I admit it: I'm a bit of a stickler about sending thank you notes. It's not that I'm an etiquette freak or anything—okay, maybe I am a little bit—but I think it's super-important to acknowledge someone's generosity as soon as you benefit from it. I guess I view most etiquette rules as "guidelines"—they are always safe to follow, but it's okay to sometimes bend them if it seems appropriate to your situation. But on the issue of thank you notes, no bending! Skipping or delaying the gesture of a written thank you note is not ever okay!
"
Emily Post" tells me that thank you notes should be written within three months of receiving a gift, and who am I to argue? Mr. Spaniel and I are determined to stay within this time frame, but do you know what falls about six weeks after our wedding?
Graduation, preceded by the two week final exam period (my last! ever!) and followed by frantic studying for the Bar exam. There is no way we are going to delay writing our thank you notes for three months! So although I love (
love) the idea of a photo thank you card from the wedding, we won't be able to wait for our photographer to get back images to us to get these babies printed, written and mailed. So we're making them now!
Similar to our international RSVP inserts, I used the PDF proof from the existing stationery to create our thank you cards. (I've gotten a lot of mileage out of those proofs!)
 Nope, not our names! |
To simplify the process (and because I couldn't find the 4-Bar size envelopes that I wanted at Staples, just the ones that fit a sheet of letter paper folded into quarters!), I created another 1/4 sheet design—this time, I remembered to account for the margin printing problems!—and then doubled the canvas size in Photoshop to create a folding card template. I then placed two of the designs side by side, printed and cut, then used a bone folder to crease the cards in the middle for a nice, smooth fold.
Sixty pages and 120 thank you cards later,
voilà! Finished thank you cards, all ready to be written during our honeymoon! They might not be as cute as the photo cards, but at least they're still personalized, they'll inform people of my new married name, and we'll be able to reuse any extras for other occasions.
How will you thank your guests?
Nope, not our names!
Don't forget, you can usually ask your photographer for a teaser or two, that is what people who use pictures on their TY's often do! It's what we're going to do bc I want to use a pic but also don't want to wait!
ReplyDeleteI did think of that too, and I really like the idea... it would work for anyone else. Our issue is that we leave for our honeymoon the next morning, are gone for a week (my spring break) and when we get back, it's already time to start cramming for finals (law school is really "special" in the stressful final exams department). We'd need to get a huge chunk of cards done before the wedding and while we are on our honeymoon, so we'd already lose a lot of time if we had to wait until two days after the wedding + however long shipping would take. And as a bonus, this was a super economical option. :)
ReplyDeleteI think it's smart to have them created before the wedding. Love the color that you chose.
ReplyDelete