I just got married! Yay!

My question is: how much time do I have for the appropriate sending of thank you notes? We got married 12/28/10 - just getting back to work and getting things in order.

How long do I have before "crazy busy" becomes "unacceptably late?"

We attended a wedding in October 2011 and received a thank you note just before christmas.

Id say you have a good 6 weeks.

Where's my copy of Miss Manners? Darn. Haven't seen it since my divorce; hubby probably has it.
(She gives plenty of good advice about a lot more than weddings.)
I do remember that it is acceptable to give a wedding present as late as a year after the wedding - sounds good, so that you don't give the nth duplicate. But I don't think anyone would use that timeline for thank yous. I'd say a month is fine and acceptable and 2 months is middling OK. No need to say why in the note.

I think this should be based on when people start worrying about whether you got the gift or not! I'd try to do it within a month, two on the outside.

People get unecessarily overwhelmed by this task - just do a few every evening in front of the television, have some stamps handy and mail them from work the next day and you'll finish in a week. Then if you continue to receive gifts, send the thank you immediately. A little late for this since you're already married, but for others - when I got married, I wrote the thank you notes immediately when I opened the gifts that were sent to me, and then a week after the wedding, mailed them all. When we did a big gift opening the day after the wedding, my husband opened the gifts and I wrote the thank you notes right then and there. It worked very well for me because I never had the big task hanging over me, and all the addreses I had collected for the wedding invitations were still good for everyone.