Thank You Messages

If your friends, workmates and/or relatives have gathered together to throw a baby shower for you, it's important to thank them and let them know that you noticed and appreciated their efforts.

There's quite a lot involved in organising a baby shower and often there will be a number of people who have contributed their time and energy you'll need to thank them all.

While you'll no doubt thank them personally at the time, it's customary for the guest of honour that's the mum-to-be to send a note to thank everyone who has organised, contributed to and attended the baby shower, as well as each guest who has given or sent a card and/or a gift.

It doesn t have to be a long letter just a short, sincere, personal note.

Baby Shower Thank You note Do's and Don'ts

• Do send your hosts and guests thank you notes as soon as possible after the baby shower; a good guide is to post the notes around three to four days after the shower.
• Don t hand out generic thank you notes at the end of the shower. If you are giving everyone a thank you goody bag, that's great, but you should still send a personal thank you note after the event.
• Do hand-write each person's name and a message of a sentence or so thanking them for their gift and help, even if you are sending pre-printed cards.
• Don t write anything critical or negative. If you didn t like the gift, be tactful thank the person for their thoughtfulness.
• Do mention the actual gift that each person gave you rather than thanks for your kind gift, write thank you for the lovely rattle or towels or whatever!
• Don t use the thank you note to ask if you can exchange the gift. That's a conversation that should happen in person or by phone. The purpose of the thank you note is to express appreciation.
• Do use personal language Dear Name, is the best way to start; and sign off with something affectionate like Love from or warm regards.
• Don t make it really formal or impersonal; use some pretty notepaper or a small-sized card rather than a computer-printed letter.
• Do address your thank-you note to the person or people who signed the baby shower card that accompanied the gift.

Sending Baby Shower Thank You notes for gifts

By planning in advance, you can make the task of sending shower thank you notes to your guests much easier.

Ask one of your hosts for help to record the name of each guest and their gift when you have opened them. Will you open each gift as the guests arrive or open them at the end?

Where will people put gifts when they arrive? It's very common to set a table up not far from the entrance door where gifts can be placed.

A good way to keep track of which guest gave which gift, is to write the gift on the back of each baby shower card when you open the gift, and then keep the cards in a separate pile.

Another option is to have a blank piece of paper and pen on the gift table and give a friend the job of writing down the name of each guest and the gift at the time the presents are opened.

Quite often, baby shower invitations may have been given out personally. It is a whole lot easier to send your thank-you notes all at once, by mail, if you can so you will need to ensure that you have each guest's mailing address.

The best place to collect these is at the actual baby shower and it doesn t have to involve a huge effort. One great idea is to ask each guest to hand-address their own envelopes or a sticker that will go onto an envelope, at some stage of the baby shower.

Perhaps you can have a blank name and address sticker next to a pre-written name-tag sticker for each guest. When they arrive and receive their name-tag, either the person handing out name tags can write out the name and address sticker or you can ask the guest to write their name and address.

Another option, if you are giving thank you goody-bags at the end, is to ask each guest to address an envelope with their mailing address at the time that they are leaving.

How do you thank someone for a gift of money?

Gifts of money or voucher gifts can be really useful. When you write a thank you note to someone who has given money or a voucher, rather than mention the exact amount, it's often better to thank them for their generosity and give them an idea of how their gift might be used.

For example, Thanks so much for your generous gift, it has come at just the right time as we need to buy our baby a new pram and this will be such a help.

Can you send a thank you by email?

Generally, handwritten notes are best for a thank you but if you and your guest are totally digital-based people, email is fine.

Just try and make sure that each thank you email is a sincere and personal message don t do too much cut-and-pasting in the thank you email, or it will seem that you haven t appreciated your guests efforts enough to make much of an effort yourself.

Sending Baby Shower Thank You notes to the hosts and organisers

Organising a baby shower can take a lot of time and effort and it's a real gesture of love. Until you actually organise a shower yourself, you often don t realise just how much work is involved.

If your friends, relatives or colleagues have hosted a baby shower for you, do make sure that you let them know that you appreciate what they have done.

A thank-you note to the baby shower hosts should be a little different to the note you send to your guests and those who gave or sent gifts. It's worth raising the level of enthusiasm, effusiveness and appreciation a notch or two to let the hosts know that you noticed and you appreciate their efforts.

At the time of the baby shower it can be really difficult to keep an eye on everything that is going on. But when the shower is finished, try and find a few quiet minutes to think about all the things that happened, and who you need to thank for these.

Hosting the Baby shower The big and little details to thank your hosts for

There's lots of little details that all add up to a successful baby shower. Below is a list of many of the typical baby shower activities that one or more of your friends may have done.

If you're not sure who did what, phone one of your friends to check. No-one likes to be overlooked!

Don t forget to write a note to each person involved and list as many things as you can.

• Arranged a venue or offered their own home as the venue for the shower
• Wrote out a guest list, found guest contact details, sent invitations to guests, received and chased up RSVP notes, kept guests informed about the arrangements
• Set out a budget, planned a theme and games and activities for the shower
• Paid for some or all of the baby shower
• Organised a caterer and/or planned and set up a menu for the party
• Purchased decorations, plates, cups, cutlery, serviettes, balloons, etc
• Organised the venue details or held the shower in their home, cleaned and decorated their home or prepared the venue, organised decorations, signs or welcoming notes at the venue or their home.
• Purchased and prepared food and drinks, baked cakes, made sandwiches, prepared other dishes
• Purchased the things needed for the baby shower games, including prizes
• Organised thank you goody bags for the end of the baby shower
• Made or purchased and presented a cake
• Set out plates, glasses, cups, arranged furniture, blew up balloons
• Welcomed the guests, gave them name-tags and introduced them around
• Organised and ran each of the baby shower games
• Served the food and drinks
• Took photographs or videos and then provided them to the guest of honour later
• Helped co-ordinate gifts and names for thank you notes
• Farewelled the guests and stayed behind to clean up

And when you are thanking your hosts for all their work don t forget to thank them for their gift as well!