When personalized with your own beach or destination wedding photo, the Sparkling Gratitude Thank You Card design seen here makes a memorable and stylish way to express your thanks to friends and family who brought gifts as well as wedding guests, planner and vendors.
You took to the seashore for your wedding day revelries because to you there’s no place as soothing and magical as a sparkling beach.
Bring the beachside treasures of seashells, oceanscapes and serene water colors to every detail of your wedding day, all the way to your thank you cards.
At Shutterfly® we live for inspiring brides so we pulled the best wedding thank you cards for beach babes in our midst.
Wedding thank you cards are your elegant vehicle for expressing gratitude to your nearest and dearest for bringing a gift or attending your big day. They’re also great for thanking planners, coordinators and vendors — all the special people who helped make your dream wedding come true.
After your beach or destination wedding, you’ll want to send stylish, custom thank you cards that reflect your beachside theme or design scheme.
“This is the time to have fun with you stationery suite,” says luxury wedding planner Sara Fried of Fête Nashville.
“There are so many gorgeous designs to choose from, whether you decide to stay within your wedding suite, add a fun photo of you as a couple, or something fun and cheeky that represents your chosen destination wedding city.”
Here we’ve collected our favorite beach and destination wedding thank you cards along with expert tips on how to design wedding thank you cards with your own wedding photos and designer planning tips to get you started.
Follow these steps to create your own destination or beach wedding thank you cards.
- Get inspired: Wedding thank you cards for beach and destination Weddings
- Design like the experts: Sara Fried’s tips on designing wedding thank you cards with pics
- Plan ahead: Time saving planning tips for creating the best wedding thank you cards
Wedding Thank You Cards for Beach and Destination Weddings
Get inspired with styles and themes that reflect your unique beach wedding design scheme.
“The best type of thank you cards are ones that truly represent you as a couple,” says Sara. “They can be fun and quirky or simple and classic.”
Get inspired by these five beach and destination wedding thank you cards with DIY templates you can start using now.
Fun Type Filmstrip
With a tropical island background of palm trees and a custom photo template, Fun Type Filmstrip is the perfect template for designing dreamy beach or destination wedding thank you cards.
Designed by Your Truly, Fun Type Filmstrip is a lovely beach thank you card featuring a tropical background of palm trees and a dreamy landscape with clouds. This fun template allows couples to personalize the stationery with three custom images in a filmstrip-style photo frame and their names. Inside, there’s plenty of room to write a unique letter expressing your thanks for that special gift or person who attended your wedding.
Customize Fun Type Filmstrip with your photographs and names.
Dreamy Thanks
Say thank you and create a keepsake. A beach wedding photograph turns into a romantic and memorable thank you card.
Your dream wedding was on the beach. Create the perfect beach wedding thank you cards with Dreamy Thanks, a simple template that allows you to upload your own photograph. Your favorite photograph from your beach wedding or a beach engagement shoot becomes the main background along with the words “Thank You” written across the bottom, in your choice of a peach or green color combination. Designed by Brejer, this contemporary stationery helps express your appreciation in style.
Personalize Dreamy Thanks with your photograph and write your message of thanks inside.
Splendid Watercolor
A sea green striped watercolor frame with the couple’s initials is a subtle yet elegant thank you card for beach and destination weddings.
Splendid Watercolor is a lovely contemporary thank you card featuring a couple’s initials as the main centerpiece of the card, framed by a soft sea green frame. Designed by Stacy Claire Boyd, the watercolor frame hints at the ocean for a subtle yet elegant reminder of your beach or topical destination wedding.
Order Splendid Watercolor to thank and appreciate your wedding guests.
Zigzag Border
Let the happy memories live on with a thank you card featuring a pic from your beach wedding.
With a beige zigzag border featuring the names of the newlyweds, this stationery is a modern template for couples who want to upload a custom photograph of their destination or beach wedding to their thank you cards. Add your favorite professional wedding image to instantly bring back a cherished memory from the big day and create the beach-themed look you’re going for. Designed by Brejer, this stationery is available in a matte finish and can feature a landscape or portrait image.
Start designing the perfect beach thank you card with Zigzag Border.
Simple Sparkle
Design a lovely collage of beach photos from your wedding day to create a memorable and custom wedding thank you card for your beach or destination wedding.
With the option to upload five different images from your engagement shoot or wedding day by the sea, Petite Lemon has designed a lovely photo collage template for your beach or destination wedding. This design allows you to express your theme and thank your friends and family for their love, support and gifts.
Order the Simple Sparkle thank you card to share your heartfelt gratitude.
Sara Fried’s Tips on Designing Wedding Thank You Cards with Pics
We hope you’re feeling inspired. Here, Sara Fried offers her pro designer tips on how to design your own wedding thank you cards with custom images.
Your favorite wedding photograph can transform an ordinary thank you card into a memorable keepsake your friends and family will appreciate. Just be sure to ask your photographer for photos in advance.
Pick your favorite wedding photograph. “Adding a photograph from the wedding is the best way to make your thank you card memorable,” says Sara.
If you don’t use a professional one, make sure the resolution is high enough for quality printing.
“With all the advances in photography, even cell phone pics can print out beautifully if it’s a nicely composed, focused photograph.”
Get creative. “If you want to do something extra creative at your destination wedding, you can plan ahead with your photographer to take a photo for your thank you card,” says Sara. For example, you can hold a “thank you” sign or banner at the beach.
Plan ahead. Be sure to communicate with your wedding photographer that you’ll need a few polished photos immediately after the wedding day.
Most photographers can take up to eight weeks to provide professional images but with the knowledge beforehand, they can provide you with photos you can use for your thank you cards and other gifts.
Skip the postcard. Whether you had a formal or casual beach wedding, go with a folded or flat card with an accompanying envelope. Postcards are too informal and not appropriate for wedding thank you cards.
Time Saving Planning Tips for Creating the Best Wedding Thank You Cards
“Let’s face it, writing thank you notes is not our favorite part of wedding planning. But they are necessary and oh so appreciated, especially when it comes to destination weddings,” says Sara.
To help simplify the process, plan ahead! Here, seven thank you card design planning tips, straight from the award-winning wedding planning team at Fête Nashville.
- Consider pre-printed return addresses. Who doesn’t want to save time on the thank you note process? A simple way to do just that is to order your envelopes with pre-printed return addresses.
“We always encourage clients to take advantage of the option to have your return address pre-printed on the envelope – what a time saver,” says Sara.
- Record gifts as they arrive. A simple and effective way to get organized is to start a spreadsheet that allows you to document your gifts as they arrive. Sara suggests creating two columns.
“The first column is to record the gifts as you receive them, and the second column will be used to document the date you send a thank you note. This way, you have the address already in front of you and you can keep organized with all the notes,” says Sara.
- Get a head start on the writing process. How? Write them in batches as your gifts arrive.
“Every week or so, set up a clean work space (without any drinks on the table) with your thank you notes, postage stamps and pens, turn on some music and get caught up. You’ll be so grateful after the wedding that you have a head start,” says Sara.
- Invest in good writing pens. Black is the traditional color ink for thank you cards. However, the team at Fête Nashville is currently obsessed with dark grey ink pens right now. Sara warns couples to stay away from blue or colored pens for thank you notes.
- Be specific in your correspondence. “Thank your guests for the thoughtful gift they gave you and let them know how you will use it. If they attended the wedding, thank them for that as well,” says Sara.
- Divide the workload. Writing thank you cards is a big task. Think about sharing the load with your other half. Sara suggests dividing the cards based on the family or friend who gave the gift.
- Consider easy options for multiple return addresses. “Many couples get an address change around the time of their wedding,” says Sara. “They are either moving in together or buying a home soon after the wedding.
In this case, we love the beautifully designed self-inking rubber stamp return address option! You can have one designed for the thank you cards being sent currently, and then after your move, you can still use the thank you cards, but order a new return address stamp.
Just be sure to send out a moving announcement with your new address, especially since guests may send wedding gifts up to a year after the wedding!”
One more reminder: While it’s customary to use the guests’ formal names on the outside of the envelope, Sara reminds couples to write a personal, familiar salutation on the inside, such as “Dear Aunt Gretchen and Uncle Randy.”
For more on how to word and send your thank you cards, read our complete etiquette guide: Wedding Thank You Wording and Etiquette: When to Send & What to Write in Wedding Thank You Cards.
Personalized Beach Wedding Thank You Cards
Shutterfly® has a large selection of wedding thank you stationery and templates that allow you to express your gratitude in style.
Begin designing personalized beach wedding thank you cards for your beach or destination wedding.
