Not inviting children to the evening…

It is completely up to you what you do with your day, we have bridal party children and babes in arms only to the day again due to restrictions and i have asked that anyone who has no other option for the evening to contact me personally as again i would prefer to have people i want there than loads of kids, i have 4 children of my own so not against children at all and understand that sometimes its unavoidable

on our website i have written

due to number restrictions at the venue we are unable to accomodate any children other than those who are part of the bridal party and immediate family, children who are invited have been specifically named on formal invitations.

Most people who i have spoken to are glad to have a night off and will have plenty of time to find a sitter and most understand, i do have 1 friend who has 3 children and she expected me to invite them to the day and eve and was a bit put out but you cannot please everyone and someone will no doubt say something but it's one day and i have given 9 months notice on the above if they have a problem and i have some who dont come i may be able to accommodate them at a later date but that will be something me and oh decide on once we have all the rsvp's in, kids dont usually want to be at weddings in general anyway and parents like a good drink without worrying the whole night good luck with whatever you decide to do x

Could you just pop a friendly personal note in with the invite just saying so sorry due to cost we just cannot invite xx and xxx but really hope you can still come and enjoy the evening celebrations? dont think anyone could really take offence at that?

We are doing the same, its not even the cost really, its just we're severely limited on numbers!

Call me a grumpy old witch, but I just don't want kids there - nothing to do with numbers or cost. This doesn't of course include family - but my fiance has absolutely no children within his family (his cousin is the youngest and she's 22!) and I have a small family - my brother and sister each have 2 children under 10yrs; one cousin has 2 children under 10, and they'll be invited, bu my other cousin (who has 3 children) doesn't live with their mother and only has them occasionally so I won't be inviting them. 2 of them are teenagers who would rather not come anyway! So we're just inviting 6 children. I'm not inviting children from any of my guests... unless we have any very young babies that the parents wouldn't feel able to leave. Currently out of all of our guests, only 2 people will have babies under 1yr and 1 of those people I'm only inviting her, not her boyfriend (I've never met him, and numbers are tight!) and I know she'll leave the baby with her OH. Of course, other babies may be born within the next 9 months!

I'll put something on our website; won't include children's names on invites; and will probably put an additional personalised note to apologise for not being able to invite the children but still hoping that they can attend.

Out of interest I've just gone through my guest list and, excluding those people with teenagers who I KNOW they don't take to social engagements, we have:

• 1 couple with 2 children at high school, who they wouldn't choose to bring anyway
• 1 couple with 1 child who will be 2yrs by then and she's regularly babysat by g'parents so they won't mind
• The friend mentioned above who will leave the baby with her boyfriend
• The couple mentioned above who may need to bring the baby with them
• 3 work colleagues who often go out without their children so will happily find babysitters (all live locally so it's not like they're going away overnight without children)

We are not inviting children to the evening, we have 16 children attending all day and the majority of children that we could invite to the evening aren't particularly close to us anyway.

The view we took was that most people attending the evening reception will be there to party and would not tend to bring children anyway.

We have decided not to mention anything about this and draw attention to it, we are just addressing invites to the guests, if any shoudl come back and request that childern come we can discuss with them aat the time although i don't see it being an issue.

Thanks for the reassurance ladies!! I am feeling a lot more confident now I know I am not the only one. Am going to put a little note in with the invites, and anyone I think will be particularly peeved I will put a little personal note in there as well. And like you say… my day, my way!!

IMO if a child isnt mentioned on a invite you shouldnt bring them - i know i wouldnt.

given enough notice im sure most people will be able to find someone to look after the children.

we will most likely have 1 child there who will only be 14 months old and another who will be invited,m but i dont think her mother will bring her because she likes to take time off from being a mum and not worry about drinking where her child is... also her daughter will be 11 and there is no other kids to keep her company so i think she would just get bored,

we will leave it completely up to her if she will go or not

one of my BM has a son, but shes a single mother and doesnt want him to be left with people she doesnt really know so well while shes doing her BM thing incase he acts up, also she will have to travel 4 hours and knows he doesnt travel so well, plus he doesnt really know me so well so she thinks she will leave it with her mum and come and have a nice week with us and enjoy her time off

We're grumpos too! We don't want children at our wedding either, except my niece and nephew who will be part of the bridal party. It's quite common not to invite children nowadays.

At the bottom of the invite you could always put something like: Unfortunately we cannot accommodate children at our wedding so please take the opportunity to have a night off.

Something along those lines would be fine a non-offensive. If people don't like it, then they wont come and if that's the case, so be it.

x

And that would be fine by us as it would cut down numbers even more!! haha!! x

We too had no children invited at all. Out of 60 guests invited, only 1 couple didnt come because their 3yr old wasnt invited. One close friend brought a baby to the ceremony only, but she rang beforehand to check that was ok.

We didnt put anything on the invite saying kids cannot come, we just put the adult names & didnt have any confusion. I think the bridesmaid & my mum spread the word that no kids were invited also.