What do you call them in the message \u2014 a first name, Mom and Dad, or nothing at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nUse whatever you already say out loud at their kitchen table. A card is not the place to try out a new form of address, and a written Mom from somebody who has always used a first name reads as a decision rather than a greeting. If you have never settled on anything, the honest fix is to write the message without an opening name at all: Happy birthday, and thank you for the welcome works perfectly well and nobody notices the gap. Couples do not have to match, either. Your partner can write Mom above the fold and you can write her name underneath, and it looks entirely normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have met a handful of times. How warm is too warm?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAim for cordial and specific rather than affectionate and vague. A short message that thanks them for one real thing \u2014 the welcome, the meal, the offer of a room over a long weekend \u2014 always reads better than a long one claiming a closeness that has not had time to build. Avoid the sweeping lines: best mother-in-law in the world, so lucky to have you in my life. They are the phrases people reach for when they have nothing concrete to say, and the recipient can tell. Two or three plain sentences with one true detail in them is the whole job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Should the card come from me or from both of us as a couple?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFor a parent-in-law, one card from the two of you is standard and easier on everybody. Sign it in both hands, and if the message is yours rather than shared, let your partner add a line so the card is not one voice speaking for two. Where a separate card from you does make a difference is when the message says something only you would say \u2014 a thank you for how you were received, or for help during a hard stretch. In that case send your own, keep it short, and do not turn it into a competing card. Children’s names go on the same card, not on a third one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family chat fills up with birthday messages. What is worth writing there?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nSomething that is not the fortieth version of the same line. The chat rewards specificity and brevity in equal measure: one detail, one wish, done. It also helps to arrive at a different time than everyone else \u2014 a message in the evening, after the rush has passed, gets read properly instead of scrolled through. Keep the private material private. A group chat is the wrong venue for anything you would not say at the table with all the same people present, and anything longer than a few lines is better sent directly to them anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is humour safe in a birthday message to in-laws?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nYes, as long as the joke is not about the relationship itself. The stock in-law material has been worn down to nothing and it always lands as a comment on how things stand between you, even when it is not meant that way. Age is best avoided too unless they joke about it first. What does work is a joke about a shared and harmless fact: the disputed recipe, the number of times a repair has been attempted, the ongoing argument about the thermostat. Keep it to one line, follow it with a straight sentence, and let the sincere part be the one the message ends on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In-law birthdays are the ones people rewrite four times. The relationship is real but it has no agreed vocabulary: too formal and the card reads like something from an office, too familiar and it lands as though you were trying to prove a point. It also varies enormously \u2014 some of us married into a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":5450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3639],"tags":[],"moimportance":[],"motype":[],"moformat":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greetings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5453,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5449\/revisions\/5453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5449"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=5449"},{"taxonomy":"motype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motype?post=5449"},{"taxonomy":"moformat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ottawa.name\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moformat?post=5449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}