You’ve intricately planned every detail of your wedding reception, from your ornate flower arrangements to the delicate music of a classical quartet, the creamy silk tablecloths and the luxurious layers of decadent chocolate icing on your tower of cupcakes. Everything is picture perfect as you glide onto the dance floor for your first dance, when suddenly—CRASH! A hoard of chocolate-crazed children knock over the cupcake table, launching the sweet treats into the air. They inevitably land haplessly in your vases, on your silky tables and, quite possibly, in the lap of your new mother-in-law.
Okay, so this scenario might seem a little far fetched, but there are many other valid reasons for excluding children from your wedding reception. For starters, weddings are adult affairs—kids usually get bored and cranky. Plus, if you have 300 guests who RSVP yes, each with two children in tow, it can quickly double your expenses. All in all, it might be best to limit the number of munchkins to the flower girl and the ring bearer.
The downside of this plan? People will be upset. Family members in particular might feel slighted when you ask them to get a babysitter for the little ones, and you are sure to hear about it right at the height of your wedding planning stress.
Considering all the possible outcomes, what do you think? Do kid-free weddings make you want to rant or rave?
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October 24th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I don’t have much experience in the wedding department and I love children. But, I think this could be an occasion to call the baby sitter for.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I don’t see anything wrong with kid-free weddings. Too many times I’ve been in the midst of watching a romantic ceremony only to have a screaming baby completely destroy the mood. I love children and totally understand the cuteness factor, but it’s such a special moment that I think it’s okay to exclude children under a certain age. Plus, as you said, they actually get really bored at the reception and tend to get hyper and rowdy. Don’t the parents want to have a pleasant adult night out once in a while?
October 24th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Nothing wrong with kid free wedding. Nothing wrong with having kids there either. Kids will be kids. The couple should expect that if they decide to have them as guest. For our wedding, we decided to invite the kids because they were a part of our lives. We wanted them to be there.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:56 am
We’ve been to a few weddings where the kids were invited to the wedding but not the reception which helped from the expense standpoint.
I agree with Manu – up to the people having the wedding and there is no right or wrong. Most people are pretty understanding!
October 24th, 2008 at 11:09 am
I just went through this for my wedding! I have no kids in my family but my husband had a 3 year old nephew and a 5 year old niece. These were the only two kids at our evening wedding and they were bored and tired before the wedding even started! Worst of all, their parents weren’t watching them and when we came out for our first dance and they were sliding all over the dance floor. The photographer was walking backwards as we came in and she tripped over the nephew and flew backwards over him. Luckily she was a good sport and nobody got hurt. Needless to say, at that point I was really wishing we had had a kid-free wedding!!
October 24th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I think it depends on the wedding. I prefer kid-free weddings unless it is an informal gathering, maybe outside or something like that. For all the reasons people previously stated.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
We have been back and forth about this for our Friday evening wedding and finally decided to just invite children of family members. We did this because the stress of finding a way to nicely tell people not to bring their children was really getting to us, and we weren’t sure how to handle it. There were three people in our family who we knew would be really upset if they couldn’t bring their kids. The etiquette sites didn’t seem to be all that helpful on this, suggesting not to put it on invitations, but rather to spread it by word of mouth and also to address the invitations to only the adults.
November 13th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
[...] you don’t include children and you have close family members with kids, the family members may be very offended that their children are not invited. If you include family members’ kids but not [...]