Wedding and thank-yous

I recently got married and one of the final things to do was hanging over my head, writing thank you notes. I sat on the couch last week with the pile of cards and started the painful task of writing them. How can you say "thank you for the money" without really saying so?
Since a lot of my family is from New Jersey many (or almost all) got the "thank you for making the trip to be with us on our special day" note and "thank you for your generous gift".

I'm not sure if telling people that their gift went to good use on our honeymoon would make them happy or not but being the truth, I included it in many cards. We did use their money on our honeymoon for shopping, drinks and dinner - so thank you because while planning the wedding, paying our mortgage and other bills we somehow managed not to save a dime for the honeymoon and were praying that our families would be generous to give us money. Thank you family.

But one thing I did notice is that an overwhelming amount of people who came to our wedding, did so empty-handed. Now I don't want to sound anything less than grateful that they did come to the wedding but seriously, do they think that we wouldn't notice they didn't even bother to give us a card. I understand times are tough but really, even the lack of bringing a card in my mind is inexcusable. I guess just like RSVPing you can't teach people manners, we did have a total of 6 people who said they were coming to the reception and didn't bother to show. 1 couple did at least give us a pretty valid excuse at the ceremony but the other 2 couples no good excuse, or even a lame one. SIGH.

All I have to say is after planning a wedding for 140 people I truly understand why people hire wedding planners and why many people elope. It is hard work and something that people who haven't been through it before have any clue about. I had an amazing time and am very proud of myself for getting 50-something thank you cards out in the mail about a month after the wedding. But then again, I am a pretty responsible person and don't put things off...