Wedding Blog
I love love LOVE the holidays. Yes folks, I am one of those freaks who, much to the (very vocal) chagrin of her coworkers, busts out the Christmas cheer mid-November. Lucky for them, this year I was away getting married mid-November, so they got an extra-long respite from Burl Ives’ rendition of Silver and Gold, and hallways festooned with chintzy dollar-store tinsel.
Me & friends at the office last year
Among the reasons we planned our destination wedding for November, such as that it would be just a little more than one year from our engagement date, that it would be around the same time as the birthday of our relationship (5 years!) and that we could be fairly certain we would not be dealing with an unwanted guest by the name of Hurricane Gustav (or his friends), there was one more very important one… our wedding’s proximity to Christmas would help me deal with the post-wedding blues! Because hey, we all know that after planning such a huge event for a whole year and having it all of a sudden be OVER can throw even the most rational brides among us into the ‘depths of despair’.
So I thought a November wedding would cover all the bases. One thing I did NOT account for, however, was the card conundrum.
See, not only am I a Rudolph-watching, mistletoe-hanging, eggnog-chugging dork, I am also single-handedly (or so it seems, sometimes) trying to uphold the dusty old tradition of sending Christmas cards. And I don’t mean e-cards or emails or, “hey, Merry Xmas!” on your Facebook -type cards. I mean old fashioned put-pen-on-paper-and-put-it-in-the-mail cards.
Mr Breezy thinks I’m totally crazy, of course. And I don’t really blame him. But we have a deal - he will put up with the expense of it (stamps ain’t cheap, yo!) and I won’t force him to write any of them. I do get to remind him what an amazing girlfriend he has, though… wait, make that wife! 
So here’s the problem:
… or…
?
A very large percentage of our Christmas-card list is also on our Thank You card list. If I send them a Christmas card in the mail, won’t it be weird to not mention the wedding or thank them for their gift? And if I do do that, does that mean we write the same thank yous in the actual Thank You card that we’ll be sending?
And here’s an even bigger problem: Mr Breezy thinks we should get all the Thank You cards done STAT… as in, by this weekend. We (read: I) haven’t even thought about what kind of cards to get/make yet - there are so many things to consider. I’ve tried telling him that people don’t expect cards right away, that we need time to just breathe. We’ve only been back for two weeks and I feel just as stressed out as I did before the wedding. He is of the mind that there is no time like the present.
So I have no clue what to do, and no clue why this is upsetting me so much. I mean, am I turning a little thing into yet another big deal just because it’s wedding-related? Would it really be that bad to go buy some plain ol’ cards at Michaels and throw in our photo slideshow DVD (which Mr Breezy has done an amazing job on), write a few words and call it a day? I wish I could say yes but some part of me (the perfectionist part, perhaps?) is having a hard time not planning this too, down to the very last detail.
So what do I do, dear hive? Do both Xmas cards and Thank You cards this week? Ditch the Xmas cards for one year, suck it up and have a horrid week writing Thank You cards every evening but be done with it? Somehow pray that Mr Breezy comes to his senses and relaxes his timeline? (Any hints for how to convince him? In a nice wifely way, of course.)
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I vote you double the Christmas card as your thank you. Or if you already have the thank yous, just wish them a Merry Christmas there. You will knock out 2 birds with one stone (or something like that). PS. I am INSAINLY jealous of your ‘Rudolph’ collection!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I say do the xmas cards with a standard “Merry Xmas” instead and do thank you’s when you have a chance to breathe. I, for one, can’t give up xmas cards, especially when it is the first year you are officially married and can sign “The Sea Breeze’s” at the end. You can tell your husband that if he is in such a rush, he can do the thanks yous now (which I’m sure he won’t).
We’re writing “Happy Holidays!” on the thank you postcards. But, I’m not a huge Xmas card person to begin with, so your mileage may very.
I have the exact same problem. My wedding was a little bit earlier than yours, but I still don’t have my thank you cards done. This week we are sending out ALL the cards, both Christmas and Thank You in hope that the Thank You cards will either beat or arrive at the same time as the Christmas cards. I was just happy to get my pro pics back in time to include the on both!
I say send out the Christmas cards (how can you pass up doing a “first card” as a married couple? I certainly couldn’t. People will love hearing from you, and then send out the Thank You cards as soon as you can. They might even think you already had the Christmas cards ready and made BEFORE you got married or something.
We are in the midst of this RIGHT NOW. So we chose a fun Happy Holidays card with a martini glass on the front that reads: “Cheers!” and wrote the thank you inside.
Two birds, one stamp. DONE. 
And DH has a Rudolph collection to rival your own. It’s a sickness, I think.
I vote for writing “Happy Holiday’s on your thank you cards. Perhaps those who aren’t on your “Thank you” card list could still receive a Christmas card?
OK… I may be the tackiest person on the planet (my mother insists that I am), but we just got engaged (and thus have received several engagement gifts). As a fellow Holiday-Fanfare-Fanatic, I had this exact dilemma. Christmas Cards? Thank You cards? BOTH??? My mother insisted that both were absolutely necessary, but with the economic crunch in full swing, and the fact that we are saving for the wedding, I decided to go with my gut. We did our first couples’ cards this year. In the cards for individuals who had been generous enough to gift us for the engagement, we wrote a personal note such as “The magic of the holidays seems brighter this year in light of our recent engagement. Thank you so much for thinking of us and sending such a lovely gift/gift card/toaster/whatever. We hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas and a delightful New Year! ~Me and Him~”
My husband wanted to do the same thing where we have the thank you cards done and sent out when our Christmas cards are, but we haven’t even gotten them back! So, I’m just going to send a Christmas card, not mention the wedding, and send the thank you cards when they are done. Hopefully people won’t be offended, and if they are shoooot, at least I took the time out to do both!
I think if you plan to do Christmas cards, you absolutely have to send out your thank-you’s first. I would agree with your hubby to get them done by this weekend– people who receive a Christmas card first may think it’s rude that you had time to send holiday cards, but couldn’t manage to thank them for their gift. It would be ok to mention ‘Happy Holidays’ in your thank-yous… What about doing a New Years update card instead of a Christmas card, so you won’t burn out on all the card-writing you have on your plate?
I’m with Amy on this one…take a breather on the thank you cards…people will appreciate receiving a separate Christmas card and then you won’t have to stress over it.
Why not combine your Christmas cards and thank yous? You could write your heartfelt thanks WITH your holiday wishes inside your Christmas card. I can’t imagine someone being put out by the fact that their thank you didn’t actually come with the words “thank you” emblazoned on the front.
Good luck!
@Amy T: Nice wording, I think that’s lovely. Did the cards say Thank You on the front or Merry Christmas?
@MissCricket: That’s a good point, I hadn’t thought of that. Hmm…
@Mrs. Corn: Any suggestions for how to convince Mr Breezy that doing them now is insanity?
I too am a christmas card writer. Even my mom doesn’t do it anymore ,but I do. If it were me, if the wedding guest was also on my christmas card list, I’d write my thanks in the christmas card along with my other greetings. If the guest was NOT on my christmas card list, I’d send a regular thank you. Hope that helps.
why not send a card with a wedding photo as the cover (if you have any of them yet?) and then use that as your “thank yous”, and “merry xmas” for those you need to thank, then send out the generic xmas cards to the ones you don’t? I would want to kill two birds w/ one stone.. and if you’re anything like me, I would delay on the thank yous from sheer hand exhaustion otherwise! 
Or you can be super cheesy and do “Marry Christmas”? Oh, I LOVE IT!
I really have to give kudos to your husband for wanting to get the thank you cards out immediately. Very Jackie of him, in the best possible way! (She apparently wrote thank you notes the first thing in the morning after any event at the White House–and it left a huge impression on guests)
I would probably just mention a holiday greeting in the thank-yous. Maybe just send the holiday cards to close friends and family in addition to the thank you cards?
@laurajane: That’s GENIUS!
@Colleen: I admit, it is pretty great of him… except guess who will be doing 95% of the writing?
i was in the same boat of having to send out the thank yous hurriedly before the christmas cards and, somewhere along the way, the “we moved” cards that we bought and wrote out and are so cute got pushed out of the to-send list. 
maybe you can do a thank you/christmas card that has a picture of the two of you on the front of it (maybe posing in the snow, by a fireplace, by a christmas tree, or even an engagement photo), but doesn’t specify thank you or happy holidays on the front. then, write it out just like a thank you, but at the end, write “thank you again and we hope you have a joyful holiday season! love, bride & groom”. Then, it knocks off the two birds, without looking like one or the other kind of card.
i think there have been some really good suggestions about how to combine the two (don’t know what emily post would say, but does it matter in this case, as long as the sentiment is there?)
As far as timeline goes, I may be in the minority, but i am with your hubby. the longer you put them off, the more likely you’ll just never get around to them, and you’ll tend to put other things higher on your priority list. also, what better time to write heartfelt thank you notes than in the immediate afterglow of your wonderful, memorable, joyful wedding (AND during the family-oriented, warmfuzzy holiday season)?
ok, sorry…so i wrote that without reading the other comments. maybe great minds think alike??
Forget the Christmas cards and the Thank You cards…start writing your RECAPS!!
@Mrs. Sea Breeze: I feel slightly ridiculous for admitting this, but they were holiday themed cards… but in our wedding colors 
I dabbled a bit in graphic design, so I just made my own. I used cream card stock and printed them up with a chocolate scripty font. Added some green and brown Christmas ornaments and VOILA!
@Mrs. Sea Breeze: OH, and feel free to theft the wording if you go for the Combo Cards. We’ll call it a post-wedding gift
A thank you note doesn’t really have to be a thank you card. Why not just get some nice stationery and do your TYs (for those people who will be getting a Christmas card) as a hand-written note included with the Christmas card?
My husband had never done Christmas cards, and was a little perturbed at the length of my list - but in most cases you do have to send a card to get a card. Most years I receive 40 - 50.
And actually, you are far from the only person doing Christmas cards. You may be finding that your friends just don’t send them because most of them are young and single, but once they are married and have kids that will probably change.
I say do your Christmas cards now and thank you’s in a little while. Thank you notes are SOO time consuming so it would be better not to rush on those. We made our thank you notes a #1 priority so we did them within a couple of weeks returning and then we did Christmas cards last week.
If you need to convince Mr. SB that doing thank you cards now would be insane ask him to get started and do the first 10 or so. I bet it takes him an hour just to get organized and another hour to write 10 cards. I think he will realize it is crazy!
I vote for making Mr. Sea Breeze write the ty’s, while you do the Christmas cards. That should help him see the time dilemma.
And what about writing thank you’s on a smaller, one-sided (not folded/like an RSVP card would be) piece of notepaper and sticking it inside the Christmas card? That way it is a seperate note, but you still get to avoid double postage.
Ooh, I just have to say that I think the above idea from Elizabeth is BRILLIANT!
@EAQ219: You are too funny. They are starting soon, I promise.
@Amy T: Ha ha, I might just use that. Thanks!
@Mrs. Pinot Noir: Good thinking!!I might try that. Though he will argue that he did his part of the job by making the photo slideshow DVDs (and he’d probably be right).
I would do the Christmas cards now and hold off on the Thank yous. I just did a few thank you cards for engagement gifts and can’t imagine doing them for a whole wedding in one weekend! It sounds overwhelming! i like to really personalize each note, so I may take longer, but thats just me!
I’m not married nor engaged, and I haven’t been to too many weddings, but from the POV as a guest, I think it would be important for you do to your thank you’s. This is just MY opinion, but it would seem a little tacky to hear from you (in the form of a Xmas card) without even a mention of the wedding and a thank you.
Since you are planning to make your thank you cards anyway, perhaps you can customize it to say Happy Holidays and Thank You. But like I said, I know nothing about weddings & wedding etiquette and maybe other people are more understanding and don’t think the way I do! I am definitely not trying to judge you, just giving you my perspective as someone who isn’t so familiar with wedding etiquette (as I’m sure a majority of guests generally are). Good luck!
Our wedding was November ‘07 and I used a wedding picture as the front of our Christmas cards and let them do double duty in the cases of guests who came to the wedding and/or gave us wedding gifts. It went really well!
I just got married Thanksgiving weekend. And what I did was use a picture from our wedding, which was in front of the church Christmas tree and made a Christmas photo card from walmart. Which are only 40 cents a piece. And I had small sized thank you cards that I just put in the envelope with the photo. And now I only had to buy half as many stamps, then if I did them separate, score!
If you have to pick between the two I would do thank-yous over christmas… with a “Happy Holidays” message at the end of your thank you.
If people know you went through the effort of doing xmas cards before thanking them they may be a little annoyed. I think the best thing to do is get the thank yous out IMMEDIATELY as you will likely be running into all the generous people who gave you wedding gifts over the holidays
It’s really not that hard to get them written. I recently had a shower and wrote 28 thank-you cards the evening of the shower and had them in the mail less than 24 hours after the shower ended! I really think that people appreciate an efficient (and thoughtfull) thank you.
I know this is a little bit of a tangent but I have to say I am always put off to receive recaps from friends. I thought Holiday Wishes were about wishing your friends and family well, not bragging about everything you accomplished this year (and even unintentionally it still sounds like bragging because you are not going to send bad news to people.) If you want to tell me whats going on in your life send me a letter or an email or call me. Newsletters are tacky.
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Mrs. Sea Breeze, Vancouver/Dominican Republic
Age in 2008 and Occupation: 30, Communications Manager
Fiance's Age in 2008 and Occupation: 29, Experiential Marketing Director
Engagement Date: October 6, 2007
Wedding Date: November, 2008
Blogging Since: July 17, 2008
Venue: Majestic Colonial Resort, Punta Cana
About Me: Planning a destination wedding by the sea should be (oh no she di-in't…) a breeze (…*sigh* yep, she did) but when you've never been to the Caribbean, your powers of imagination are really put to the test. Luckily, I'm 90% resourceful, creative optimist (and kooky, neurotic practicalist-if-that's-a-word for the other ten). Other than writing about our week-long celebration of family, friends, laughter and love, I adore books, shoes and… you guessed it… long walks on the beach.
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