Sending Thanks

It can’t be denied that being a wedding guest can sometimes feel like a big job. Not only does it mean potential travel costs, gift-giving and maybe even a new outfit purchase, but some couples might need to arrange child care or request days off work to attend. Of course, your nearest and dearest don't mind doing this at all (we hope anyway!), but it's still so important to show thanks.

Here are two simple ways of doing this that will make your guests feel valued.

Personalised messages on the wedding day:

A week or so ago, I was lucky enough to spend the day with one of my closest friends. She loves weddings almost as much as I do and we were both bridesmaids for each other. A little trip to the countryside and a long catch up were well overdue, and our chats also reminded me of some top tips that I would absolutely recommend to anyone in the throes of wedding planning.

As we queued up for a much needed almond croissant and a coffee, I rooted around in my purse for my debit card. It was then that I pulled out the lovely, personalised message that my friend had written to me on the day of her wedding back in 2019. I took a mental note to mention it in a future blog and waved it around in front of her. She couldn’t believe that I still had it after so many years and it was lovely being able to show her that the little touches of her wedding day had had a big impact.

Her wedding was at the beautiful Chippenham Park on a gorgeous sunny day, and everything about it was just perfect. From the dove grey bridesmaids’ dresses to the live band on the lawn, it oozed class and sophistication. One of my favourite things, however, was that every guest arrived at their seat to find a small, white card, with a heartfelt message typed on it. The cards were about A7 in size (making them easy to slip in a clutch bag!) and they included individual thank you notes for our friendship as well as out attendance at the wedding. I remember noticing just how special they made everyone at the table feel and my card is a keepsake that I have treasured for a really long time.

When planning my own wedding, my husband and I knew that we wanted to incorporate something similar and the process provided additional confirmation that everyone on our guestlist was there for a good reason. We chose to divide and conquer, writing our messages on the reverse of our place name settings and it became a really enjoyable activity to do together whilst ‘sampling’ a spare bottle of our wedding wine. The hand written messages went down so well with our friends and family, and I hope that one of them has ended up in someone’s purse, ready to give them a little lift on a grey day.

Unique thank you messages after the wedding:

After our wedding, we spent a few weeks in that lovely post-wedding bubble. We enjoyed being drip fed photos by our photographer and had a relaxing weekend away in the UK because we had a little while to wait for our actual honeymoon.

Upon returning home, we were suddenly faced (like all newlyweds) with a long list of thank you cards to write. We didn’t want to repeat the messages that we had written for the wedding day itself, but we still wanted them to be super personalised. Whilst we made it clear that we certainly didn’t expect gifts from anyone attending our wedding, many of them contributed towards our honeymoon and this sparked an idea.

Our honeymoon was a road trip through Italy, driving around in our little Mini Cooper and sampling all of our favourite food and drink along the way. We made sure to take a copy of our wedding guest list and every time we reached one of the destinations that we had used for our wedding table names (Verona, Venezia and Roma to name a few) we recorded thank you videos for the guests sat at those tables. It became a really fun part of our honeymoon and meant that our guests could see exactly how we had used their kind contributions to elevate it. It’s been quite fun watching them back afterwards, and I treat them like a little video diary of what we got up to on our travels!