Okay, so the other day, my buddy invited me over for dinner. I gotta say, it was pretty awesome, and I wanted to send a proper thank you note. First thing I did was grab my phone and hit up Google. I just searched for some examples of “thank you for dinner notes” to get some ideas.
I found a bunch of different examples, some were super formal and others were more chill. I wanted something in between, you know? Not too stuffy, but also not like I was just texting a quick “thx”. I looked at a few different websites that had lists of examples. Some were just a single sentence, like, “Thank you so much for dinner last night!” Others were a bit longer and talked about how good the food was and how much they enjoyed the company.
After looking through a few, I started to get a good feel for what I wanted to say. I jotted down a few ideas on a notepad, trying out different phrases. I knew I wanted to mention how delicious the food was, specifically calling out the main dish, which was this amazing lasagna my friend made. I also wanted to say how much I enjoyed just hanging out and catching up.
- Draft 1: “Thanks for dinner! It was great.” (Too short, too basic.)
- Draft 2: “Thank you for the invitation to dine at your residence last evening. The meal was exquisite.” (Way too formal, sounded like a robot wrote it.)
- Draft 3: “Hey! Dinner was so good last night. That lasagna was the bomb! We should hang out again soon.” (Getting closer, but still not quite there.)
I played around with the wording for a bit, making sure it sounded natural and sincere. I wanted it to sound like me, not like some generic template. I read each draft out loud a few times, like an idiot, to see how it sounded, I guess that’s what you do.
Here is the final version
Finally, I settled on something I liked. I grabbed a nice little notecard I had lying around and wrote it out neatly. I even added a little smiley face at the end because, why not? Here’s what I ended up with:
“Hey! Thank you so much for having me over for dinner last night. That lasagna was absolutely delicious! I had such a great time catching up with you. We should definitely do it again soon! :)”
I popped it in the mail the next day. Hopefully, my friend liked it. It felt good to express my gratitude in a thoughtful way. It’s the little things, right?
