Thank you Notes from Hell

Jan-Jun 2000 Archive
Jul-Dec 2000 Archive
2000 Archive

I had this friend, Jeremy whom I had known since is was about 15 years old... When this event took place I was 23 (I am now 28).. anyway, Jeremy had this strange habit of dating women for long periods of time & telling all his friends he was going to get married... anyway, he did this with 3 different girls in college & oops! no marriage! So he meets Angie... about a month after they start dating they get engaged... I was waiting tables at a restaurant in our college town & he told me the happy news while I was pouring them water (tacky enough, first of all)..... I get invited to the wedding & cannot attend.. I called the groom myself (I didn't know his bride to be at all) to tell him the situation, and he is not pleased, but he accepts the fact that I cannot be there on his big day...

Not long after the wedding - I move cross country, and having just graduated from college didn't have money for a gift right away (Jeremy knew my financial situation - he did know my major in college)... I sent them a letter wishing them congratulations & telling them what was going on with me, and then a month after that (I had saved for 2 months) I sent the a nice wedding gift along with another note wishing them happiness...Okay, maybe I was over the top with trying to make up for NOT attending the wedding, but what happens next goes beyond the boundaries of taste...

About 3 months went by, and I had not received a thank you note (I really wanted one to make sure the gift had arrived...)& so I called my old friend, the groom... I left a voice-mail at his office that went like this.."hi, Jeremy - just calling to see how married life was treating you & also, just wanted to make sure the package I sent arrived safely..." now, as I said before - he was one of my closest friends & I didn't think it would be a problem to ask him this & I didn't know his wife at all & didn't want to bother her... WELL... I received a phone call from HIS WIFE & it went as follows: Angie: Hello, Rachel? This is Angie, Jeremy's wife.. Rachel: Oh, HI!! I guess Jeremy gave you the message... did you all get the gift okay? Angie: Yes, we got it... Listen, I don't know what your momma ever taught you, but you DON'T call married men at work... (I was SO shocked I almost dropped the phone...) I responded with the first thing that popped into my mind (and not exactly the classiest response, I admit) Rachel: Oh, really, well I don't know what your momma taught you, but when you receive a gift in the mail... you send a "bleeping" thank you note! (& hung up the phone)...
thanks0103-01

Who knows what paranoia lies in the hearts of women? I introduced an ex-boyfriend to a college friend. They were a perfect match! After a few years, they became engaged. I was sincerely happy for them as both were dear friends from different circles. My relationship with the groom was short-lived and several years ago. I was also engaged to my future husband. I spent more time with the bride as the wedding approached, and rarely saw her fiancé. I was a bridesmaid and organized all of the fittings and purchases of bridesmaid dresses and had the final details perfected two weeks before the big day.

The bride was excited about entertaining by the pool of their new home, so my gift was a patio sideboard. The wedding occurred without a single hitch. At the reception, the tearful bride even toasted me for introducing them, and "dragging me to meet what turned out to be the best thing that had ever happened to her." A month later, I received the usual thank-you note for my gift. After the requisite thank you, she wrote, "I know it was really a gift to Joe but we can pretend it was for me too. I appreciate the special relationship you had with him, but that has to end now. I'm sure you understand what I mean. Love, Lynn." Verbatim. All I could do was laugh and shake my head! I have no idea what convinced her that I was after her husband. We have heard nothing since Lynn declined our wedding invitation, saying on the RSVP, "Sorry we can't come, but I hope you understand." Two references to understanding something that still mystifies me in completely inappropriate forums! Oh well. The next time I'm in a wedding, I'll make sure I never see the groom.   Thanks0301-01

I grew up reading the endless stream of letters to Ann Landers from a guest who hadn't received a Thank You from the bride. I always said to myself "how could anyone be that rude! I would never do that!" When I got married, I IMMEDIATELY wrote Thank Yous for everything, and was quite proud of myself, thinking all the time about all those letters to Ann Landers. About 4 months later, my mother called me and said "You DID write and thank so-and-so for such-and-such, didn't you?" I assured her I did. A few weeks later she asked again, about someone else. And someone else. In fact, she received about a dozen discreet inquiries about whether I had received gifts. Here is (apparently) what happened, though it's all conjecture. At the time, we lived in the country and had one of those rural mailboxes out on the road. I had mailed all of the Thank Yous the way I always sent mail--by leaving it in the box with the flag up. The only explanation is that one big batch of Thank Yous just never made out of--or perhaps into--the mailman's pick-up truck. That was nearly 25 years ago and I've moved six or seven times since, but I have NEVER left an outgoing piece of mail in the mailbox again. I take it to the post office. --  thanks0308-01

I was a bridesmaids in my friend's wedding. 10 months passed before thank you notes were sent out. Even then, she sent out a photocopied form letter! She took the opportunity to thank everyone for the generous gift (obviously not specifying what it was), announce her new address and the fact the she is expecting. Some of the thank yous were addressed to "Jane Doe and Guest". Talk about tacky!
Thanks0326-01

My story is kind of a long one. My husband and I got married about 1 year ago. One of the ushers insisted on giving us a wedding gift. Let's call him Bill. Bill had just graduated college and didn't have a lot of money to spare. We told him not to, but he did anyway. Bill wrote us a check for a certain amount of money. After the honeymoon, we cashed it and went on our way. About a month later, we get a statement back from the bank stating that the check we cashed had "insufficient funds". Bill's check bounced!! The second part of the story happens about 5 months later when Bill gets married. My husband and I got the couple a nice gift. In the course of transporting the gifts from the wedding to the new couples house, our gift slid out of the gift bag and into the truck. The parents of the groom just stuffed the tissue paper into the gift bag. I had the foresight to tape the card securely to the bag, so they would know who the gift was from. When the couple read the card and opened the gift bag, they found nothing! They thought we were playing a joke on them, since his gift bounced! We got a thank you card that simply stated "Thanks for nothing". We called and got everything straightened out...and are still good friends with the couple to this day.    Thanks0910-01

One couple whose wedding we attended sent , not thank you notes, but very bad photocopies of wedding photos and the wife’s work reference from her boss. The only personal touch was the names on the envelope this came in. Very odd.   Thanks0915-01

As a gift to a friend of mine who was getting married, my mother offered to make the cake for their reception. She has made wedding cakes on a number of occasions and felt this would be a way for her to not only provide a gift, but help the bride and groom save a great deal of money on their wedding day as they were typical struggling college students. My friend came to our house and looked through several cake books my mother had and they designed her dream cake--complete with 4 double tiers and blue icing roses. The sheer size of the intended cake turned out to be a major feat of engineering, but Mom had it all figured out. She took two days off work baking cakes and making blue icing roses and icing cakes and piping on borders and making blue icing roses and....you get the idea. The day of the wedding, my sister and Mom loaded the cakes into the car, drove to the reception site and set up the cake--it was beautiful, flawless and about 4 feet tall. They made it to the ceremony minutes before it started. The ceremony ended, Mom and sister went to McDonald's for lunch because they figured the reception wouldn't start for another hour or so and they were starving. They assumed the pictures would take a while after the ceremony ended. Well, they didn't take long at all. The bride and groom were at the reception hall less than 1/2 an hour after the ceremony ended, digging into the cake. All the guests were starving and the only food at the reception was the cake and two trays of fruit. Well, the fruit was already long gone by the time the wedding party showed up and so the bride and groom decided to cut the cake at the beginning of the reception. By the time Mom and sister got there, the cake was completely dismantled and 1/2 gone. They hadn't had time to take pictures before going to the ceremony and they certainly didn't want any now... Several months after the wedding, Mom is still waiting for a thank-you or at least a picture of the complete cake.    Thanks0131-01

This is regarding one of many etiquette faux pas my now Brother in law and his wife committed during and after their very expensive wedding back in the summer of 1998. 'Andrew' and 'Averil' were very particular about sending the invitations and enclosed a note about their wedding registry - they had registered in two very expensive stores, one dealing with their china and another for everything else for their house. My husband, his sister and I were all participating in their wedding as best man and bridesmaids and as we were asked to contribute a significant amount of money to pay for dresses Averil designed (130 bucks each), we felt we didn't need to spend a lot of money on a big wedding gift. We all pitched in and bought a lot of the kitchen items on their registry list - cooking utensils and the like and had them shipped to their house before the wedding.

On the day of the wedding, Averil was in an awful mood. Wouldn't speak with any of us in the wedding party, huffed around the house yelling at people, and stormed out and refused to take pictures with the rest of us in her bridal party. When it came to leaving for the church, us bridesmaids were mortified to discover she hadn't bothered to arrange transportation for us to get to the church - and she left with her father in a big limo, leaving us to call the mother of the groom in desperation to pick us up. The rest of the day was a shambles. Although the ceremony itself was okay, the tension and bad vibes from the morning just left us feeling upset. All in all, the whole of the wedding party (apart from the bride and groom) just did not have a good day at all. Afterwards, we were hoping for some sort of thank you or acknowledgement from them for all that we did before and during the wedding. In the least, we were expecting a thank you for the wedding gifts we had purchased and sent to their house before the wedding. Three months after their honeymoon in Barbados, we received a Xeroxed, fill-in-the-blank thank you note: Dear ___, Thank you for the gifts. The _______ are lovely. Love, Andrew and Averil. [this part was hand written:] PS: thanks for participating in the wedding. Apparently they did this for us and the groom's side of the family. Needless to say, we've had several holidays and birthdays since then, and that was the only occasion we ever received a thank you. My husband and I have decided not to bother with presents or cards again. It's caused a lot of tension in our family!   Thanks0217-01

Last year (11 months ago now), I was a bridesmaid in the wedding of two very close friends. They are very dear to me, and I was honored to be a part of their celebration. We live in different cities, about 10 hours apart. I still live in the city where we all went to college, along with many of our mutual friends. In the months preceding their wedding, I co-hosted a shower and bachelorette party (and gave a nice gift). I also purchased a bridesmaid's dress, traveled to the wedding, and purchased a very nice $100+ gift for them. I also helped with many of the pre-wedding tasks. I did not receive a thank-you gift as a bridesmaid, but I really didn't mind at that point because I was so happy for them. Up until yesterday, I had not received a thank-you note from them. I was a little put out, especially considering the lengths and expense I had gone to for them, but since they are such nice people I figured it had simply gotten lost in the mail. I would never have dreamed that they were tacky enough to not send a thank-you note acknowledging the time and money I spent. Yesterday, I received a thank-you note. It was written to all of us in the bridal party. We all live in the same city. I guess we were supposed to read the note and somehow pass it to the next person listed. And as if this weren't enough, they didn't even waste a stamp on this one group thank-you note! A friend of ours had been to visit them, and they simply gave him the note to give to all of us when he returned! Humph. These people are dear friends, but really. When I get married, they will be the very first to get an ultra-personal thank-you note!  Thanks0204-01