The well-wishers have up to a year to send a present. The wedding couple does not have up to a year after receiving the present to write a thank-you letter. Thank-you letters need to be sent promptly after receiving the gift.
I swear this is all in Miss Manners’ books, but I don’t want to be getting calls from Judith Martin’s lawyers about posting large tracts of her books on this message board.
I know most of 'em by heart, anyway.
My sister, who got married in 1998, claimed that she had THREE years to send out thank you notes. When I pressed her on the issue, she couldn’t “remember” what bridal etiquette book she’d come across that particular bit of wisdom. Of course, she never did send out any notes, but did cash all of the checks and uses all of the appliances, etc.
I believe Emily Post says that three MONTHS is the high end of the acceptable range for bridal thank-you’s and she advises brides-to-be to write notes as the gifts are received. I did this with baby gifts and it was definitely more manageable, not to mention easier : “who gave us the puce sweater for Baby?”
A cousin of mine did her thank-you notes thusly. Her sister, the MOH, had already catalogued each gift as it came in, so she sat down with her list and stationery and wrote, “Dear Gramma Kay—Dear Aunt Josie—Dear Cathy and Fred” until every gift-giver had been accounted for. Then she did a round of “Thank you for the blank; it will be useful for blank”, then, “We did such and such on the honeymoon”. Then a go-round of “Thank you for being there on our day”, and finally, she signed them one by one.
Presents can be shipped even if the couple is not registered. You either bring the address with you when you go shopping, and have the store send it directly, or you wrap it with your own two little hands and bring it to the post office yourself. I mean, what do you do when you send a birthday present to your mom in another state? Do you say, “Oh, sorry, Mom, no present - you weren’t registered”?
There is a gift table at the reception because you have to deal with the people who bring gifts there, and you know there will be some, even though it’s a pain in the rear for the bride & groom. I’ve heard tons of stories of gifts “disappearing” from the table, and even if you don’t have any losers who steal them, you have to deal with getting them home when you’d rather be happily toodling off on your honeymoon.
The vast bulk of the guests brought presents to the reception at my wedding. Since the wedding was in California and I live in Boston, it was a huge pain to deal with shipping them all home. My mother had them for a good eight months before she got around to sending them to me. (I sent all the thank-you notes before that).
Just wanted to say that I don’t think kids being included or not is in any way a minor point of etiquette. I think it is a hugely important matter about which everyone should be perfectly clear and respectful, and anyone who is foolish and rude enough to drag a 3 year old to an evening wedding when the child was not invited is a shmuck of the highest order, regardless of who the bride is or how she’s behaving.
Carry on.
Hoo boy, does it never end?
Yesterday’s mail brought another bridal shower invitation – and I don’t recognize any of the names on it! Um, hello, aren’t bridal showers supposed to be for people WHO KNOW YOU?? Or at least close family? I suspect that this is my cousin’s fiancee, because I know he is getting married later this summer. But I’ve spoken to my COUSIN only a few times, probably at his graduation party and events like that. I could MAYBE pick him out of a lineup, if I knew he was in it, and then only because he is the spit and image of his dad, my uncle. And I’m supposed to attend his fiancee’s shower (90 miles away on a weekday evening)? Um no, I don’t think so. I just keep thinking “How tacky” when I consider (if my hunch about the cousin is correct) that the bride’s people actually asked my aunt for my address, and she actually gave it out!
I’m going to call my mom tonight and see if she got one, or has any clue who this is. Then I plan to call the number to RSVP – to decline and also to indicate that I don’t know who this is. I don’t want to be rude, but I want to get the idea across. Here are my ideas so far:
PLAYING DUMB:
“I received this shower invitation, and I think it may have been misaddressed, as I don’t know who this person is.” (I do have a common name, but on the other hand, there’s only one “me” in this town.)
POLITE, BUT CURIOUS:
“I’m sorry that I will be unable to attend the shower, but I do have one question: Who is the guest of honor? I don’t recognize the name.”
Any other ideas?
Are thank-you notes an American thing? I’m British and have never once written or received a thank-you note. Mind you, we don’t really do baby showers or bridal showers, either.
I posted awhile ago on this thread about not having sent out thank-you cards for my wedding gifts, and received a bunch of flames. Thought I’d post an update.
I sent out a few of the cards (not nearly all of them) mostly to the American guests. (This was an experiment of sorts.) I had the opportunity to travel home recently and meet many of the Indian guests, and without exception (of the dozen or so I raised the issue with) they told me that they thought I was stupid for even worrying about writing thank-you cards. The overwhelming attitude was, “You have better things to do than write the cards, and I have better things to do than read a card and toss it in the trash. Have a happy marriage and that’s thanks enough.” So, maybe it’s just a cultural thing.
After further meditation, I’ve decided that I still think that the whole thing is as stupid as the bridal industry–seems like a plot by card manufacturers to keep themselves in business. I send thank-you presents/letters to people who have done massive favors for me (professors, former bosses, etc.), but I feel anything less is a waste of both my time and the recipients’.
Are we still in the Pit? Good! Fuck Miss Manners! May her tired old ettiquette rot into a green ooze the consistency of peanut butter, and may said ooze be forced down her gullet, clogging up her system! Requiring that gratitude be expressed in a certain time frame and in a certain mode of correspondence is exponentially more asinine than refusing to play the thank-you note game. Hmph. :rolleyes: Flame me if you want. I dare ya!
Don’t you be diss’n my Miss Manners. Etiquette is more than knowing the water glass from the finger bowl, it is the lube of social intercourse. Although I pretty much agree with you about the bridal industrial complex stuff. And the formal thank you card; I’d much rather receive a genuine, but verbal “Wow! I love it, thanks!” than a trite note. “Thank you for the lovely turnip twaddler we will treasure it always love shallow bride and buttmuch groom”
I do recognize that I am weird.
QueenAl, can I come to the UK? Showers make me puke, and British beer makes me happy.
I would never waste flames on little people who are so self-involved that they could not possibly understand the insult.
My take on the thank you card dilemma is that I do write thank you notes. I don’t send thank you notes for Christmas and birthday gifts from my family, but they don’t send those notes either. Also, I write at best a two line message: Dear So and So:
Thank you for the item, which I really wanted/needed. Whenever I use it, I will think of you fondly. Love, Mary. I realize that note is quite spare, but I think it does the job.
It is likely that the fianceé didn’t ask for your address, doesn’t know who you are any more than you know who she is…I would think it more likely that your aunt compiled at least part of the guest list and thought it might be a nice thing to invite you.
I say this because for our wedding, despite the fact that I said the words “small, family and good friends only kind of wedding and reception” I still, like a fool, gave my mother 4-5 blank invitations, which she gave to people I haven’t met, or in the case of two, to people I’ve only met once in my life a long time ago. It’ll be so great to have strangers at my wedding…I think my mom thought’d be okay because, after all, they are her friends and she is the Mother of the Bride (apparently, according to the huge wedding market I AM THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD ON MY WEDDING DAY [gag] so therefore, she is, as the kids would say, the “shiznit”) and my dad (thank G-d) has plunked down a substantial amount of the wedding money and I think she thinks he’s paying for the whole thing, she still has a lot of anger towards him :rolleyes: Yáll cross yer fingers and hope she behaves, please.
Anyway, so before you call and make this girl totally uncomfortable, give her the benefit of a doubt and phone your mom, check it out with her, and then, if you still don’t want to go, RSVP your semi-sincere regrets. Etiquette is about making people feel comfortable and appreciated as human beings, not embarrassing them, using it as a social truncheon.
Eeeeeugh. So etiquette is kind of a behavioral Vaseline? I suppose the analogy holds up. 
And I’m sorry, tomndebb, but indicting me as self-involved because I’m not into the thank-you card B.S. suggests that you, too, are merely a tool of the System. Hmph.
Well, Tortuga, I’m a Miss Manners devotee, so I was thinking of her style of social truncheoning; it’s possible to make people realize that they’ve committed a blunder while still being entirely correct oneself.
I did call my mom last night, and she and my sister, who also got the same invitation, were equally mystified but also figured out that it must be the cousin’s fiancee. They had the same take as I did. My mother isn’t going, but she plans to send a gift (my take on this is :rolleyes: ); I asked her to include me in her RSVP call. So the question is moot.
Another addendum to the previous shower: My sister, who sent her gift rather than attending (she was about to pop a kid any day) did not get a thank-you note either, I guess because she wan’t there to address it to herself.
More like behavioral Astroglide–everyone knows that if you use Vaseline, the analogy may hold up, but the condom won’t. 
Thus leading to more baby showers :mad:
The whole idea of addressing your own thank-you note reminds me of addressing your own reminder card at the dentist!
Why do mothers do this??? My mother invited her “best friend” (who I had met maybe once in my life for a total of ten seconds) to visit me in the hospital while I was recovering from a c-section! And apparently it was the height of rudeness and immaturity to ask that she not do so again, because she was excited and wanted to share it with her friends, and not everything is about me. :rolleyes:
Scarlett, I know you said it’s moot now, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was your aunt or some other relative who invited you and your mother and sister without regard to the bride’s preference of guests.
I might have expected something like that from my other aunt, the mother of Miss Thank-Yourself, but not from this aunt, who I’ve always pictured as having more class than that. But I could be wrong.