How to: Write wedding thank you notes

I think a lot of brides and grooms dread writing their thank you notes, but I love everything to do with good old fashion letter-writing. I love selecting my stationery, the pen I’ll use, choosing my stamps, selecting some type of return address label, stamp or sticker and finally settling down. With a latte. Or tea.

If you read my stamp post, you know we never got around to ordering a return address stamp or return address labels, so we made sure we had some for our thank you notes. I designed 2 different ones to match our thank you card, plus one alternate that tied-in the stripes theme from our wedding:

Don’t worry, this isn’t our real address!

I’m really happy we opted to also get the ones with “Mr. & Mrs.” and a wedding dress/tux graphic on them because they are so cute! And we’ll only be newlyweds for so long, so I figured we should enjoy it while we can.

Writing our thank you notes was basically the last “Post-Nuptial” to-do on our list, we had a lot of fun planning them out. Wedding Paper Divas has some of the most beautiful stationery I’ve ever seen, so we knew we’d go there for the card itself, but in terms of what to put ON the card, these were really the main inspiration for ours:

I can’t thank my friend Bridget enough for copying the script font so well & carving the wood signs we held in one of the thank you note photos!

We had a lot of fun taking the pics for them. Here are some of the outtakes:

But the most important part of a thank you note is the content, which may be where a lot of couples struggle. To be honest, I spent a lot more time searching high and low for a stationery etiquette resource that would explain whether “informals” were too formal for thank you notes and whether it is OK to write on the back of the card (since brevity isn’t my strong suit).

But for those struggling with what to write, I think it always helps to imagine what you would say if you were thanking someone in person. Personally, I’d want to express how thrilled I was to have seen them on such a special day, how loved and supported they made me feel, and if a gift was given to share not only my gratitude, but how, where, or when, we’ll use that gift. I found a great resource in Southern Living magazine that should help you get started. And if all else fails, always write from the heart.