In the past two years, I’ve sent presents to three married couples. Well, one had a gift registry, the other two had honeymoon registries. One wedding was in England, the other two were in the US. I was only able to attend two of them.
Anyway, I never received thank-you notes from any of them. I don’t really care - I was just wondering if this had become the norm nowadays. From what I read on the boards thank-you notes seem like something important, but it’s not like any of my three friends are normally thoughtless people. Have thank-you notes gone the way of the dodo, then?
Manners and class are never out of style, HazelNutCoffee. If I’d have gone to the trouble of choosing and sending a gift OVERSEAS I would be mightily affronted to have not received acknowledgement.
I have given a baby shower present and a wedding present in recent months, and I received thank you notes. I attended the baby shower, but did not attend the wedding.
I don’t think manners ever go out of style, either. At the very least, one should acknowledge a gift was received through the mail!
Email, FB message, text message, a phone call if you’re feeling really ambitious. I’ve never understood the sense in dusting off some ancient, inefficient form of communication just to acknowledge receipt of a gift.
They haven’t gone out of style any more so than being outraged at not getting a thank you note. I appreciate the effort when someone sends a thank you, it shows good manners, class and gratitude. I understand when I don’t get a note because I’d rather not get a gift if it creates an obligation.
So don’t. I am Ok with e-mailed thank you notes, but if I send a package overseas, I would at the very least hope for an acknowledgement! Don’t mail it. Do drop me an e-mail that says “We recieved X. Thank you so much!”
We’ve noticed we rarely get thank you notes, and it shows a lack of class. Geez, an email would be fine, but apparently some can’t be bothered.
I used to give my young nephews money at Christmas, but gave up on it since none of the three ever uttered the words “thank you”. A simple acknowledgment is all it would take, and they are smart enough for sure.
Sending thank-you notes is still the right thing to do, however I would give a bit of slack for thank you note for a wedding gift. When I got married my wedding was small (I think in the end about 40 people showed up) and I was super laid back about it but it still managed to be the most hectic thing I could possibly have imagined. I got yelled at for not sending a thank you note to someone for a gift we never received (a check for $200 according to the yeller) and we got one gift that we still haven’t been able to figure out who sent it (a gorgeous set of knives) because it didn’t have a card with it so we can’t send a note. It may take a month or two before you finally get a thank you note or you might have to call them to verify they received it in case it got lost or an attached/included card was damaged beyond legibility or something. In the end I would say if the gift was sent out of love and you know it was received don’t worry too much about the thank you note.
Your friends are classless POS’s, or at the very least, did not have the benefit of a good upbringing. And Steronz is right, it doesn’t have to be a hand mailed letter (though I think that does show a lot of thought), email is OK too. No acknowledgment is not OK.
First off, I am all about the Thank You card. That being said…
Most of my baby shower guests have been invited via Evite, as theyre all very Online people. There is a short list of about 10 who were sent paper invitations.
So, would Thank You emails work for those included on the Evite? Or should paper Thank You cards be sent to everyone?
Oh, I’m not. Although there’s very little chance of the gift having gotten lost in the mail - I sent them their presents through their online registries (and like I said, two were honeymoon registries so those were basically cash gifts). And in Korea everyone gives cash and no one gives thank you notes anyway.
Also, yelling at someone for the lack of a thank you note sounds 100 times worse than not sending one. :mad:
Wow, my mom must really have internalized Southern manners, if it’s not a Korean thing, because she yelled at me for not sending thank-you notes (for cash, from Koreans) a week after I got it. Though admittedly she only yelled at me about thank-you notes to the ones in the US, and not the ones in Korea (apparently, to my mom, sending one in English is worse than sending none at all). I think she might have sent thank-you notes to them, though.
Anyway. As a thoroughly Americanized Korean-descent person, as you can see I’ve been totally socialized to send (paper!) thank-you notes, and I tend not to send presents to people who repeatedly don’t send thank-you notes. (However, I have had the experience of getting thank-you notes years after the wedding, and once for a card – I assume the card got detached from the present, and at this date neither of us remembered what I gave them.) Honestly, for me, an email would be fine, though paper mail is admittedly charming.
I send written thank you notes, and I prefer to receive written thank you notes. I am fine with an emailed thank you, or even a phone call. Getting nothing bugs me.
I’m irritated at my cousin, who got married a few months ago in a private ceremony. She sent a wedding announcement (and posted pictures) after the fact. I sent her a check but I didn’t get a thank you of any sort. I saw her in person this weekend, and she didn’t mention it. Tsk.
Here’s Miss Manners’s answer.
IMHO, if someone gives you a gift, it is incredibly rude not to thank them for it, in some manner. Mailing them a written thank-you note/card is probably the most gracious, but not the only acceptable, way of doing so.
(This rule does not apply to “free gifts,” like when a charitable organization sends you a sheet of printed address labels in hopes you’ll send them a contribution.)
I think a lot of people just don’t bother and I think it’s pretty rude. I know a lot of people think “giving should be selfless and not require thanks” but I think it’s fairly classless to not send some kind of acknowledgment that someone cared enough about you to give you something.
I had never heard of people writing thank you notes for birthday or other gifts until I read it here, but I would send and would expect to receive thank you notes for wedding gifts. I wouldn’t mind it if my nieces thanked me for the birthday and Christmas gifts they get, though, since their parents aren’t speaking to us and it would be nice to know if they’re even getting the gifts (an email would do just fine).
As for thank you notes going out of style, I’d say they’re in the same place as people responding properly for RSVPs - i.e. response is very sporadic, and you never really know if people are coming to an event or not (even weddings, hard as that is to believe, when people are plunking down some serious money per person).