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Record gifts as they arrive: don't try to reconstruct who gave what after the wedding
Thank-you cards go out within 3 months of the wedding. Being able to write them depends on knowing who gave what.
Record in the moment, don't reconstruct
On the day you'll receive: cash in red envelopes, wrapped gifts, registry items shipped straight to your home, and some things with no name attached.
If it isn't recorded then, three weeks later you'll sit down to write cards facing a pile of things you can't attribute.
How: assign one person with a notebook or their phone. Someone has to be responsible for the gift money anyway (see item 114 of the checklist), so give them the recording job too.
The fields are simple: name / contents or amount / when and how it arrived.
Keep the red envelope ledger separate from the cash
Two reasons: if the cash is lost you still know who gave what; and the ledger is private and shouldn't sit in the same easily-searched place as the money (see item 114 of the checklist).
An extra use at Chinese weddings
The gift money record isn't only for thank-you cards; it's the basis for reciprocating later.
Chinese social exchange runs long: how much you give when they marry, how you handle a happy occasion in their family, all refer back to what you received. Keep this record long term rather than discarding it once the cards are written.
After the wedding, turn it into a spreadsheet, confirm the amounts with the elders, and file it.
Make the cards specific
Mention the actual gift or the actual help, not boilerplate.
"Thank you for the gift" and "thank you for the coffee cups, we use them every morning" are entirely different things. The second proves you know what they gave and that you're using it.
Write to people who gave no gift but helpedRemember to write cards for the wedding party, the relatives who helped with airport runs, and the elders who managed the gift table. They put in far more heart and effort than just giving a present.
Three months is a ceiling, not a target
The sooner the better. In practice, write in batches:
- Gifts that arrived before the wedding (registry shipments) can be written before the wedding
- A batch two weeks after
- Another batch when you're back from the honeymoon
A hundred cards in one sitting never gets finished; three sittings of thirty is entirely doable.
Choosing the language
Write in Chinese to elders in Taiwan and in English to American friends. That sounds obvious, but plenty of people use one language throughout for convenience. For an older relative, receiving a handwritten card in Chinese feels completely different.
In one line
Record as you go, keep the red envelope ledger long term (it's the basis for reciprocating), write specifically, and split it into three batches.