Miss Cloud, Richmond
Age and Occupation: 25, Sales Rep
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Customer Service Manager/DJ
Engagement Date: February 14, 2008
Wedding Date: November 2009
Venue: Cathedral of the Sacred Heart & The Jefferson Hotel
About Me: Mr. Cloud and I are Yankees planning a Southern wedding to show our families from Boston and New York our fabulous city. We are complete opposites, resulting in a wedding to include bridesmaids in pearls and groomsmen in Adidas shell toes. I’m a sorority girl at heart with strong addictions to my blackberry, cherry Chapstick, Coach purses, the Boston Red Sox and our fur baby, Bella. I can’t wait to the throw the party of our lives and of course, marry my best friend!
I had already decided that I would be making almost all of our paper products (with the exception of the invitations, I’m just not that brave) and my first task was thank you cards for my showers! So, this past weekend, I decided to get to work. Back in February I had run across Make and Takes‘ tutorial for these super cute hand sewn cards. I whipped a few up and realized they were not only cute but really really easy! How hard could it be? I’ve made five Valentines, what would 25 thank yous be? Piece of cake! And, she already had a template for a very cute wedding ring design!

[Source]
So I got to work, and a few bleeding fingers later my design was sewn and ready to go.
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Mrs. Deviled Egg, Pittsburgh
Age and Occupation: 27, Public Relations
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Accounting
Engagement Date: December 24, 2007
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Blogging Since: October 21, 2008
Venue: Historic auditorium and meeting hall in one of Pittsburgh's commuter cities
About Me: I am obsessed with all things crafty, especially scrapbooking, knitting, jewelry-making & cake decorating. I also love being an aunt, wrapping presents, watching football (Go Steelers!), shopping at yard sales and consignment stores, procrastinating, singing and learning to play the guitar. When it comes to wedding planning, I'm excited about working on DIY projects and finding creative ways to stay under budget. Of course, nothing is more exciting to me than knowing that the wonderful Mr. Deviled Egg will be my husband.
Thank you notes. They have to be the most dreaded post-wedding task. (I hear you moaning and groaning right along with me.) I confess that I even gave some thought during the honeymoon in regards to how unappealing the job seemed. Even with the wedding a month behind us, I feel like I just finished writing thank you notes for the shower. Looking at the calendar, I had those finished over seven weeks ago, but, as I stare at the list of names on my wedding thank you list, it seems like it was just yesterday when I was writing notes to most of them in appreciation for the wonderful kitchen tools, bedding, towels and other gifts I was grateful to receive. And now, I have close to 100 notes to write, and I just have no motivation to check this task off of my to-do list.

Regardless, I need to get my butt in gear and get these hand-written messages of gratitude to the people who shared our day with us and/or were thoughtful enough to give us a gift. I really am thankful for all of the generosity, but just not so thrilled about the process of expressing all of that on paper.
Unfortunately for me, Mr. DE has the worst handwriting. I think he could probably do a better job if he put the pen in is toes and tried to write that way.
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Miss Mary Jane, Grand Forks, ND
Age and Occupation: 26, Instructional Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Lead Programmer
Engagement Date: February 28, 2009
Wedding Date: September 2009
Venue: City Hall
About Me: I'm a career woman on the surface and a homemaker at heart. I love fast cars and high heels, and my favorite food is cake. Mr. Mary Jane and I are both full-time employees and students, and we just bought our first house. We love to curl up on the couch with buttery popcorn, Sour Patch Kids, and the latest Netflix arrival -- whenever we can get a break from everyday life.
Mr. Mary Jane and I wanted to send thanks to a few people who really helped us out in the home-buying process. So when I ordered our “Semi-DIY” address change photo cards from Shutterfly, I added a couple of custom photo cards to the shipment.
For the front of these cards, I chose a similar (but not the same) shot to the main one used on the address cards. I ordered five 5″x7″ cards with the image printed on them and custom text inside. Here are the results:

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Miss Stiletto, Chicago
Age and Occupation: 26, Non-Profit/Fundraising
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Engineer and Photographer
Engagement Date: March 2, 2008
Wedding Date: September 2009
Venue: The 19th Century Club
About Me: My fiance and I love living in the city of Chicago with our cats Basil and Linus, and vow to never move to the suburbs if we can possibly avoid it! We’ve poured ourselves into planning a wedding that reflects our personal style - modern and high contrast with a vintage twist. Blogging keeps me creative, baking keeps me happy, and grande nonfat no foam sugar free vanilla lattes keep me sane.
I never thought I’d love a thank you card more… until I saw Etsy seller Rasideas’ “Around the House” thank you notes. The gray is just perfect (all of the walls in our condo are painted gray, and we love it!), and the clean simplicity of these cards fits our style to a T.
And, aren’t they perfect? Because at my bridal shower in July people may kindly be buying us our…

Source for all photos: Etsy
… kitchen utensils…
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Mrs. Hot Cocoa, Boston/Los Angeles
Age and Occupation: 31, JD/PhD Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 32, Medical Student
Engagement Date: May 30, 2008
Wedding Date: March, 2009
Blogging Since: April, 2008
Venue: Ritz Carlton, Marina Del Rey
About Me:
I am a professional student by day and an amateur cupcake taster, bargain shopper, and wedding planner by night. I am obsessed with NPR, the Food Network, paper, dance shows, Anthropologie, post-structuralist theory, Weddingbee!, "The Office," and celebrity gossip. When not procrastinating from my dissertation, I spend time catering to Jellyby, our overly anxious shih tzu, and getting to know Mr. Hot Cocoa. We have only been dating for fifteen years, so it's like I'm in love with a stranger! From the East Coast, we are planning a Jewish-Chinese Extravaganza in L.A., where we both grew up.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: Mr. HC has a serious case of POFAD (”put off for another day”) syndrome. Two months after our wedding, he still hasn’t sent out his thank you notes yet! Oy.
But when he finally gets around to doing it, he’ll have these three designs to choose from:

For our wedding, I’d Goccoed tags with “thanks” in English, Chinese, and Hebrew to attach to our favors.
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Miss Joey, Seattle
Age and Occupation: 28, Project Administrator for Public Health NGO
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, High School History Teacher
Engagement Date: June 24, 2008
Wedding Date: August 2009
Venue: Eastside Catholic Chapel and Lake Union Cafe
About Me: I'm a Seattle girl through and through except for the fact that I don't drink coffee. I love my job most of the time because I get to travel and work with brilliant people who are trying to prevent Malaria. I love DIY projects of all sorts, cooking, and watching sports. I'd wear anything at Anthropologie and could spend all day on Etsy. I love to travel but shouldn't because I always get myself into unbelievable situations!
Ah, the thank you cards. I knew from the beginning that I (I say I because “we” didn’t care) wanted to do postcards. I love getting postcards more than I like getting letters. Maybe it’s because I’ve sent so many as a traveler, or because I love seeing images of all the places my friends and family have visited.
Originally I was going to go with something like this:

image
And then I wanted to do something more personal, like takign a cheesy picture of Mr. Joey and me holding the presents and giving the camera a wink and a thumbs up.
The first option was doable, but I wasn’t feeling it so much.
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Mrs. Quiche, Chicago/Montego Bay
Age and Occupation: 28, Interior Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 42, Telecom Guru
Engagement Date: July 2, 2008
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Venue: Coyaba Resort, Montego Bay
About Me: I love Chicago and can’t imagine living anywhere else (Well, except Paris. Or anywhere in France, for that matter!). I’m a full-time worker, part-time student, soon-to-be-step-mom, indie music lovin’, architecture and design fanatic, macaroni and cheese addict, vegetarian, Francophile, Ohio State football obsessed, wedding planning girl. Mr. Quiche and I are “Partners-in-Crime” and cannot wait to celebrate our marriage surrounded by our family and closest friends. I plan on DIYing my little heart out (or as much as a suitcase to Jamaica will hold).
As the post-wedding days fly by, I realized it was about time to design, think of, write, address, stamp, and send thank you notes. Seem overwhelming? Even typing all of those steps out makes me start to sweat and panic, and I only have a fraction of the “normal” amount to send.

In the past, I’ve divulged my love for Dear Abby and Margo. No B.S. advice, handed down to you daily. I also love Annabel Manners—etiquette and advice for the preppy girl in me. While perusing her site (and justifying my LOVE and expense for a LWD - little white dress), I came across this service - “That’s Gratitude” - personalized, handwritten thank you notes. Done by someone else.
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Mrs. Crab Cake, Columbus, GA
Age and Occupation: 25, Registered Nurse
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 31, Director of Education and Living History for a museum
Engagement Date: April 6, 2008
Wedding Date: June, 2009
Blogging Since: November 26, 2008
Venue: Holy Family Catholic Church, reception: National Infantry Museum
About Me: I'm a perfectionist trying to balance two jobs, motherhood, my craft obsession, and wedding planning. I am obsessed with all things wedding, especially creative ideas for saving money and DIY projects. A Southern Belle at heart, I love anything southern, especially sweet tea, grits, afternoon thunder storms, crab cakes, and good old Southern hospitality. Mr. Crab Cake and I are planning a vintage inspired wedding with tons of Southern flare (can y'all say that with a thick Southern drawl?).
Inspired by this post by Miss Glitter, I took on the arduous task of creating my own thank you cards.

This tiny snapshot does not do this map justice. It’s so gorgeous. I really want to incorporate it into our home, as well.
I used the same map from our invitations, but I decided to use the whole map. Isn’t it gorgeous? I scaled it down to roughly 4×6 and printed 2 to a page.
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Mrs. Perfume, DC
Age and Occupation: 36, Consultant (and Part-Time Professor)
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 41, Consultant
Engagement Date: May 13, 2008
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Venue: The Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia
About Me: I'd like to think that I'm a modern day Little Edie Beale. Only not as..."talented". More realistically, I'm a foodie who can't bake; a dancer and dilettente; an art collector with a penchant for the whimsical and subversive. I live in the city and adore the country, but not much in between. I like smart design, great craftmanship and good value. Most of all, I love the new vintage aesthetic: classic, sweet, delicate, bespoke. If I had to do it all over again, I'd go for a culinary arts degree rather than a PhD; but wouldn't trade Mr. P for the world.
As you may know, we did not register for anything. Well, actually, we buried a pseudo registry (Honeyfund.com) in our wedding website, but didn’t think anyone would navigate to it. However, people are more tenacious than we thought! So we had some thank you cards to write (especially after the non-shower dinner the other night)!!
Initially I was going to order up some thank you notes from Lindsey (our invitation designer extraordinaire) to match our invitations. But we never got around to it. A little while back, Mr. P came up with the idea of using something that is reflective and specific to our venue (since it’s kind of like a third character in our wedding play!).

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Mrs. Deviled Egg, Pittsburgh
Age and Occupation: 27, Public Relations
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Accounting
Engagement Date: December 24, 2007
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Blogging Since: October 21, 2008
Venue: Historic auditorium and meeting hall in one of Pittsburgh's commuter cities
About Me: I am obsessed with all things crafty, especially scrapbooking, knitting, jewelry-making & cake decorating. I also love being an aunt, wrapping presents, watching football (Go Steelers!), shopping at yard sales and consignment stores, procrastinating, singing and learning to play the guitar. When it comes to wedding planning, I'm excited about working on DIY projects and finding creative ways to stay under budget. Of course, nothing is more exciting to me than knowing that the wonderful Mr. Deviled Egg will be my husband.
One of my goals post-wedding is to not purchase a greeting card for one full year, but to make them all instead. I like to think that card recipients feel a little extra special with they get a homemade card for their special occasion. I make my Christmas cards every year and randomly make birthday cards for friends and family members. With all of the wedding crafting I’ve been doing lately, I haven’t had much of a chance to make birthday cards. I did somehow manage to squeeze in some paper crafting time and put together thank you cards for my bridal shower (which I plan on writing a post about very soon!). Here is what I came up with:

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