Appalled
I just read a Miss Manners column that made me want to scream. A reader had recently been to a wedding where the couple had stated on the back of their program that in lieu of sending guests a thank you note, they were going to take the money and donate it to a charity. I’m sorry but I find that insulting. If I had been a guest at that wedding, I would have retrieved my gift and taken it home with me. I’m curious how the couple will determine the dollar value of their thank you notes, and if the money will ever actually make it any sort of charity.
Plain and simple, when someone gives you a gift, you should write a thank you note. Now, I’m not saying I am perfect. In fact, I can think of three gifts I have gotten this summer for which I did not send an acceptable thank you note. I did acknowledge the receipt of the gift and offered verbal thanks, so at least the givers were not left wondering if I had even received the gifts. But I am pregnant and absent-minded, and still vow to get those three notes in the mail any day now. I will rectify the situation.
I also want to state for the record that this new-fangled idea of having guests at a shower address their own envelopes for thank you notes is completely unacceptable. Completely. If a friend or relative has taken the time to shop for a gift for you, wrap the gift for you, and attend your shower or wedding, the very least you can do is write a personal note of thanks, and that includes addressing the damn thing yourself.
A handy tip, though, that a shower hostess might want to use to assist the guest of honor, is to compile an address list of all the shower invitees for her. On this sheet, the person writing down the gifts can just put the gift given next to the appropriate name and address. This way, the guest of honor, when writing her notes, has one sheet to work from and won’t have to worry about the cards having been separated from the gifts, and trying to match them up later. In fact, the guest of honor probably has provided this already, so it’s just a matter of printing off a fresh copy with room next to each name to write the items given.
There you have it, your daily dose of etiquette.
Filed under What Would Emily Do? |3 Responses to “Appalled”
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I’m completely with you on the not having people address their own envelopes…what’s with that? I’ve never heard of it.But I will disagree with you on the charity thing. Maybe the people should make a phone call, but I’d much rather have someone spend their money on a charity than on sending me a piece of paper that I’ll just throw away anyway. I hate getting crap in the mail, it makes me feel wasteful for just chucking paper. I know, tangible is nice, but I can’t even bring myself to send paper cards these days. I’d rather call, or send an ecard.
Ooh! Ooh! I agree!!
If I disagree will I booted from reading your blog? :-)I am very very good at writing thank you notes. All of the attendees at my baby showers recieved their thank you notes no more than two days later. I wrote them all that night.However, quite a few of those that attended my were guests of my in-laws and had moved or were remodeling and receiving mail somewhere else so I was very happy that my guests addressed their own envelopes.Also, at our wedding we had the option of allowing guests to donate money to two causes we had chosen that were very personal to us: Breast Cancer research and the Parkinson’s disease foundation. The guests that donated in our name to one of these wrote in our guest book they appreciated the idea as they didn’t want to be one more guest getting us cloth napkins or what have you.Anyway, just trying to make a pregnant woman mad. :-)(Kidding)