Is it too late for thank-you notes?
They sit in my house taunting me and have done for six months. They shouldn’t still be there. They know it, I know it. They should have been gone at least three months ago. I mean, they’ve been there since I got married in April, it’s just awkward now.
But I am holding out hope that the box of thankyou notes will eventually leave the bottom shelf of my coffee table, where they have been literally collecting dust, and find their rightful owners.
Within three months. That’s the timing etiquette wedding blogs tell me is appropriate for sending out thank-you notes.
Days, then weeks, then months passed and I now find myself at the point where I have doubled what was ‘‘appropriate’’.
In famous last word fashion, I had every last intention of getting them out. But after the wedding is all over, momentum drops.
The internet is filled with listicles of the importance of the thank-you card, what to write, and all the situations you should use them in.
Jimmy Fallon even has a weekly segment on The Tonight Show where he takes time out to write thank-you notes.
And it’s not that my husband and I aren’t hugely grateful for all the love, support, travel commitments, and gifts we received at the wedding.
It’s just, they take some serious time and commitment.
From picking the photo to be on the front, getting them ordered, cutting them, writing them out, remembering what everyone got you and trying to make each note original, and then there’s the actual posting of the things.
Posting the invites out was a mammoth enough task. And maybe that’s just it, maybe the physical act of posting something is dying out.
Maybe a thank-you email would have been a better idea.
A few managed to make it out, like to our parents and grandparents, but only because we gave them in person.
And it is important to thank fathers in writing for pulling you down on the ground on the dance floor and photobombing 99 per cent of the photobooth snaps.
It’s unrealistic the rest of the notes will ever leave the coffee table and, to be honest, receiving a thank-you note six months after an event is probably a bit odd.
One day they will move but I’m going to place my bets on that it won’t be via post.
We all dream of being organisation superstars, remembering birthdays, and meeting deadlines.
Every year when the email goes out at work for requests for the next year’s diary, I always put an order in.
And every year I fool myself thinking ‘I’ll be the sort of person that uses a diary every day and never misses a deadline’.
But the reality is I am an unorganised, messy, lazy hag who today had to position her jumpsuit in a certain way to cover a toothpaste stain. And I always forget birthdays and deadlines.
Sure I’d love to be able to thank all the guests for coming and all the help we got at the wedding.
It’d be nice to profusely thank our close friend who married us and did an amazing job, and our two friends that MC’d and killed it and had everyone in hysterics.
Of course it’d be great to thank all the bridal party and tell them they were the best bridal party a couple could ask for and that some of our favourite memories are spending time with them on the day.
And thank my best friends for an incredible hen’s do, rivalling the wedding itself, which saw them with temporary tattoos of me on their foreheads and me dancing on tables and with drag queens.
It pains me that cousins who fell asleep in bushes will never know how great it was to have them there and friends who travelled from far away won’t be thanked for their efforts on the dance floor.
My biggest thanks, a bow down even rather than a note, is owed to the family and friends who, like the legends they are, gave the Dirty Dancing lift their all when Time of my Life came on, including getting a run up from outside the marquee to really get the power that manouevre requires.
Oh, well actually, that pretty much covers it. I guess I don’t need to post those thank-you notes out after all.
They shouldn’t still be there. They know it, I know it.