How to keep children entertained?

We had a lot of kids and we bought them activity packs which had them going round to find a guest who wore glasses, dressed in a certain colour, hair colour etc. It also had word searches, colouring and a quiz in. You could set up a room in your venue, which ours suggested, with games, crafts and a games console etc but it is more expense and we felt it was not justified. It is boring for kids, mainly in the meal part, we didn't provide anything else as in honesty most of the parents had planned and bought the kids tablets and earphones with them anyway.

View quoted message Love the idea of activity packs. my biggest concern is kids interrupting the ceremony tbh... but hoping parents will be prepared!

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We got them on Etsy, and they were personalised so was a nice touch for the kids.

Agree about ceremony, you could add a polite note to invites to ask that those attending with children please seat themselves on the end of a row nearer the back so that if they needed to take the child out they could do so quickly and without interrupting the ceremony, but some may get offended. we did speak to a couple of our friends about it and they automatically said they were already prepared to take them out and were fine with our request. We also had some say they were not bringing them as they wanted a child free day!

In honesty most parents worry about their kids kicking off and will do the right thing and take them out so dont worry to much, at the end of the day you cant do much about it on the day if it happens

We had 6 kids at ours (4 weeks, 6,8,10,10 and 11 (5 of my nieces/nephews and my now step son). We gave them all cameras (second hand from eBay) with a photo treasure hunt but we never saw the results so not sure they stuck to it but they were entertained for a bit! We also had games for everyone (hook a duck, coconut shy, football game, croquet etc) which they joined in with and then activity books for during the meal. We didn’t do anything for during the ceremony - it was only half an hour and they were all fine! We had a Photo Booth in the evening which, judging from the number of photos of them, they loved!


We had a room they could have used as a breakout space but it wasn’t needed - they mainly just integrated and had fun with each other / our family and guests.