If you’re getting married soon, you may have heard of the long-standing tradition of sending thank you cards (or notes) to your guests. You may have also heard that thank you cards are outdated or unnecessary in the digital age – but you’d be wrong!
Sending physical thank you cards or letters to your wedding guests is every bit as important a gesture nowadays as it was many decades ago. Thank you cards are how you’ll show everyone who spent time or money on your wedding that you appreciate them.
Once you become a husband or wife, you have a few short months to write and send a thank you card to every guest that attended your wedding (and everyone who sent a gift in lieu of attendance). This guide will talk you through thank you card etiquette and discuss exactly why they’re so important.
What Are Wedding Thank You Cards?
Thank you cards are exactly what they sound like. They are greetings cards which the bride and groom send out after the wedding has taken place. Their purpose is to thank everyone who contributed to the wedding – by buying a gift, helping out financially, providing a service, hosting a pre-wedding event, helping out with set up or cleaning, or simply attending the wedding and sharing in the experience.
It’s thought that thank you cards have been around in some form for hundreds of years. They’re a long-standing wedding tradition, and remain a crucial part of wedding etiquette to this day. No matter whether you’re having a tiny, intimate celebration or a huge bash with hundreds of attendees, it’s important to thank everyone who’s spent their time or money helping you celebrate.
Why Is It Important to Send Wedding Thank You Cards?
At this point, you may be wondering: are thank you cards really necessary in 2021 and beyond? The answer is yes, and here’s why.
• The sending of thank you cards is an established tradition that your guests will be expecting you to uphold. This is especially true for guests belonging to older generations.
• Your guests will have sacrificed a lot to spend your wedding day with you. They may have had to book time off work, arrange childcare, travel long distances, and even fork out for a new formal outfit in order to celebrate with you.
• The average wedding guest spends £40 on a gift for the bride and groom. That must be worth a card! It’s simply rude not to thank someone for spending money on you.
Another great reason to send thank you cards is that they make wonderful keepsakes for those that attended your wedding. At 123Print, you can find thank you cards to suit just about any wedding theme or colour scheme. You can even create your own design!
You can save plenty of time by ordering your thank you cards in advance. You can even address and stamp the envelopes before your big day, if you have the time. (Obviously, you can’t write the cards themselves until you’ve opened your gifts.)
Aren’t Wedding Thank You Cards Outdated?

One of the most common and widely-spread myths nowadays is that wedding thank you cards are ‘outdated’ or ‘old-fashioned’. And it’s definitely true that lots of wedding traditions are being uprooted in favour of more modern ideas. But it isn’t the case with thank you cards.
No matter what kind of wedding you have, whether you follow all the old customs or throw them out the window, it’s still crucial to thank all of your guests. They were still willing to take an entire day out of their lives to help you celebrate your marriage, and that’s something that deserves your gratitude.
Why Can’t I Just Send a Text?

But do you have to send an actual card? Can’t you just text a ‘thank you’ to your guests, or send them a Facebook message? Well, you could, technically. The problem, though, is that this is going to be seen by the vast majority of your guests as tacky and rude.
If you really haven’t got the time to send out thank you cards, your best bet is to call your guests individually to thank them for attending your wedding. But phoning everyone will take so long that you might as well just send a card – and you’ll have to give them a good reason why you’re not doing so.
How Do You Write a Wedding Thank You Card?
Let’s get down to business, then: how do you actually write wedding thank you cards? Here’s our fool-proof formula.
1. Order your cards in plenty of time. We’d recommend using a professional printing site such as 123Print. Order more than you think you’ll need, in case you make a mistake or smudge the ink.
2. Write all of your cards by hand. The time and effort you put into this will show, and your guests will be grateful.
3. Start by addressing your recipient by name. Thank them (and their plus one) for attending your wedding, and mention how happy you were to have them there.
4. Thank them for their gift. Talk about what they bought you and how much you like it. If they gave you money, tell them how you plan to use it. (If they didn’t give a gift, skip this part.)
5. Include a touching or funny memory you have of them from the wedding day, e.g. “It was so fun dancing the Macarena with you, especially as we’d had a bit to drink!”
6. Finish by wishing your guest well. Both the bride and groom should sign the card by hand.
It may be tempting to draft a generic message of thanks and copy it into every card, changing only the recipient’s name. Do not do this – it will be obvious, and will come across as lazy.
Who Gets a Wedding Thank You Card?

As a general rule, all of your wedding guests should receive a thank you card. You can send one card per family or per couple. It’s important to send everyone a card, even if they didn’t bring a wedding gift. They still took a day off to celebrate your marriage with you.
You should also send a card to anyone who sent you a wedding gift, even if they didn’t attend the wedding.
Should you send thank you cards to your wedding suppliers (e.g. your photographer)? You paid for their services, so you don’t need to – but the gesture would be appreciated all the same. It’s completely up to you.
How Long Do I Have to Send Wedding Thank You Cards?

A common myth is that you have an entire year after the wedding to send thank you cards. This is not true. If 6 months pass with nothing in the post, most people will have assume you’ve forgotten them.
Instead, a good rule to go by is this: you have 1 month (starting after the honeymoon) for every 50 cards you have to write. So, if you had 150 guests at your wedding, you have 3 months in which to write your cards.
That might not sound like much time, but it’s plenty if you think about it logically. You’d only need to write an average of 1.6 cards every day to have them all done on time.
You don’t need to wait to send the cards all at once. Post the most important cards first – guests that sent you particularly large gifts, helped out the most financially, and those that are likely to care the most about receiving a card (usually older relatives).
What Happens If I Don’t Send Thank You Cards?

The world isn’t going to end if you don’t send wedding thank you cards. However, it will come across as rude and ungrateful, especially to anyone who bought you a gift or helped out with your wedding.
Some of your guests won’t mind, but others are bound to be offended if you don’t send a card. They’ll be less likely to attend events that you invite them to in future, and it may put strain on your relationship with them.
So, don’t delay: order your wedding thank you cards today from 123Print!

How should guests RSVP for a wedding? The traditional way, of course, is by returning a paper reply card that the invitee would receive with their wedding invitation. The guest would fill this card out with their name, and tick a box to indicate whether they can attend the wedding. They’d then return this card to the host of the wedding using a stamped, addressed envelope that would be included in the invitation suite.
But in today’s digital world, digital RSVPs are becoming more and more common. Many couples set up a wedding website, which contains an online RSVP form for each guest to fill out. You simply include the link to the website on your invitation, so that your guests will know where to go: no paper or postage required.
As you might expect, there are both upsides and downsides to the digital approach. While it saves money and trees, it might prove confusing for older guests, or be perceived as inappropriately casual for a formal wedding.
Today, we’ll compare paper and digital wedding RSVPs, and figure out which method has the edge. By the end of this guide, you should have a good idea of which one will work best for you and your guests.
Paper vs. Digital RSVPs: Pros and Cons
Let’s jump right into it, and take a look at the pros and cons of paper and digital wedding RSVPs. We’ll discuss what impact each choice might have on your budget, your time, the environment, and the way your wedding will be perceived by guests. We’ll also discuss how accessible or ‘user friendly’ each option will be for your invitees.
Budget
One of the most popular reasons (if not the main reason) to opt for a digital RSVP system is the money-saving opportunity. Physical reply cards can be pricey, depending on where you order them from. You will also need to pay postage, both for sending the cards to your invitees, and for getting them back (you’ll need to include a stamped, addressed envelope for your invitee to use).
These costs are completely eliminated if you ask your guests to send you a digital reply. However, you will need to pay for the setup, design and hosting of your wedding website, if you want to go the digital form route.
Time and Effort
There’s no doubt that paper reply cards take a lot more time and effort to write, send, and organise than digital RSVPs. You have to:
• Design your cards and have them printed
• Write your guests’ names individually on each reply card (unless you’re letting your guests fill in their own names – though bear in mind that if you do this, they may add extra guests or plus ones that you hadn’t intended on inviting)
• Prepare a stamped, addressed envelope to post along with your reply cards (so that your invitees can send them back to you)
• Go to the post-box to send them all off
• Gather all of your replies, read each one and compile the data
Of course, it also takes time and effort to design a wedding website and set up the online form – but probably not as much. Only you know which one you’d find more taxing.
Environmental Impact
If you are an eco-conscious sort of person, you might take issue with the amount of paper that your paper reply cards will use (and the envelopes they get sent back to you in). It’s true that digital RSVPs are much better for the planet in this regard, and have less of an impact on the environment.
It’s not all bad news, though – paper reply cards are fully recyclable, as long as they don’t contain any glitter or foil in their design. After your wedding, you can simply pop them into your paper or cardboard recycling bin, if you don’t want to keep them.
Formality
Paper reply cards are very traditional for weddings, and therefore seen as the most formal option. If you want your wedding day to have a classic, elegant, formal feel, we’d definitely recommend going with paper RSVPs.
Older guests in particular are likely to sniff at the idea of replying to a wedding digitally, and see it as almost offensively casual for such an important occasion.
While younger generations won’t mind the idea of reply to an invitation over the internet, they may be less inclined to bother replying. Sending out a paper reply card conveys the significance of the event (and lets your invitees know you’re seriously expecting a RSVP).
Aesthetics
As well as coming across s more formal and ‘proper’, many newlyweds-to-be prefer the aesthetics of a paper reply card, rather than a digital one. By designing your own reply cards you can inject your personal style into them, and coordinate them with your wedding theme. This is something both you and your guests will really appreciate, and isn’t really possible with a form on a website.
You can also keep your reply cards as a memento of your wedding day, which you can’t do with digital replies. Many couples enjoy reading the handwritten comments on their reply cards from all of their loved ones.
Accessibility
Although we’re well into the digital age, not everyone finds it easy to use modern technology – particularly the older generations. If you’re planning to use digital RSVPs for your wedding, you must be sure that every single one of your invitees has access to the internet, and would be tech-savvy enough to understand how to submit their reply.
Think of your grandparents, great-aunts and uncles – would they be able to use a digital RSVP system, or would they be more comfortable filling out a traditional reply card? Use your best judgement here. If your system isn’t accessible to many of your guests, you’ll have to spend a lot of time talking them through it, or telephoning them to ask for their RSVP.
Technical Problems
We all know that technology isn’t perfect. It’s no secret that websites can experience glitches and errors, and e-mails can get sent into somebody’s junk folder without them realising. With this in mind, it’s possible that you may lose some of your digital RSVPs in this manner. This may mean that you have to spend a lot of time phoning the guests you haven’t heard from, and getting them to submit their reply again.
Of course, paper invitations can also get lost in the post. But this is relatively rare compared to glitches with e-forms, and far less likely to happen.
The Verdict

Taking into account every pro and con, we feel that paper RSVP cards are still the best way to go.
Going digital may be the cheapest and least time-consuming option; however, you risk singling out any guests that aren’t comfortable using technology. You also risk your guests forgetting to reply without a physical card to remind them, or losing some of your responses to technical glitches.
If you would like to offer your guests a way to reply digitally, the best thing to do is to provide both a paper reply card and an e-mail address or online reply form. That way, your invitees themselves can decide which RSVP method they’d prefer to use.
What Should I Include on a Wedding RSVP?
Whether you’re going to opt for paper or digital RSVPs, you will need the following information:
• The names of each guest that’s invited. You can fill this out yourself, or have a space for your guests to write their names. Make it clear whether children and/or plus ones are invited.
• The RSVP deadline (the date that your guests must reply by)
• A space for your invitees to indicate whether they are or are not attending (e.g. a tick box, or a drop-down menu with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options)
• Optional: a way for guests to select their meal choice
• Space for guests to inform you of allergies, intolerances or other dietary requirements
You might also wish to include a free space for guests to wish you well, express their excitement, or add a song recommendation for your DJ’s playlist, for example.
If you’re using paper reply cards, you can design them with space in mind for every bit of information you need.
For online forms, simply incorporate either a blank text box or a drop-down menu for each detail you’re requesting. It’s a good idea to make every question mandatory – so that if your invitee tries to leave a box blank, it will give them an error asking them to fill it out.
Where Can I Order Wedding Reply Cards?
If you’ve decided to go with the traditional option of paper RSVP cards, you can order yours today from 123Print. Create your own design from a blank slate, or select from one of our hundreds of fully customisable templates. We have styles and themes to suit every kind of wedding, from casual and beachy to classically elegant.
Whichever design you choose, you can edit the text for free to include any extra details or information. For example, you could add a space for guests to indicate their choice of meal, the name of their plus one, or a song recommendation for the DJ.
Choose between matte, pearlescent or textured card stock for your professionally printed design, which will be dispatched within 2 working days. The more you order, the more you save – so make sure you order plenty of extras!