No, see, I bought the gift, YOU write the thank-you note!

The BBQ Pit
1

Yes, I know there are more pressing issues in the world, but this just irks me to no end.

It happened again today, just like I knew it would. Went to a relative’s bridal shower, and just like at her sister’s a few years ago, the maid of honor passed out thank-you card envelopes and pens and asked everyone to self-address their own thank-you notes. :mad:

However, unlike at the last shower, I didn’t comply like all the rest of the cattle. I took the envelope and the pen and set them on the end table next to my chair. All the other guests dutifully waved theirs out when they were done, to be collected by the MOH. I never did, and no one ever asked me for it. :cool: I think it got cleaned up with the papers from all the dumb games at the end of the party. If I had been asked why I didn’t comply, I’d have replied with something along the lines of the thread subject line.

For God’s sake, if you can’t be bothered to take the full two minutes to write the address as well as the actual note in thanks for the gift on which I spent considerably more than two minutes and my scarce cash to purchase and wrap for you, then don’t have a shower. Or the big flashy wedding. Then people won’t saddle you with the burden of having to write all those thank-you notes. Are you planning to hand out envelopes to be SASE’d at the wedding too? I don’t begrudge you the gift, and no I didn’t give it just to be smug about getting a note, but have a little class, huh? You’re spending hours and days and weeks and oodles of cash planning The Wedding to End All Weddings, but 15 shower guests times 2 minutes per address = 30 minutes is just too much trouble? Wah wah wah. If you’re going to go through the motions of etiquette, at least have the sense to do it right.

The kicker was after the party, when all the nonfamily guests had left, and the bride’s mother was griping to my mom about her sibling who hadn’t bothered to RSVP yet, and how rude that was, and don’t people mind their manners anymore? Never mind that the RSVP deadline is next week.

Mr. S and I had a small wedding, and sometime in the few weeks afterward we sat down and wrote our thank-yous together, maybe 15 or 20 of them. if it had been a bigger wedding, we’d have just been at the table longer.

I think someone was writing down the gifts and givers when she was opening them; let’s see whether I get a thank-you note, or whether I’m out of the running by not having helped thank myself. If I do, I’m guessing it’ll be of the “Thank you for the [insert gift here]. It is very nice” variety.

Scarlett, who is alternately entertained and horrified by the content of Etiquette Hell

2

what’s wrong with “Thank you for the [insert gift here]. It is very nice”? that’s what i do, not from a lack of time or care, but because i’m not creative enough to find thirty unique ways to say thanks.

other than that, how very rude. while i wish i had gathered addresses in some form at my baby shower (three guests whose addresses i cannot find have still not received thank-yous and my son is a month old!) i can admit that that is a horribly tacky way to do it.

3

to say you don’t have thirty ways to write thank you is a complete cop out.

all you need is a few. NO ONE compares thank you notes.

once again, for those that say they don’t have time, etc to write thank you notes, it goes like this:
Dear _____,

Thank you so much for the .
I think it is a(great, unique, beautiful)__(lamp, dish set, stationary set)
I can hardly wait to use it- (insert how you will use it here: I think it will be lovely in the living room, It matches my dishes perfectly!, I have friends from college I have been meaning to write and this will be perfect!)
I really appreciate the time and effort you put in to the gift.

(love always, truly, sincerely)

there, was that HARD?Use the same format to create billions of individualized thank you notes.

and the reason you send a thank you note is because your gift giver spent time and energy in getting you a gift. It shows how much you appreciate it and it shows a sign of good manners. It shows you went the extra mile they way they did for you.

there isn’t anyone on earth that doesn’t like to get thank you notes. In this day and age where we get inundated with electronic communication, ‘real’ mail is nice to get.

I have yet to encounter this situation:

grump: oh damn it! MORE thank you notes! How rude! as if I have the time to waste reading stupid uncreative thank you notes.
jesh people, make someone’s day already. ITS NOT THAT HARD.

4

sorry, what you suggested is what i thought she was referring to.

5

Ugh. That happened to us. My parents’ oldest friends’ oldest son (got that?) got married over a year ago. We flew down from Chicago to Houston, so airfare plus hotel (for four people) plus a $250+ gift AND a check in the card (it’s the way Indians do things, what can I say?).
Like I said, it’s been over a year. None of the 400+ people in attendance at the wedding (that we know of) has recieved a thank-you note. Not even a verbal thank-you from the happy couple later on. Feh.

6

No, I meant exactly that – you know, the type of thank-you that an eight-year-old writes while his mother has a [metaphorical] gun to his head, the kind that you might as well photocopy and send to everyone. I wrote that kind when I was eight, too. I’ve gotten better at it over the years. :slight_smile:

I get a real charge out of writing thank-you notes, myself. As BNB said, people like to get them. Several weeks ago I was having a REALLY bad day and was quite frazzled, yet needed to calm down and concentrate so I could get some work done. I put in a CD made by a musician friend whose music is very soft and soothing, and it really helped. I hadn’t talked to her for a while, so I sent her a quick e-mail to tell her how her music had helped me that day, thanking her again for her talent, sending good wishes for her family, etc. I got an almost immediate reply from her, saying that my note had really lifted her spirits – she’d been somewhat down lately and was going in the next day for yet another treatment for a serious and recurring medical problem.

OK, so I’ve hijacked my own rant somewhat, but I’ve found that gratitude is a wonderful emotion that when properly expressed benefits both giver and recipient.

7

see, i dislike thank you notes. i don’t mind getting them, but i prefer thanking people in person. i only write them because other people like them and it’s for them, not for me.

8

Crap, it’s late. Let me clarify my first sentence in the previous post. IMHO, thank-you notes that read exactly like the example I gave – unembellished with personal commentary – obviously have not been given much thought by the writer. Bad News Baboon gave excellent examples of how to write thoughtful, personal thank-you notes.

I need food and sleep. I am now off to acquire both, hopefully in that order.

9

. . . after adding this thought . . .

See, Cessandra, you are being thoughtful and considering the people who gave you the gifts. That’s what graciousness and gratitude are all about.

10

If it makes you feel any better, I sent out thank you/holiday cards last year to everyone who bought something from me. I saved all their addresses in a notebook and I attached a print-out letter from my computer to the inside of each card, then added a handwritten personal message. It took me a whole night.

So some people still write them.

11

The real tragedy is that I once got a thank-you note just like this. Literally just like this – as in, typed, with blanks where words could be written in: Dear [blank]. Thank you for the [blank]. We plan to put it to use in our [blank]." I mean, it read like flipping MadLibs. I thought it was so appalling that I was actually amused by it. Amused and grateful that the bride was only the co-worker of a then-boyfriend, and not someone I actually considered a friend.

I wish I were kidding, but I’m not.

12

jodi, what a great idea! :wink:

13

In defence of such people: my wife and I are a similar happy couple. It’s been 1.5 years since the wedding/reception, and we haven’t sent out thank-you notes.

My wife and I recently sat down to do it, then thought a bit and reasoned that the thank-you note is a stupid idea when there are hundreds of people involved. If one person does something nice for you, or even a few people, then a meaningful and detailed thank-you note (not the mad-lib style one described above) is warranted and appreciated.

But for 400 people? Come on–of course we’re grateful for the gifts, people! Do you really need a one-line pre-printed card in the mail to demonstrate that fact? Oh no, wait, I see! You expect two full-time grad students to spend 20 minutes on each card writing what we want to do with your gift and how much it means to us. The hell with that!

  1. A gift freely given should not be given on the condition that a thank-you note is received in X time. I find it far more obnoxious that gift-givers are measuring the time between the gift and the receipt of a card and then passing judgment on the gift-recipients. To be sure, tiggeril, failing to give a verbal thank-you if the opportunity presents itself is pretty lackluster, so I won’t defend that. But even still…
  2. Can I send a fuck-you card to the assholes who gave us crystal? This still infuriates me: everyone knew that my wife and I are grad students, everyone knew that we live in Chicago (reception was in Salt Lake City), and everyone should have guessed that we live in a small humble apartment, not a palatial estate. What the hell are we going to do with even ONE crystal vase, let alone the FIVE that we got? Ditto for all the other useless gifts–at least some were good.

Again, I’m not defending sheer ingratitude. My wife and I are very grateful for the gifts we received. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect us to churn out hundreds of thank-you cards, especially given that we didn’t want those hundreds of people around. If we’d had a smaller affair, things might be different.
Pardon the rant, all. I feel much better now. :slight_smile:

14

I’ve never understood the point of thank-you notes. Of course, I’m a guy, so that’s probably part of the reason. A verbal thank-you should be enough as far as I’m concerned.

15

If you didn’t want “those people” at your wedding, why did you invite them?
And what’s the difference if one person buys you a gift or if 400 people buy you a gift? It doesn’t matter! Anyone who buys you a gift deserves a thank-you note. It shouldn’t take 20 minutes to write one thank-you note. And you don’t have to do it all in one sitting. You could have done 20-25 at a time, over a couple of weeks.

And the crystal vases? Did you register for gifts? Did you register for everyday china, and maybe your wife went back and registered for some nice stuff?
You can exchange gifts, too, for something you can really use. You still have to write a thank-you note, though, but not mentioned the exchange.

You say you’re two grad students in a humble apartment with no use for crystal…then what the heck are you doing having a wedding with 400 guests?
And everyone gets a few “useless gifts” at their wedding. Deal with it, be an adult and write an thank-you note.

16

Well, ** PublicBlast**, if you’d done them a year and a half ago, you wouldn’t have 400 people thinking you and your wife are ungrateful SOB’s. You are pathetic. 400 people came to your wedding, gave you gifts they thought you would appreciate, and you can’t be bothered to spend 5 minutes apiece and a stamp on sending a thank-you card.

Yes, I send out thank-you cards, and so do my kids (ages 5 and 2) for every gift we receive. If someone gives us a gift, the LEAST that I can do is thoughtfully acknowledge it with a note. Oh, and by the way, I work, go to college full time, AND raise my two kids and I can bother to do this, so don’t whine about how you have no time to write those cards. Fuck off.

17

We recently went to a family friend’s wedding and received lovely thank you notes about a month after they returned from their honeymoon. The note was handwritten, personal, and they even included some photos of our family from the wedding. Then a week later, the couple dropped by with a gorgeous basket of goodies and personally thanked us for going to the wedding. :slight_smile:

I think that in many cases, especially with close friends and family, that a verbal thank you will suffice. But in other cases, a thank you note is a nice indication that you received and liked the gift, that you’re grateful for the time they took to attend your wedding, and that you are more than happy to reciprocate with a small moment of your time.

And I agree with the others, PublicBlast. If you invited 400 people to your wedding, then you can damn well write the thank you notes. Better yet, why don’t you print out that little rant and send it to them so they can see what an ungrateful twit they wasted their time and money on. :rolleyes:

18

Preach it, Kayeby! Oh, the unbridled narcissism!

19

I find it so ironic that the people who claim that it takes too much time to write all those thank-you notes somehow managed to find the time to plan a wedding for 400 people.

400 notes X 5 minutes (NOT 20) = 2,000 minutes = ~34 hours
34 hours / 2 people = 17 hours

That’s a little over 2 weeks of both of you sitting at the table for an hour every night writing thank-you notes. Or you could stretch it out a little longer and take a whole month, 1/2 hour a night. Assuming that of those 400 people, many were couples or families who gave joint gifts, the task would take even less time.

Personally thanking 400 people at, say, 1 minute per person would take nearly 7 hours, assuming you didn’t get bogged down in chatting. If you split the job between you, that’s 3.5 hours to thank people. Did you do it at the reception? OK well, not for all the gifts because likely people brought them that day and you opened them later. So you called them all afterwards to thank them? Those phone calls were probably longer than a minute, since I’m sure you didn’t just call, give your thank-you spiel, and hang up. Any long distance charges? Are you sure you personally thanked EVERYONE?

Sorry, no sale. Part of the job of having a big wedding is thanking all the people you invited for their THOUGHTFULNESS in giving you a gift. It matters not one whit whether you liked the gift. You are thanking them for the act of giving.

20

Public: 400 people means ~200 thank you notes given that most people arrive as part of a couple or a family. In other words, you don’t have to write one note to Uncle Fred and then another Aunt Wilma. Rather, you write one that says, “Dear Uncle Fred and Aunt Wilma.” I’m telling you this because it appears you don’t have a fucking clue.

Had you split the thank you note writing duties with your bride, you would each have been responsible for 100 notes. Had you written just 2 lousy thank you notes each WEEK, you would have been done in a year.

And then you could have come onto this board and bragged how you did the right thing even though it was a royal pain. Instead we get treated to your weak ass rationalizations and self absorbed rants about how crystal just wasn’t an appropriate gift. Appropriate indeed. They should have gotten you a mayonnaise jar and called it a day for all the gratitude you have shown.