How is it going with all those wedding gifts?
Like most brides-to-be, once you gifts began to arrive, you probably started a Jenga-like pile of white and silver packages that is threatening to take over one of the rooms in your (or your parents’) house.
Whether you have invited fifty people or five hundred to your wedding, you should consider cataloguing your gifts so you can prepare to send thank-you notes. Create a spreadsheet or use a legal pad to keep track of the arrivals. As you receive each gift, note the date it arrived, the sender, what the gift is and leave a column for you to enter the date you sent the thank you.
The thank you note should be handwritten on good quality or luxury paper allowing you to express how grateful you are for the wedding gift. Text messages and Facebook posts are not substitutions for thanking someone’s thoughtfulness, and they do not constitute a thank you note. In addition, the general rule of thumb is to have all of your thank you notes mailed within three months of your wedding.
What wedding gifts are special enough to cherish forever? You might be tempted to think that it’s that high-end appliance or hand painted stemware. Certainly, those may be bodacious gifts, but appliances eventually give out and stemware breaks in spite of the good wishes that were sent with these gifts.
Some of the most cherished gifts may surprise you.
Many brides will tell you that they saved the cards people sent for the wedding, placing the cards and even their inserted letters in a special box or envelope. Although the cards are not really gifts themselves, years later it can be fun to relive memories and read the good wishes people wrote inside the card.
One of the wedding gifts that many married couples appreciate is a framed presentation of their wedding invitation. The luxury invitation is one that the bride and groom chose together after carefully vetting many options in color, design, printing and delivery. What better way to commemorate the special date than by preserving the invitation? It can be matted and framed or transferred to an acrylic or glass plaque suitable for display.
Remember, too that you are doing more than receiving gifts; your wedding gift to your guests is not only a well-planned reception; it’s also the wedding favor bags you give as a token of your gratitude for them helping you celebrate your wedding. Of course, even these special tokens don’t replace the need for writing that thank-note for the gifts you receive.
With a little forethought and strategic organization, you can properly thank each sender for their gift.
Hopefully it will be one to cherish forever.