Who To Thank After Your Bridal Shower

Basic Invite sponsored this Who To Thank After Your Bridal Shower post. All thoughts and opinions belong to A Bride On A Budget.

When we lived in the apartment, our mailbox was in a common area. I used to open all the mail on the walk back from the mailbox instead of waiting until I was back in the apartment.

One day, I got a baby shower invitation in the mail. I was super excited about it because I was actually planning on being in New York for the shower. See, living in North Carolina meant that I often missed out on these celebrations for my friends and family.

But I was already planning on being in New York for Christmas, and this shower was the weekend before Christmas.

So, before I was even back to the apartment, I RSVP'd and said I would be there. And that's weird for me. Very. Weird. Because, until that point, I was always the person who didn't RSVP for anything until the very last second. It's such a terrible habit, but one that had gotten engrained in me.

Imagine my surprise, then, a month or so later when I showed up at the bridal shower -- and it was actually a surprise bridal shower for me, not a baby shower for a friend!

Bridal showers are (possibly) the best part about wedding planning because none of the planning falls on your shoulders. All you have to do is show up.

After the shower, though, you need to thank people. But who? I'll let you know.

Who To Thank After Your Bridal Shower

The hostesses.
Who?
Your mom or maid-of-honor are most likely the ones who planned your shower. Your bridesmaids probably helped a lot too. But there are other women in your life who may have helped too.

Pull your mom aside at some point and ask her who threw the shower for you so you know who to thank.

How?
A card is nice. A card with a gift card to a favorite coffee shop, manicurist, or restaurant is a better gesture. Think about how much time, effort, and, of course, money went into your shower. You want to show your appreciation with a gift.

Your mom and bridesmaids didn't do it for the thank you. They did it because they love you. But a small thank you gift is always nice.

The guests who attended.
Who?
Any of the guests who attended, regardless of if they're brought a gift or not. Sometimes, their presence is their present. And it's so important to remember that.

You want to thank everyone who spent time with you that day, regardless of if their spent money to pick up something off your registry or not.

How?
Have one of your bridesmaids write down a list of what each attendee gave you. That way, when you are writing your thank you cards, you can personally thank each guest for their specific gift. It makes the thank you cards feel less generic and makes the gift feel more appreciated. For those who didn't bring a physical gift, you can still say something like, "Thank you for spending part of your day with me."

Your bridal shower hosts will probably have gotten small favors for each of the attending guests, but that doesn't substitute for your thank you.

The guests who didn't attend. 
Who?
Any of the invited guests who weren't able to attend but did send a gift. They gifts were probably sent to your mom or maid-of-honor, and those women will bring the gifts to the shower for you. Some may arrive to your home after the shower though too.

How?
A thank you card, thanking them for the gift and saying how you missed them at the shower works well.

The staff.
Who?
Any wait staff, caterer, etc.

How?
If the hosts have any extra favors, give them to the staff at the restaurant (or wherever the shower is being held). Trust me on this one. Most people don't thank the staff this way, and I make sure to do it for every shower I host (or help host). I also suggest it at every shower I attend but don't host. The staff is always very shocked and appreciative.

Since you (often) don't know you're having a bridal shower ahead of time, you probably won't have thank you cards ahead of time either. So you need to order beautiful ones that can print quickly.

Basic Invite to the rescue.

The site has amazing, customizable thank you cards (in addition to invitations and other stationery). You can choose from 180 different color options -- including foil. And the color options carries over to envelopes too. There are over 40 different color options for envelopes.

And if you remember, I'm a big pusher of envelopes matching your wedding colors and invitations. Everything should be coordinated, and everything should be an extension of your wedding theme and colors. So white envelopes are a wasted opportunity. They're also peel and seal envelopes, which means you don't have to lick them (which, if you've been around here a while, you know I hate. I really have blogged a lot about envelopes, haven't I?).

You can customize your thank you cards to match your wedding invitations as well, which is great. In fact, Basic Invite has over 800 luxury wedding invitations, plus menus, programs, wedding websites, guest books, and more.

Now, we're talking about bridal shower thank you cards in this post, which are pretty standard. But, for something like your wedding invitation, you really want to know exactly how it is going to look and feel before you purchase them.

Basic Invite allows you to order a sample of nearly everything on its site. You can customize it with your choice of font, text, colors, paper type, rounded corners, and more. You can also order samples of wedding invitation accessories, like invitation wraps. That way, you can see and feel your exact invitation before ordering.

Follow Basic Invite on social media: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

BRIDAL BABBLE: Which of Basic Invite's thank you cards would you order for your bridal shower thank you card?

Why You Need Thank You Cards On Hand During Wedding Planning (and free thank you cards from Tiny Prints)

I love greeting cards. I'm one of those people who sends them for everything: birthdays, anniversaries, Wednesdays. Whatever excuse I can make to send a card, I will.

And don't even get me started on keeping cards. I have all our engagement cards, all my bridal shower cards, all our RSVP cards, and all our wedding cards. Right now, they're sitting in various bags and piles, but I'll figure out exactly how I want to collect and display them, and that's what I'll do.

I also have a stack of thank you cards ... for just in case. I always like to have them on hand. In fact, when we got engaged, my friend Nicole gave me a box of thank you cards that she had leftover from her wedding. And as soon as our party was over, I was able to start writing thank yous. It was just so convenient. 

Why You Need Thank You Cards On Hand During Wedding Planning

If you're engaged, I suggest you pick up some thank you cards now. That way, you'll have them in case a gift arrives at your doorstep.

I'm gonna be honest. My friend Mallory sent us a gag gift when we got engaged, and I can't remember if I sent her a thank you card. And that probably means I didn't send her one. Which is awful, bad form, and very much not like me. I blame being blinded by my new ring. I know I said thank you to her with a text or call or Facebook message or all three, plus a blog post, but seriously, a card is so much better. That's why you need them.

You can run to the store and pick up a box, order them on Amazon, or get ten free right now. Tiny Prints has an offer where you can get ten free holiday cards. Just enter the code 10FREECARDS at checkout by November 12. You'll have to pay shipping, but the cards themselves will be free. Now yes, these are specific to holiday cards, but I've gotten very good at many any holiday cards look generic and turned into thank you cards. Just be aware of the text on the cards.

And, if you're done with your planning, you could always pick these up for a friend who is engaged (or your next friend who gets engaged). It's a great gift -- one that I give to all my engaged friends!

BRIDAL BABBLE: Did you order these thank you cards?

Get help with your wedding thank you cards:

The Ultimate Guide To Wedding Thank You Cards

The Ultimate Guide To Wedding Thank You Cards

A Bride On A Budget was sent these cards for review. All thoughts and opinions belong to A Bride On A Budget.

We were fortunate that a ton of our friends got married before us. We were able to go to their weddings and see what we liked (and didn't like), what worked (and what flopped). We were also able to get a ton of thank you cards before we had to think about ours.

One of the thank you cards was from my friend Nicole. Her card was actually still sitting on our fridge until we moved. Why? Because it was pretty much the epitome of the perfect thank you card. She got married over four years ago and, in that time, we've been to countless weddings and gotten just as many thank you cards. And the only one that was still on our fridge was Nicole's.

So when it was our time to do thank you cards, I knew I had to use a few of her tips and tricks so hopefully, years later, people would still have our thank you cards.

I learned a lot about thank you cards, more than you would expect actually. But that's how it went with every aspect of wedding planning. So, to help you, I've put together The Ultimate Guide To Wedding Thank You Cards.

The Ultimate Guide To Wedding Thank You Cards

1. You have six months to send them.

With wedding thank you cards, you actually have up to six months to send them before you're "late" on them, especially if you're adding your own photos. In some cases, it can take up to three months before you'll get your professional photos back from your photographer. After that, you'll select the ones you want for your wedding thank you card, order your card, and then find a night (or weekend) to sit down and write them all. It takes a while and your guests understand that. Anything longer than six months post-wedding gets a little dicey, although you should try to send them out within 12 weeks.

If you're not including photos, you should send them out as soon as possible.

2. Send a thank you card to everyone who attended your wedding and anyone who sent you a gift.

You had a wedding and you invited people to celebrate with you. You didn't invite people so that your wedding would turn into a fund raiser. Yes, many of your guests will give you a gift but they don't have to. Sometimes, their presence is just their present. And that's okay. But you still have to thank them. No, you're not going to send a card saying, "Thanks for nothing" because that's rude. You will, however, want to send them a thank you card saying, "Thank you for making the trip to our wedding and spending our special day with us. It meant so much to have you there." Because you know what? In life, someone's time is worth more than their money and if people took the time to celebrate with you, you should be grateful.

There are guests, though, who won't be able to make your wedding. Maybe they're busy, maybe they're unable to travel, maybe they just don't like weddings. Who knows. But sometimes, those guests will send you a gift anyway. And that's really, really nice of them. You need to thank them, of course, but you can wait until you're sending out everyone else's thank you cards. That's especially nice if you use photos because those people missed seeing you in a wedding dress and your groom in a tux, so photos on your wedding thank you cards allow them to see just how amazing you looked.

People who just send back your RSVP card, decline your invitation, and do not send a gift, are the only people who don't get a thank you card.

3. Choose photos that represent your wedding.
We got married downtown, took photos on the courthouse steps and near the water, had a beach reception, and a huge part of our wedding was Pete getting to play a song with our wedding band (and I bought him his dream guitar as a wedding gift to play during that song). I picked a photo from each of those parts of our wedding to go on the thank you card. I didn't pick anything from the church, but they were more serious and I wanted photos that showed more personality. Our guests who missed the wedding were able to see what happened. And all the photos, actually, were taken during private moments that were (almost) just us and the photographers. So even our guests that were there didn't see these moments until the thank you card. When I look at the photos, these are the moments that I feel capture our day beautifully. They were all selected very purposefully and I think they do a great job.

4. Stick with your theme.
If you have a color that you used throughout your wedding, continue that with your wedding thank you cards. Our colors were eggplant, lilac, and silver, so I made sure to use those colors everywhere we could. Our favors were silver buckets with purple ribbon (which my mom made). We used silver, eggplant, and lilac in our programs and in our thank you cards. Actually, our programs are also from MagnetStreet (you can check out a full post about them here). I made sure to use the same colors when we designed the thank you cards. MagnetStreet makes that really easy, so it works to your advantage to order your entire stationery suite from the same company. You don't have to order them at the same time, but the same store means the same colors and everything will match.

Plus, if your entire wedding was focused on black and pink, you don't want to all of a sudden introduce yellow at the last minute. Your thank you card is the bow on top of your wedding. Tie is nicely and make it cohesive.

5. Include a personalized photo in the thank you card.
This is something Nicole did that I absolutely knew we were doing. Her photographer took a really nice photo of my family and extended family during her cocktail hour. I remember him taking the photo and thought it was great ... although I figured there was a chance I would never see it. I did see it ... in our thank you card. That photo is hanging on our fridge too, years later.

When we were sending out our cards, I made sure to find a really nice photo of everyone I could. There were a few people who just weren't in a single photo and some who were just in the background. So in those cases I either skipped a photo or, if it was a couple, I sent a nice photo of at least one half of the couple.

What I wanted to do, but didn't and wished I did now, was to set up disposable cameras near the escort cards and ask everyone to take a selfie when they walked in. That way, I would be sure to have a photo of everyone. But, really, not everyone signed the guest book (which was between the escort cards), so you can't expect that everyone would have taken a selfie either. Honestly, you're not going to get everyone, but you can try.

6. Hand write a personalized note in every card.
I know, it sounds so easy to have a generic message printed inside your wedding thank you cards and sign your names (or heck, even have your names printed too). But no. Just no. Your guests spent time and money to come and spend your wedding day with you. The least you can do is write them each a personalized note, thanking them for their generosity.

From the start of our wedding journey, I involved Pete in the card process. He helped me address and stuff our engagement party invitations. He wrote half of the thank you cards after the engagement party, the shower and again after the wedding. And he helped me stuff and stamp our wedding invitations too.

The way we did our shower thank you cards was simple. I wrote pretty much everything, and then Pete added an ending sentence or two (like, "Can't wait to see you in June!" or "So sad we won't be seeing in you June!") and we each signed our own names. The shower was thrown for me, so it was my responsibility to write most of the card but the gifts we received were half mine and half Pete's, so if he was sharing the gifts, he could share the card writing.

We followed a similar pattern with our wedding thank you cards (and our engagement party thank you cards too). We had a (pretty much) generic way to start almost every card and then a way to finish every card. So we each started half the cards with the salutation and the first sentence, then we traded cards so I would finish the ones Pete started and he would finish the ones I started. Then we both signed our own names. It was half the work, since no one had to do all the cards, and a nice way for us to spend time together.

7. Buy a stamp or an embosser.
You're going to hand write your wedding thank you cards; you don't want to hand write your return address on every single envelope. I'm not a fan of address labels, honestly, because they're finite. You order a specific number of them and you have that many to use. With a stamp or embosser, you sort of have an infinite amount of uses. So far, from one ink pad, we've done our save the date cards, wedding invitations, thank you cards, and our first Christmas cards.

I absolutely love our stamper and it's been clutch for everything except our thank you cards. We ordered the luxe pearl cards from MagnetStreet, which is basically a really beautiful Italian linen paper that has a gorgeous shine to it. They're not flat matte cards. They have a heavy weight and appearance that is well worth the extra money. The luxe pearl cards comes with a matching shiny pearled envelope too. It looks beautiful in the mailbox ... but didn't mesh so well with our stamp. The ink never dried. We ended up using extra clear address labels on top as a sticker and that worked just fine, but we wouldn't have had this issue with an embosser. So your better bet is an embosser since you don't know what paper type you'll choose for everything. Whatever you choose, invest in one of those. And, if you make it like ours (sans last names) you can continue using them even after you're married.

8. Remember to add a stamp.
I know, that's such a silly reminder but you do have to stamp these. And if you order "small" cards (or even large ones), they have to be hand sorted so you'll need to add extra postage to them. If you don't, your guests will get a note from the post office that they owe some money in order to get their thank you card. Save yourself the phone calls (because people will call if you don't put enough postage) and make sure you put a stamp -- in the right amount -- on your cards.

Designing our wedding thank you cards from MagnetStreet was really simple. I was able to scroll through the options and choose the one I liked best. The Sketched In Love thank you card was originally shown in blue hues, but I was able to change the colors, the font, the text, and (of course) the photos. I uploaded about 15 photos and was able to easily select and deselect photos to see what fit best.

When I was done designing them, the edge of one photo bled onto the back of the card. I absolutely didn't want that to happen, so I put a note in the "special request" section and asked a designer to fix that for me. Before the cards were printed, I was sent a proof of my order. The cards were designed exactly as I wanted (with no photo bleed). It was really great to be able to review them, especially since thank you cards are an expense. You don't want to spend a ton of money on something that isn't exactly what you want.

Our thank you cards from MagnetStreet came packaged in a really pretty white ribbon. It felt like I was opening a present, which was nice. They didn't come folded, which I suspected would happen since that's how our programs arrived. Folding them was easy, though, so no worries there. They felt really nice and high quality when we opened them, so I was so happy. We didn't want any moment of our wedding to feel cheap and I knew MagnetStreet wouldn't let us down.

BRIDAL BABBLE: What other tips do you have for writing wedding thank you cards?

Thank You Cards At Wedding Paper Divas (And how you can order photo cards if you don't have your photos yet)

Since our wedding was over a year and a half ago, in theory, I'm no longer a bride on a budget. As many have pointed out, I'm now a wife on a budget.

Sigh.

I'll always be Pete's bride, though, so it's okay. A bride on a budget still feels right. If you're a wife on a budget now, though, there's a good chance you need thank you cards.

My wedding twin Kristiana found a great deal on thank you cards, which was a limited time deal.

Often, you can get half off thank you cards from Wedding Paper Divas. That's amazing and, if you got married recently, that's something you should take advantage of.

What if you see a sale, though, and you don't yet have your photos? Or what if you want to take advantage of a deal but your wedding is still a few weeks away? No worries. Kristiana actually bought her cards when this deal was around, even though she didn't have her photos yet.

You have two options. One) you can order a card sans photos. Or two) you can order and hold the printing until you get your photos (basically pre-paying for your cards). Then, just swap your photos in when you get them and have the cards printed. Kristiana talked with Wedding Paper Divas' live chat to confirm that, placed her order, got her half off, and she was ready to go when the photos got to her.

BRIDAL BABBLE: Have you ordered thank you cards yet?

Need wedding thank you card help?
Check out The Ultimate Guide To Wedding Thank You Cards.

When Should You Send Your Save The Dates? (And all your other wedding postage questions answered.)

This question comes up a lot: When, exactly, should you send your save the dates? That also expands to wedding invitations, thank you cards, and any other sort of stationery you might send after you get engaged.

Don't question it anymore. I got you. I put together this great list that answers all your wedding postage questions (and the questions you didn't even know you have).

When should you send your ... 

Engagement party invitations?

Send your engagement party invitations out one month before your party, if you're having a large, formal party. If you're doing something more casual at home, give people at least a one week notice.

Quick tip: For a casual party with immediate family only, you can get away with a phone call invite. Plus, they'll probably want to chat and hear your proposal story.

Engagement party thank you cards?

As soon as you get home from your party, write them. If anyone is generous enough to give you a gift at this (no one is required to at all -- it's sort of the only gift-free wedding related party), thank them immediately.

Quick tip: My favorite engagement party gift idea is a box of thank you cards. The bride and groom will be able to start writing thank you's right away.

Save the dates?

Sent your save the dates as soon as you set a date. Realistically, though, they should go out at least six months before your wedding date, if it's local and nine months to a year if you're having a destination wedding.

Quick tip: If you're running out of time (or having a short engagement), you can always text your save the dates.

Wedding invitations?

You should sent your wedding invitations out so they arrive three months before your wedding date (meaning, you should mail them three weeks and one week before your wedding). Make sure you put the RSVP card in the invitation!

Quick tip: Make the RSVP date five weeks before your wedding date (which means you'll receive them about one month before your wedding).

Thank you cards?

"They" say you have up to a year after your wedding to send your thank you cards, but I don't know who this "they" is because that's ridiculous. Realistically, if you are including photos, those can take up to three months to get them back. So, if you are including wedding photos, you can send your thank you cards three months after your wedding. If you're not including photos, send them out within the first month. If you need help with these, check out our ultimate thank you card guide.

Quick tip: If you're going on a honeymoon, purchase a bunch of postcards at the airport when you land. Spend one night writing thank you postcards and send them out before you head home.

Who should you send your ... 

Bridal shower invitations?

Whoever is throwing your party. That's generally your mom and maid of honor, if they choose to throw you one (they may not!).

Quick tip: Give a copy of your guest list (with addressees!) to your mom after you send your save the date cards and go over it with her so she knows who to invite to your shower.

Bachelorette party invitations?

Your maid of honor should take care of this, if she is throwing you one.

Quick tip: Work with her and your bridesmaids to put together a guest list.

How much does it cost to send your ... 

Okay, this is sort of a trick question. Without knowing the size, shape, and weight of your invitations and thank you cards, it's impossible to estimate this. But, know this: square envelopes cost extra postage. Also, oversized and undersized envelopes cost extra postage. Square, oversized, and undersized envelopes all need to be hand sorted, so it costs more to send them.

Heavier envelopes cost more to send than lighter ones, so keep that in mind when you're choosing the type of card stock to print on (a heavier card stock makes for a nicer invitation but more postage). Also, the more enclosure cards you add to your invitation, the more weight you're adding.

Quick tip: Take one, completed invitation to the postage and have it weighed before you buy any stamps.

You should keep in mind ... 

Postage prices change often. Our friends actually bought post card stamps, affixed them to their RSVP cards ... and then post card stamps increased one cent. 

BRIDAL BABBLE: Do you have any other wedding postage questions?