Your wedding is finished and you have either gone on a honeymoon or you are back to reality and working. Some of the first things you should do is get everything unpacked and get your dress to a cleaners! Then, it is time to tackle the wedding cards and gifts your guests brought get them unwrapped and organized!
This task can be so overwhelming for a couple. Especially busy couples or groom's that just do not know what to do to be helpful! Here are some things that I did to keep caught up and not let the showering of gifts drown me in thank you cards!
1.Buy standard Thank You cards in bulk early on! It is great to order cute ones with your wedding pictures. They are adorable I know, but you cannot get them printed until you get you wedding pictures back which can take weeks. This just pushes the thank you cards into the back of your mind until you forget about them and have an upset guest because they don't know if you ever received their gift!
2. (Wedding Shower Tip) Have envelopes as the "guest book" for your shower! Have the guest self address each envelope for you! This made it so much easier and quicker! My MOH had a notebook to write down every guests name and the gift when we opened them. All I had to do after was pick up an envelope find their name on the gift sheet and write out a thank you! If someone came, but could not bring a gift, no worries! I just thanked them for joining in on the festivities for those days! I had them stamped and mailed out 48 hours after each shower.
3. (After the wedding) when we were opening, we had a majority cards brought to the actual wedding. We sat down and opened them all together separating cash, gift cards, and checks into piles for our savings account. Each time we opened a card, we wrote who it was from and what was in it on a notepad. This way, I could go through and check down each card I wrote. We tagged teamed this while I wrote the cards, the hubby would look on our computer for their address and address and stamp the envelope! Within a week of our wedding all thank you cards were mailed out!
I know that time-lines and things to do always depend on your schedule and your guest count. The big thing is to make it as easy on yourselves as possible but sit down and get them done! You will feel so much better about not having that in the back of you mind and enjoy the newlywed stage!!