I suck at writing thank-you notes. Yes, I am a shitty self-involved human being for being a non-thank-you-note-writing person. You all talk about me behind my back for it, you all complain to my husband about it. Funny, none of you helped me pay for my wedding, and every single one of you had an opinion about where it should be held and what time of day it should occur. I don’t want your gifts if I am going to be cast in a horrible light for not killing trees and wasting time on something that is going to be thrown away when you get it. And why do you not think my husband is the bad person for not writing the notes? Why is it always the woman’s fault? 
I, Anonymous
Thanks But No Thanks
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yawn. we want sex! violence!
No doubt, @1. Zzzzz…
The killing trees excuse is a joke. If you accept the gifts (are you giving them back?) then it’s only polite to thank people for them. Formally.
And yes, your husband is also at fault for not writing them. Both of you need to sit down and do it.
Wow! What a bitch?! Are you actually wanting other people to feel guilty and/or ashamed for being involved and enthusiastic about your wedding, then buying you a nice gift!?!
I think it’s pathetic that you held a party to celebrate you and your husband, accepted gifts and love from your guests, and now can’t be bothered to thank them properly.
Of course they feel alienated! That’s really wrong and you need to CHECK YOURSELF!
I totally and completely agree with you. My wedding experience was nightmarish, despite the fact I truly went out of my way to accommodate everyone and was the opposite of Bridezilla. Obviously, if I had been selfish and bitchy and overbearing, they would have treated me well. By the time the horror show was over, I wrote a few notes to a few kind people and said screw the rest of it. I hope they ALL still cast my name out there as the bride who never wrote thank you notes BECAUSE I DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
I totally agree with other posters. Boring – AND it’s just plain good manners to send thank you cards for wedding gifts. If you’re not mature enough to realize that you probably shouldn’t be married.
Right now, darling, right now your new husband is reading this and he is realizing what a lucky lucky man he is.
I could write a book about all of the experiences I’ve had with my awful in laws (and have enough left over for a monthly magazine lol) but I still write them thank you notes if they send gifts. You and your husband need to grow up and show some fucking class!
Yes, it sucks that the husband doesn’t take equal blame for not writing thank you notes – but he looks bad for marring a lazy woman with no manors.
HA! Killing trees is your excuse? Well, go green and send an email… just find some way to thank the people that spent money on you. Yes – you spent money on the guests at the wedding, and they repaid you with a gift, now it’s your turn to invest TIME in thanking them. Get over yourself.
Granted, it’s piss poor form to insult a person to her face — or to her husband’s face — for not writing thank-you notes. The thank-you note is about courtesy and graciousness, and the gift-giving guests basically forfeit their higher ground when they decided to bitch publicly about it.
I can understand the fury in having to sit down *now* and write notes, as if those gossipy horrors were *correct* to harp on about this.
But yes, you should have written the notes in the first place. Sucking at it doesn’t count. “Not killing trees” doesn’t count. (If the environment is that much of a priority for you, maybe you shouldn’t have a wedding? Social events of even moderate sizes generally aren’t ecologically sound.)
Oh right, and your husband should be getting his fair share of notes. Should really go without saying.
I wonder how many thank you notes you could have hammered out in the time it took you to write this immature little rant.
For crying out loud, it’s not rocket surgery! How hard is it to write a thank you note?
Dear So-and-So,
Thank you for the ________. It (/is lovely/is beautiful/is really unique/will really come in handy).
Take care/Love/Sincerely,
Blah J. Blah
—-If you don’t want to “kill trees” you could always email, text or say it on the phone.
If you accepted the gifts, you have to write thank-you notes. If you didn’t want to write notes, then you shouldn’t have set up a wedding registry and you should have specified “no gifts” on the invitation.
You can’t complain that the wedding etiquette that compelled people to buy gifts also compels you to thank them for those gifts. You had the option to short-circuit the process, and you chose to receive shiny gifts instead. Own up to it.
I happen to despise thank-you notes, so I am not nearly as condemnatory of this I, Anonymous as most of you here.
However, I don’t like gifts either. To me gifts and thank-you notes are part of the same set of social obligations that I hate. So I agree that you shouldn’t have accepted wedding gifts if you didn’t want to write (or your spouse didn’t want to write) thank-you notes.
@10
Wow, I love contextual misspellings…
“…but he looks bad for marring a lazy woman with no manors.”
I’m sure glad he didn’t maim a lazy woman because she wasn’t rich enough to own more than one large house.
Consensus seems to be you are an a-hole. People went to a store with you in mind. That took at least an hour of their time. They probably spent at least $50. If you went through the formality and pomp and circumstance of a wedding, you can do the societally-prescribed thank you note.
Wow — a passive-aggressive/hipster bridezilla, and after the event, too!
Look, I, Anon — saying (or writing) “thank you” to someone who has given you something is called “politeness”. If I were one of your friends who had spent the time and money to buy you a wedding present and didn’t get so much as a *verbal* “thank you”, you would be on my shitlist forever. As in never ever ever call me to help you ever again (ie, as in moving; jump-starting your stalled car in the middle of the night) because I’d have your number blocked.
Why? Because you’re a self-centered asshole.
And @17: You’re just as bad — or even worse.
The only nice thing about the LW and @17 is they’re going to die lonely and it will be their own damn fault.
Oh, and I’m not usually this bitterly misanthropic — it’s just that the LW and @17 seem so *proud* of their selfishness and rudeness that set me off.
@6: Can I have my gift back, you thankless bitch?
Two items:
1) You are a dumb twat and surely deserve the “behind the back” comments. No, guests did not help pay for your wedding but they surely paid for the gifts they gave you. Grow up and stop sucking at life.
2) Is this really the best I, Anonymous available for the week?
God, people get so melodramatic here that it cracks me up.
I didn’t write very many of my wedding thank-you notes either. I didn’t have a registry or expect anyone to get us stuff, but of course they still did. After we married we immediately needed to focus on moving. And we are lazy. Horrible excuses, I know. But we are only human. I guess I am lucky to have a rational family and inlaws that won’t hold that sort of thing against us forever, unlike the OP. It’s a little rude to not write them, yes, but it is not a grave insult to the gift giver.
Frankly, her relatives sound a little bit off if they have nothing better to do than fume and bitch behind her back about not getting a thank-you note. Maybe she didn’t have the greatest relationships with her prospective in-laws to begin with and that made things worse or something. And I agree that the husband is partly to blame, as is my husband for not participating in the writing.
You know what? A lot of those people probably didn’t really want to go to your wedding. A lot of people hate weddings – but they went FOR YOU and they spent money ON YOU and you can’t even be bothered to spend 30 seconds writing a thank you note? Fuck you.
You have got to be kidding me. How can you be so fucking self righteous about something like this? You were given gifts. Thank you cards need to be written. You write them? He writes them? You both write something sweet on the same card? People chose to do something nice for you. Their time. Their money. I’m assuming they cared enough about either one of you to do so, so go buy some cards, grab a pen and grow the fuck up.
what a fucking bitch. i agree with what anonymous is saying about her husband and him being at fault also. but you know what, you’re friends who are telling your husband-and not you-are probably doing so because they consider him to be the more approachable of the two of you. and that’s probably true since clearly you are a bitch and don’t value your friends…if you don’t want to send thank you notes for the presents you claim to not want why didn’t you just fucking tell people when inviting them that this is a no-gift wedding? oh yeah, i know why. it’s because you are selfish.
thank you notes suck ass
I’m with the non-TY-writers. At certain events, people just give you gifts and like the letter writer, I’d rather get no gifts than be expected to pay for them with thank you notes. Time is money but really, I’m just that lazy. I guess I’ll just start asking people not to give me gifts, even though that (or returning the gifts) is also considered very rude. I’m not mean but I honestly don’t like forced social contact like that. But don’t say I’m morally decrepit or unfair for not writing the notes when I didn’t want the damn gifts to begin with or I told people not to get me anything — and when returning them is viewed as even more rude. Also, I expect thank you notes from nobody. Eventually, though, if you don’t write the notes, those who require thank-you notes for their gifts will ‘punish’ you by not giving you any more gifts and staying out of your social circle, so it works itself out.
And yes, it is usually considered the woman’s duty to write the notes — in this day and age! Bullshit.
Also, if the friends are close friends, you give gifts reciprocally over the years and thank each other in person, so I don’t think notes are required. And if the ‘friends’ aren’t close — why are you giving me gifts, you creep? Stop your passive-aggressive attempts at making me your friend!
Hey listen, your guests’ feelings are valid. You really should thank them for their gifts. Do what I did and write one per day until they are all written. Mail them off in batches once per week. If you want your husband’s help, COMMUNICATE with him, sit down together for 5 minutes each night, write a note each. Soon you will be done.
Mel, you should thank family for their gifts, especially for events like a wedding. If you know that your friends don’t expect a note, fine, don’t give them one. And if someone makes any attempt to be your friend, have some compassion for them. You should appreciate that they are offering friendship. You don’t sound like a very kind nor caring person.
you and your husband BOTH suck for not saying thank you for your gifts. how f*cking ungrateful can you be???? if you wanted to save trees you should have at least emailed or called everyone to thank them. your attitude is so sh*tty i doubt your marriage will last long you negative creep.
If you want to get married and don’t want to write thank-you notes, you have a quiet ceremony with a justice of the peace in front of the necessary witnesses. You don’t bother with a typical wedding. You bought into the social obligations that come with that when you held a typical wedding. Deal with it.
Wow. What an ungrateful whore.
Bloody hell – good manners cost nothing! The time you spent writing this bitter passive-aggressive crap could have been better employed sending a round robin, tree-preserving e-mail to your wedding guests just saying: “Thank you all for the presents”.
It’s tedious and tiresome, but it really should be done. Get however many cards you need. Write on each of them, “Thank you for your lovely wedding gift. It was greatly appreciated.” Or whatever. You get all this done by spending about 3 minutes per card, maximum. You don’t have to be sincere, particularly personal or anything else. Just get it done. People remember when they don’t get notes. It matters. Do it, you stupid woman. You had the wedding, got the gifts and it’s now your duty. You want hubby to help? Fine, make him. But the duty is yours.
Seconding @34! You have a wedding that is more than going to the courthouse, people want to give gifts. You get to write thank you notes.
Those few minutes of your time acknowledges the time and expense your guests went to in coming. As much as giving a wedding can be expensive, attending one is not necessarily cheap either: hotel room, gift, driving or flight/rental car, days off work if you are far away. I spent over $1200 going to a friend’s MONDAY (2 days off work) wedding and would have been PISSED to not get a card.
We had a small wedding and still managed to get to write 40+ notes. I did 5 a night, made the husband address, stamp, and seal them, and we were done in a few weeks. We spent maybe 20 minutes a night on it since he wanted to read what I wrote (not sure why, they were all variations on “TYVM for coming to the wedding, it was special. The gift is cool too. <3 us”)
If you give someone something with an expectation of something in return, I’m pretty sure that it’s not a gift. Isn’t that how buying stuff works?
Anon, I’m surprised that you can find the I, Anon section, type up a few sentences, and send it off.
Because you failed to find the many, many online services which will auto-send thank-you notes for you. You can even select from pre-written messages and have their name auto-filled. Just upload your wedding RSVP list, select a card, a message, put in your credit card info, and press send.
You could be done with this in 20 minutes. Here’s one site that came up on Google, but there’s many others. http://www.us.popcarte.com/special/postc…
Suck it up and be thankful— it’s a skill you’ll need in your marriage.
Look, you self-involved little harpy, the only time you can get away with not sending a thank you note is when you received no gift. Period.
If you are concerned about trees, get your sorry, selfish ass to a proper stationer and buy some good paper made from ragstock and recycled paper.
I pity your new husband for having married a woman so disinterested in making others feel appreciated.
Let me clarify- Husbands are not exempt from needing to say “Thank you”. I singled out the husband for pity because she actually wrote this incredibly bitter, petty rant not because he should not have had to write notes.
Wow. I remember after my bat mitzvah, when I was 13, my dad made me sit down and write thank you notes for all my gifts. It was tedious and hellish and I obviously wanted to just go outside and be 13 (my bat mitzvah was over summer break). But now I really appreciate it. I write thank you notes for every gift I receive; if for some extreme reason I don’t have time, I definitely make a quick phone call. It is just decent behaviour! People give you gifts to show they care and appreciate knowing that you give a shit about them too. Geez.
@39: Not really. Plenty of cultures engage in gift economies, which are often just nice ways of redistributing resources or establishing social peace.
The idea that “a real gift comes with no strings” is sort of a recent, lovey-feely invention, and also used as a bullshit excuse by passive-aggressive hermits to be rude. Really? “Thank you” — not an owed favour, not future gifts — is now a “string”?
I actually don’t see a problem with not writing thank you notes. If you give a gift, are you doing so under the condition that you will be praised and thanked?
Gifts are not conditional in my opinion. Thank you note, or not. Maybe these people shouldn’t have given the gifts is the attention is what they were looking for.
Dear people who took the time and spent their own money to purchase gifts and attend my wedding, presumably because they are friends or family and love or care about me:
Fuck you!
signed,
Anonymous.
Oh get over yourselves, isn’t saying “thank you” at your wedding enough? Who the fuck needs a thank you note to feel duly appreciated besides the shallow? Get real, you give someone a gift, they say “thank you!” and you feel good about giving it. Sitting around waiting for a piece of paper and then talking shit if you don’t get one sounds a lot lamer than someone who doesn’t want to buy a pack of fucking pre-written cards and fill them out for no other reason than to soothe your apparently fragile ego. Sorry! ^_^
Holy shit, I dont think I’ve ever seen so many commenter’s in such agreement on any “I Anonmyous” before. Kinda neat.
Yes, you are fucking selfish, it’s not that hard to write a thank you note. In taking the gifts you essentially agreed to standard wedding etiquette. Get busy sista’.
@46 FTW. What a privileged bitch! “How dare you guys not pay for my wedding! How dare you expect thanks for your gifts! Thanking you is a waste of my time and trees!!!!”
First of all, the thank you note is socially determined to be a must, so yes if you have a wedding and gifts/registry is a part of it, you must send the notes. I agree it’s a pain in the ass, but you can’t shirk your part of the bargain. A traditional wedding is ridiculous anyways — i have no sympathy for those that do it and then complain about the hassles. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of examples to judge the experience by.
Secondly, I could not agree with you more about the stupidity of those who criticize you but not you husband about the notes. But again, it’s part of the gender-disparity at the heart of a traditional wedding. A friend of mine got married, got lots of gifts. Her husband was unemployed at the time. I called the house shortly after to talk to her, he answered, and without me saying a single word about gifts, weddings, notes, he said to me “Sorry, J—- hasn’t got those thank you notes out yet, she’s been busy.” I immediately came back with “Well why don’t you do them? You’re not working.” He was caught off guard, laughed, and said he’d let her know I called. Total loser.
I wouldn’t talk about you behind your back for this. I would walk straight up to you and tell you that you are a piece of trash. People spent money buying you gifts and time attending your wedding and you are not even going to formally thank them? I wonder what kind of a trashy-ass wedding you had, given your stance on doing the proper, classy thing. Entitlement is quite an ugly thing – displayed in its sincerest form here. Good luck with your marriage.
wow…ungrateful…no wonder your friends are backstabbing you..clue in and write the Thank yous already!