Written by 
After nearly a year of wedding planning, the last thing I wanted to do after the big day was yet another task: Writing 50 thank you notes for the guests.
I’ve heard of people using ChatGPT to draft wedding speeches, but what about thank you notes? Beyond wedding planning, what about other types mass communications that might entail a lot of copying and pasting, but also need small tweaks for each recipient?
The idea of automating a note to a close friend or family member initially felt wrong to me, especially for such a meaningful event. In the past, I’ve even written about how sending AI-crafted missives without disclosing it can be disingenuous, or even deceptive. Ideally, all of my guests would get handwritten, personalized notes—a sincere token of my gratitude.
But the more I thought about it, the idea of getting a little help to fight the final boss of wedding planning sounded pretty appealing. I started asking other brides how they handled the task, and there was more variation than I expected. One sent everyone a card that was pre-printed with “thank you for your gift, your presence was so appreciated on our big day.” Boom. Done.
So I went against my original instinct and turned to ChatGPT (screw the old tradition, I’m tired!) Here’s how I got AI to crank out all 50 cards in seconds, customize them for each guest, and save me from multiple hours of tedium and a sore hand.
ChatGPT vs. Google Gemini
My first task was to determine which chatbot was best-suited for the task. I chose between the free versions of ChatGPT and Google Gemini, my go-to chatbots for everyday tasks. My choice would depend on which one could accept the data for the cards. I had already collected the following data points for each person and assembled it in a three-column Google Sheet:
I first sent Google Gemini the link to the spreadsheet. It could read a fellow Google product’s content, right? Wrong. Surprisingly, it was not able to, citing “security and privacy restrictions,” even though the Sheet was created on my account. Gemini asked me to put the information in a text file, but that would require pulling each data point out and arranging it in a list—more work!
Perhaps Gemini Advanced ($20/month) could’ve handled the task, but I was done spending any cash on wedding-related tasks.
(Credit: Google Gemini)
Luckily, ChatGPT was up for the job, and able to pull the data from the Google Sheet.
“I need help writing thank you letters for my wedding,” I said. “If I give you a spreadsheet with the names and gifts, can you generate drafts of each letter?”
“Absolutely! I’d be happy to help with that,” ChatGPT responded.” If you upload the spreadsheet, I’ll generate drafts for each thank you letter based on the names and gifts provided.”
I sent it the link, and it got to work.
(Credit: ChatGPT)
Data, Drafts, Done
Rather than immediately producing all 50 notes from the get-go, ChatGPT first generated five to see if I liked the direction it was going. They appeared in the chat window, with a line break between them.
The draft approach was helpful so I could approve the tone, length, and format. It was also a smart approach from a computing power standpoint, given the serious environmental impact of AI. Why waste energy on all 50 if I don’t like the first one?
The length and tone looked solid. I asked it to remove “Dear” from the salutation, and to add a custom signoff: “Love, Emily and Tony.” A small note appeared that ChatGPT had updated its “Memory” with a note that my name is Emily, and my spouse is Tony. Creepy or useful? Time will tell. For now, I had work to do.
(Credit: ChatGPT)
I also asked it to play with tone, and try out a “funnier” vibe. But that ended up being corny, and sounded less like my voice, so I reverted back to the original tone, and gave it the go-ahead to produce all 50 notes.
They spat out in just 10 or 15 seconds. Amazing. But I wasn’t comfortable printing and sending them without a careful review. I copy and pasted the output into a Google Doc, and sent it to my husband for a second look. We made lots of tweaks, and a few that applied to almost every note, which we realized we could’ve put in the ChatGPT prompt.
Recommended by Our Editors
For the non-English speaking guests, we put the notes back into ChatGPT to translate them. In my testing, it provided more natural-sounding translations than Google Translate (although Google is rapidly improving Translate to keep up with AI competitors.) In hindsight, we could’ve put a “Translate Y/N” column in the original spreadsheet, for ChatGPT to do that task from the get-go.
(Credit: Emily Dreibelbis)
In the end, I felt confident they were far from 100% written by ChatGPT, but grateful for the time-saving starting point it gave us. Truthfully, if I had written them from scratch myself I probably would have taken a similarly formulaic approach to keep things simple. It’s possible that using ChatGPT helped me create more meaningful, customized notes, since I had extra energy to have some fun with the edits.
There was one thing I sacrificed with this approach, which I’m still not totally happy with: They are not handwritten. As the last step, I printed out each note and taped it inside a card. I couldn’t help but draw a small heart on each one as “proof” that I did them myself.
“You used AI? That’s awesome,” my mom said when she saw the envelopes on the counter. Older generation-approved.
Think Outside the Card
Though weddings are (hopefully) a one-time thing, you could use this approach for any form of mass communication. It could be to create custom invitations for an event, or even emails at work.
Let’s say you’re organizing a project and have a long list of tasks that different people need to do. If you created a similar spreadsheet with the person’s name, task, and any extra instructions, ChatGPT could crank out draft emails for you to review and then send. In the prompt, you could ask it to include a standard blurb on the status of the project to get everyone up to speed, for example.
The goal is to avoid spending time manually copy and pasting, and crafting very similar communications to a large group of people. It can’t do all the work for you—I still spent at least 6 hours from start to finish (collecting the data for the spreadsheet, putting all the envelopes together, writing the addresses, applying stamps, etc.)—but at least it made one portion of the process a lot easier.
How do you use AI to make your life easier? Share your best clever tricks in the comments below.
Get Our Best Stories!
Sign up for What’s New Now to get our top stories delivered to your inbox every morning.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
About Emily Dreibelbis Forlini
Senior Reporter
Read the latest from Emily Dreibelbis Forlini