giver definitely SHOULD be the one writing the note, but . . .
In my house, it depends on the event. I wrote all of the wedding / shower notes; as the resident stationary nut, I was happy to (the only one willing to) do it. However, for more individual gifts to my husband alone, such as for birthdays, I kindly suggest (nag) he write a note until he does it.
LOVE that KS notecard, by the way. I wish her Crane’s line weren’t so expensive, otherwise I’d be swimming in the stuff.
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Girl, getting Adam to write a thank you note would be HELL 🙂 So I would just write it myself!! Speaking of, thank you for mine 🙂
I love writing thank you notes as well. You are so good to be so timely with yours! I found by the time my second child came around it became quite difficult to get the out on time. And my dear husband has NEVER written a thank you note. I’ve always done them, and I most likely always will.
My mother made certain that both my brother and I learned how to write a proper thank you note at a very early age. My husband was never taught or told. Our girls, however, have been writing them since they could hold a pen. They LOVED going to our local stationary store to choose their own monogrammed stationary as little girls and still do to this day(ages 12 and 15).
I was just married three weeks ago, and I’m having my husband write thank you notes to his friends, family, co-workers, etc. Granted, I’ll probably tell him what to write, but I think it’s only fair that he participate in thank you note writing since he’s also sharing in on the gifts!
The only time my husband has helped me with Thank you’s was while I was pregnant. I had severe carpal tunnel and brought all of the things we needed to bed. I circled the ones for him to write and I wrote the rest. We atch our favorite shows every night before bed so I knew where he would be. 😉
Oh gosh that’s easy, I write them! My husband just isn’t interested in that sort of thing. However, the kids love writing their own thank you notes and making their own cards.
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Hilarious! I have been married for 18 years and I know I have written evevry thank you note. regardless if I provide snacks:)
I let him learn his own lessons and deal with the guilt of not having written them. And then I don’t let him throw away the stack of unwritten cards until he sends them off, no matter how late they are. I told him that people appreciate gratitude, no matter how late it is.
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My hubby has written a couple of thank you’s since we’ve been married, but I wrote almost all of them. It is a little awkward, but I always find a way to word it just right and make it still seem personal. 🙂
Between our wedding and Harper – I have written approximately 1000 thank you notes (I wish I was kidding) and Scott has written exactly 0. He would love to do it if he could e-mail them. ha!
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