How to Personalize Wedding Thank You Cards

Now that the wedding is over, and you've been on your honeymoon, it's time to thank everyone that came to your wedding or gave you a gift. You'll want to mail out wedding thank you cards. This article will show you how to personalize wedding thank you cards, to provide meaning and demonstrate that you appreciated the person coming to the wedding and buying you a gift.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

How to Know Who Gave What Gift

1. The first step in being able to personalize a wedding thank you card is to know who got you what as a wedding gift. If you don't know this, it's going to be almost impossible to be personal with the thank you's.
2. Get together a notebook or pad of paper to write down each person's name and the gift they gave and have it ready for when you start receiving gifts.
3. You may get some gifts before the wedding. As these come in, you will have more time and opportunity to write down in your notebook who gave you what.
4. Take the notebook with you to the wedding reception. As the bride or groom, you're going to be busy with other things, such as stating your vows and keeping your nerves in check. So, give the notebook to someone else to write down the gifts. Maybe grandma is up for the task. Your mother might just want to enjoy her daughter/son getting married, so more distant relatives might be a better answer.
5. At the wedding, you should have a guest registry that asks for a person's contact information and not just their name. This way, if Aunt Fern gives you a toaster, you'll have her address in the guest registry to mail her the thank you card. Chances are, you found the person's address originally to invite them to the wedding in the first place. But, some guests might have been invited by phone or email.
6. Other than just recalling gifts, you may also want to remember how the person contributed to the wedding as well. So, you could have a notebook for this as well. If someone made the cake for you for free, or cooked something for the reception, you'll also want to thank them. Perhaps your thank you cards will also thank the bridesmaids for being in the wedding, and the photographer for taking pictures. Whatever you want to remember, write it down or have someone else write it down.
7. If you aren't able to get everything written down, you might be able to view photos from the wedding to recall pieces of information. If the photographer takes photos of each gift as it's opened and a photo of the person who gave it, you could use the photos to help for whatever wasn't written down in a notebook.
8. Most gifts will have a card or gift tag attached. In addition to writing in a notebook and relying on photos, or instead, you could make sure to keep the gift tag or card with each gift after the wrapping paper is thrown away. If there is no tag, you could write with a pen on the gift's box who gave the gift.

How to Write the Personalized Wedding Thank You Cards

9. Get the notebook with who gave you what gift. Or, look through the photos or on gift tags/ cards to discover this information. Once you know who gave you the gifts, you can write the personalized cards.
10. In the card itself, write the person's name at the top of the inside of the card. Then, write a sentence or two about the gift. The first sentence could be "Thank you for the lovely new down comforter for our bed." The second sentence could then tell about why you like the gift or how you have used it. For instance, "The comforter is really warm and soft, and we have been using it since we returned from our honeymoon."
11. Then, at the bottom of the card, write "Thank you." And finally, sign your name. The most personalized wedding thank you cards will be signed individually by both husand and wife, showing that both people appreciate the gift.
12. To further personalize the wedding card, you could include a photo from the wedding. Some people will put one standard photo in all the thank you notes. Perhaps it's a photo of the couple feeding each other wedding cake, or standing before the minister getting ready to say their vows. You could opt to send each person a different photo that might be meaningful to them. Send the person who baked the cake for free a picture of the cake being cut. Send Aunt Kathie a picture of you standing beside her at the wedding reception.
13. You can get wedding thank you cards that have a slot to put photos in, either on the front of the card or on the inside. Or, you can have the cards made up with a photo incorporated in the card itself.
14. In addition to thanking someone for their gift, you may also wish to thank them for their contribution to the wedding. Once you have written a sentence or two to thank them for their gift, you could add another sentence about the contribution. For example, "P.S. It was nice of you to offer your backyard as a place for us to hold our wedding."
15. If you think that two or three sentences does not do justice for someone who gave alot to the wedding, you could write that person's card in more of a letter format. "Dear Kendra- It was really nice to see you again after a couple of years. I sincerely appreciate you still being a bridesmaid even though we have been out of touch for awhile. I will never forget having you part of my wedding. I hope you enjoyed the choice of food that we had- I know you really like seafood. The gift certificate to Macy's will come in handy to help us buy new appliances to use in our new home. Thank you for the thoughtful gift."

Tips & Warnings

• If you're really short on time, you can have prewritten wedding thank you cards written to send out. If you do this, you could just write in "Thank you for the toaster," at the bottom of the card and sign it to give some personalization to the card.
• If you don't think ahead and come up with a way to remember the gifts each person gave you, and there are many, you may not be able to personalize your wedding cards later. Make sure to keep track somehow before and during the gift giving process.
• If you forget a gift, you could call someone else and ask if they remember who gave you the gift. The only problem is, what if the person you call was the one who gave you the gift? That would be embarassing!