It has come to Miss Ultimate Wedding's attention that there is a great deal of misinformation circulating about thank-I you notes. One such canard is that people who get married have up to a year to thank those who give them presents. This is a fiction perpetrated by brides with writer's cramp. No, they do not. Miss Ultimate Wedding gives them about twenty minutes after the arrival of each present; more lenient souls admit the possibility of its taking up to two weeks. The highly rude notion that one can wait a year to express thanks seems to have originated with the correct rule that one can send a wedding present within a year after the marriage. But once received, it must be acknowledged immediately.
Is Thanking Passe?
Q. Three months ago, I attended a wedding for a niece of mine and I have not received a thank-you for the gift I gave them. I was told by the mother of the bride that it is not necessary to send thank-you notes anymore. I have never heard of such a rude thing before.
Giving and Receiving Thanks
Q. A fatal problem with amateur etiquette advice-givers (especially those who should have recused themselves from the situation out of a glaring conflict of interest) is that they only do half the job.
If the writing of thank-you letters is to be declared defunct, then the giving of presents must also be declared defunct. You cannot have one without the other. Miss Ultimate Wedding suggests you stop giving these people presents and that you stop taking etiquette advice from them.
Dividing Tasks
Q. My husband and I decided to split the wedding gift thank-you-note duties into those of his friends and colleagues with whom I am not really acquainted, as his responsibility, and those of our mutual friends, my friends, and my parents' friends as my responsibility.
My notes went out promptly. Three months after the wedding, I realized he had only written a few notes, but he said he had verbally thanked just about everyone. I was mortified! I thought a note that long after the gift was given (we were married five months ago) would almost be insulting! To make matters worse, I just went over the list with him and he has only thanked a third of his colleagues. What on earth can I do? Is it too late to do anything?
A. It is late, but not too late, to write those thank-you letters; and it is exactly the right time now to work out a peaceful division of duties with your husband. The bargain you had made with him—that he write his circle and you write yours—is an eminently fair and reasonable one. However, insistence on always being fair in every little thing, as opposed to over the long run, is ruinous to the happiness of marriages.
The better way to divide things is that each of you takes over the tasks you don't mind doing and you either split the rest or decide that you both hate them so much that you will sacrifice elsewhere in order to be able to pay someone to do them. We can now take it as a given that your husband hates writing letters. His excuse—that he thanked people verbally—not only violates the rule of etiquette that wedding presents deserve letters, but also violates the bargain you made with him.
These letters must be written and it is a task you may not hire anyone else to do. Miss Ultimate Wedding assures you that it is more insulting to ignore a wedding present than it is to send a belated letter. So you should sit down this minute and write them, just as you managed to write those other letters.
Is this fair? Sure, if you say, "Okay, I'll be the letter writer in the family. But you know what I've always hated? Vacuuming. I can't stand it. You don't seem to mind—will you do all the vacuuming in the family?"
Deputizing the Task
Q. I attended a grand wedding in my daughter's husband's family and sent them a pair of silver candlesticks. After quite some time, I received a thank-you note. But the odd thing was that the note was not in the bride's handwriting, but in her mother's! I know her handwriting well and so does my daughter. There is no mistaking it. The note was written in the first person—"I," not "they"—throughout. Such as "Bob and I really love the silver candlesticks and they look so nice in our new home" signed with the daughter's new name.
Miss Ultimate Wedding, is this now an acceptable way of thanking someone for a wedding gift? To me, it almost borders on forgery. Nor does it do the daughter any favor, as she certainly isn't teaching the daughter the values of responsibility or honesty, do you think?
A. It seems to Miss Ultimate Wedding that your friend has long since taught her daughter something about responsibility: namely, that she can get her mother to do her job.
Thank-Yous for Money
Q. Over half of the wedding gifts we received were gifts of money. How would one go about writing a thank-you card to someone for such a gift without sounding crude?
A. However useful and welcome money may be, it is, Miss Ultimate Wedding would like to point out, a crude present. For one thing, the recipient knows exactly what it cost. The most graceful way to disguise this in your thanks is to select a real present on that person's behalf—that is, to tell the donor what you have bought with the money. The rest of the thanks can then apply to the present, as if the giver had selected it.
Thanking Oneself
Q. Since the majority of the '60s generation, especially brides, are slow with thank-you notes for gifts, could a self-addressed, stamped envelope with note paper be enclosed in the gift box? Brides enclose similar envelopes for R.s.v.p.'s.
A. Miss Ultimate Wedding sees that you are generously willing to forgo the give-and-take of present giving, by assigning the guest both the task of giving the present and thanking him- or herself for having done so. This doesn't seem quite fair. Perhaps such a bride ought to be allowed to buy herself a present and then thank herself or not as she prefers.
Prewritten Thanks
Q. At an extremely extravagant wedding I attended, there was a printed card at every place setting at the dinner table stating, "Thank you very much for sharing this special day with us, and thank you for your gift."
Am I behind the times (I am twenty-seven, and have been to many weddings but never came across this)? I thought a thank-you note was to be very personal, handwritten, and was to state the gift received.
A. Personal? Do you think of the relationship between bridal couple and their guests as personal, rather than commercial?
Evidently these people think otherwise. They have provided an all-purpose, standardized receipt which is not going to thrill those who had hoped to hear that whatever they had selected actually touched and pleased the couple. But Miss Ultimate Wedding can imagine that their method would be of advantage to those who had not selected a present and who can now forget about doing so, although honor would then require them to leave the card on the table.
Fishing for a Thank-You
Q. I left a wedding gift in the form of a check at a wedding I attended several months ago. I had met the bride once before, years ago, but had never met the groom. Thus far, I have not received any acknowledgment that my gift was received. It was cashed a month after the wedding, but I would like to know that it was received by the proper party. Is there any specific correct waiting time before making inquiries? I could call the bride's parents, but do not want to embarrass them or their daughter unless necessary.
A. You know and Miss Ultimate Wedding knows that what bothers you is not the presumption that the check was stolen and cashed with a forged signature, but the likelihood that these ingrates took your money and never bothered to thank you for it. To give a present to someone who doesn't even acknowledge it is galling. You shouldn't be ashamed to admit it—to admit it to Miss Ultimate Wedding, that is. You can't admit it to the ingrates or their relatives, because that would be a social declaration of war.
This brings us full circle back to your claim that you are merely afraid that your present went astray. Indeed, that is the excuse used to point out that a present was never acknowledged. Miss Ultimate Wedding doesn't know why she forced your real feelings out of you, except as ammunition against the rude, who are given to claiming, on no evidence whatsoever, that "no one cares about receiving thank-you notes any more."
In the case of a bought present, one voices doubts about the store where it was purchased, or the mail or delivery service, so as to avoid accusing the recipient. With checks it is harder, because you have evidence from your own bank that the check was received. By all means, question the parents (who seem to be the people you actually know) as to whether this is, indeed, their daughter's handwriting, with which you are not familiar. Let them figure out why you are not familiar with their daughter's handwriting, so they can pass the embarrassment on where it belongs.
No comments:
Post a Comment