No children...wording on invites?

This is always a controversial subject

What's the reason you don't want children at your wedding? Venue capacity? Budget? Want an 'adults only' day with no little darlings running round screaming?

Whatever your reasoning for 'no children' you need to be prepared to justify it to your guests who think they should be an exception to the rule, accept that some people will choose not to come (for a variety of reasons) if Tarquin and Annabel can't come with them, and make no exceptions regardless of who it is and their reasons otherwise you will upset people.

The only children that will be at our wedding is our 11yr old and 3yr old daughters, my friends 2 1/2yr old (my 3yr olds little friend), our friends 11yr old who has to come due to personal circumstances and my other daughters friend in the evening. Oh and our 11yr old nephew.

I have spoken to a lot of our friends and most of them who have 2 or 3 children have said that they wouldn't want to bring them anyway cause they want to be able to relax and enjoy themselves.

We have decided that if anyone specifically asks if their child or children can come after the invites go out then that will be fine.

Not many of our guests have children, the few that have are not bringing them as they would have to take them out of school for the day but one guest has a young child that is very hyperactive all the time, he can get quite violent and scream and we have heard that no one will babysit for him anymore. H2B and I dont have children ourselves and would hate for our day to be ruined by that kind of noise and disruption. We have addressed our invitations to the parents only, if they ask us about the children we will be be honest and tell them why. Our day is the most important day of our life and we feel its also the one day that people should be thinking about our wishes and not the other way around.

Well our reasons are as follows:

1. the civil marriage room only fits 70 & we have only budgeted for 70 we are struggling as it is and kids would take up too much of this

2. if the above didn't matter we still feel we would like a child free day...we don't have children & I've been to a couple weddings where the children have been crying & running about and we just don't want that really

Quite a few ppl I have spoken too said they would like to relax without their children neway, I just think if ppl get offended so what, it may seem selfish but it's our day & we only do it once (hopefully, lol) so we will have it how we want, just didn't know whether ti mention on invite or not?? don't want people to assume the children can come

We put:

"Please note: Due to limited numbers, we have decided to restrict child invitations for the daytime to the bridal party only. Children will be more than welcome in the evening"

Our information sheet reads

" We regret that we cannot accommodate children and hope that you understand and are able to make alternative arrangements"

We declined to put a reason in, as people will often argue against a specific reason, whereas we hope that this is definite without being impolite, Several people have told us that they are happy to have a child-free day out and those that disagree will probably not come, which is entirely their choice.

Thanks for your comments, amnesia that's good wording! may have to pinch