Monday, January 30, 2006

So we have a bit of a wedding gift dilemma. Because everyone was incredibly generous, the gift management got a little out of control. I did well keeping up with the thank you notes for the gifts we received before Christmas, but since then it became a hodge-podge of invoices/notes for things shipped to us that I keep in my daily tote bag and the neat list that my mother wrote when we opened the gifts received at the wedding itself after we got back from the honeymoon. I thought all gifts were accounted for, but they are not. Fortunately, I think we’ll be able to sort it out but here’s the confusion:

1. One lovely gift at the wedding that either had no card or got separated from its card.

2. Two cards with no gifts attached at the wedding.

3. An email notification of a gift purchased from a registry. We never really knew if that gift arrived because…

4. Several gifts were shipped to us that had no gift enclosure cards or any other indication from whom they came.

From that list we’ve only got 2 or 3 unreconciled things - the lovely gift with no card at the wedding and the two cards with no gifts at the wedding. However, I just nailed down a gift with one of those cards, which was part of item #3 - a phone call to that registry to inquire about that notification verified that we did indeed receive that gift. But it opened another question about the quantity received of that particular item because I know we received some of that item from more than allows for what we have. Are you confused yet? Anyhow, the mystery of item #1 is now clarified some because I’m pretty sure the other lone card from the wedding actually goes with item #1.

And we have so many thank you notes to write. If there is one piece of advice I can give to engaged couples and brides especially it is to keep up with your thank you notes as you receive gifts - don’t let more than a couple of weeks pass before you get them out because it won’t take long before you get behind and it seems overwhelming. You do not want to have to do all of your thank you notes after you’re married - you’ll be dealing with adjusting to your new home routine, which is fun but a huge time waster. But that’s another post for another day.

Funny related note: We attended a wedding in August and just received the thank you note from that couple last week. So I’m feeling pretty good that we may be able to get our notes out a little quicker than that.