With Thanksgiving in front of us and Christmas right around the corner, this time of year can become stressful for those dealing with fitting in to a new family.  I’ve heard way too many times that you aren’t just marrying your spouse at your wedding–your marrying their whole family!  Here are some links to help you deal with hosting or visiting the in-laws during the holidays:

-Associated Content offers this helpful article on hosting your parents or in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner.  Among them, make sure to include recipes from both sides of the family in your dinner so that they both feel equally honored.

-eHow.com has some steps for coping with meddling in-laws.  Remember, as hard as it may be, it’s always better to be the bigger person.  Respond accordingly!

-Distract your fellow family members with gifts!  Reader’s Digest has a list of gift ideas for the in-laws on their blog.

-Yahoo has a list of survival tips for the holidays.  At least one of these is sure to work.  If not, check out author Dina Koutas Poch’s book”I Heart My In-Laws…” for even more guidance.

-Finally, a personal tip: before you head out or have people over, make sure you and your significant other are on the same page.  You have to be able to support one another.  Isn’t that what marriage is all about?

Getting through those big stack of thank yous may not be your way of having a good time, however it simply must be done and I’d say the sooner the better. So to help you through the process, here are a few tips on ways to make writing those wedding thank you cards pain free!

1. Writing a thank you card actually begins when you start sending out your invitations. Make sure you keep everyone’s contact information in a spreadsheet. Google has a documents program that allows you to share files with others. This way you and your significant other can keep track of your information in the same place.

2. Either mail out all of your thank you cards at the same time or do it by family. If not, you’ll run into the same issues as me and have some people calling to find out what happened to their thank you card since they heard someone else already got theirs.

3. Clarify any questions early! As you receive each gift, look for a card or gift tag. If there are presents without any name attached to it or the card says from: The Smiths and you have two relatives with the same name, clarify things with the gift givers right away.

4. Order extra thank you cards. I’ve made so many mistakes on my thank yous and had to throw them away. Having 25 extra ones really made a difference especially since I didn’t account for cards to our vendors.

5. Do a little at a time. So that the task seems less daunting commit to doing say 5 or 10 cards a day. Then just push through the process. What I told my husband was that these people deserved a nice card for all of their efforts getting to our wedding and for their generous gifts. It was worth the bit of discomfort to get them a well worth the wait thank you card!