Inviting friends children to wedding ceremony/reception

bylromarha

super41 wrote:

Gosh did I sound harsh? I wasn't labelling the friend as 'bad' just perhaps not my real friend after all, as others were ok about my decision and understood. Clearly she thought I wasn't a friend either as she wouldn't have broken off contact. I wasn't a Mum at the time and I think you do feel differently after having a child. However I hope I would respect someone's decision not to invite my child and if I wasn't happy just politely refuse from all of us. This is such as difficult area as this thread has shown, and my real point was that we must all try to do what we feel is right at the time. Weddings are hard enough at the best of times - I felt I was trying to keep everyone happy but really I should have been thinking about myself and my partner. I'm not a selfish person but looking back I feel this is one day where I really should have been able to do what I liked!!

Unfortunately too many years have now passed to pick up the phone.

If my (then) 6 month old wasn't invited to a wedding, our family would have stayed at home (or OH ventured out depending on how close a friend they were!). Would have respected the B+G decision though, as I throughly agree it's the B +Gs day and not an appropriate time to make a protest about children's rights!

Just wanted the OP to know, if they aren't a parent (which I assume they aren't else their own kids would be at the service), that some things will reflect quite heavily on parents and to weigh up whether not inviting young kids means by default not inviting their parents too as there are no options except to not attend.

No offence intended to you in the slightest super41, genuinely sorry if I have offended, and it's a shame that your friendship can't be restored, though if your friend stopped ringing you because of your decision, I guess it would have been a hard relationship to rebuild if she continued to feel cross with you.

super41

bylromarha wrote:

No offence intended to you in the slightest super41, genuinely sorry if I have offended, and it's a shame that your friendship can't be restored, though if your friend stopped ringing you because of your decision, I guess it would have been a hard relationship to rebuild if she continued to feel cross with you.

Absolutely no offence taken! This thread is all about people's attitudes on a difficult subject so it's good to get lots of opinions! Our decision was originally made because my husband did not want his father's new family at our wedding as it would have been very difficult for his Mum after a bitter divorce. But he didn't want to hurt his father so we decided to have a no children policy to get round it. So you see I could hardly have my friend's children at the wedding without seeming a complete hypocrite ... elopement would have been easier ....!

nearlyrich

My brother's MIL banned children from their wedding, they were paying, in case they spoiled the video. I had a 21 month old and a 3 month old as did my SIL, we were both breast feeding the little ones and my mum was the only person who babysat for either of us.

We didn't go to the wedding because we had no-one to leave the children with, it was quite a long way from us too so not really feasable to go for a oouple of hours and leave them with a friend.

Apparantly the church was next to a school and they got married on a Friday so there are school playground noises on the video ( poetic justice??)


My cousin got married a few months later and invited the children, they were all really well behaved and my SIL commented that she was sorry they hadn't been invited to their wedding. Fortunately we are a really well balanced family and we don't bear grudges but at the end of the day I missed my brother's wedding because of someone's preconception.....

Sofa_Sogood

Oooooo .....

I really don't envy the OP

Although we paid for our one wedding, our daughters, we did try to compromise about the kids at weddings issue. For instance, one neice who we were godparents to was invited, the other wasn't. That was the first 'discussion' In my eyes ... it was both or none.

My brother-in-law took umbrage when his 30 year old alcoholic son, who he rarely saw anyway, wasn't invited, yet the rest of his family were. He withdrew all the invites we sent.

As it turned out, they saved us a couple of hundred quid. But I'm not expecting any invites to any of their kids future weddings. In fact, I don't expect any invites to weddings, even if I'm an aunt, cousin, SIL etc etc.

But looking back, out of the people that were invited, to the day and night celebrations (about 300 in all), I've probably seen about 40 of them since, if that. The now divorced couple haven't seen many more either lol

But the posts about breastfeeding are relevant imo. A guest that was invited had her baby earlier than planned ... and that made her offspring the youngest (and best ), 'uninvited guest' .... she was two days old

Just do what you think's best and enjoy the day.

Or elope

Sweet_Pea_2

Just to add my two pennies worth, I received a wedding invite a couple of years ago and it had a slip of paper inside which said that due to the high number of guests invited to our wedding no children are allowed. The invite was from my step sister who I see very little of. It was worded in the traditional way, so it came from her step dad (my dad) and her mum, although I think that she herself had posted it.
I had been quite looking forward to the wedding up until then as I knew there would be loads of aunties, uncles and cousins that I hadnt seen for years due to my parents break up who had never seen my two daughters, (then aged 4 and 7) My step sister had at the time 2 nieces (roughly same age as my 2) and a younger nephew. I knew for a fact that they would be there.
I was suprised at how offended I felt. Firstly that the invite was worded from my dad, who was in fact saying his own grandchildren were not welcome, (even though I suspect it came direct from step sister, still very insensitive I thought)
Secondly that the wording "due to the high number of guests at our wedding" in other words, we've got loads of mates we'd rather invite than your kids.
I felt very disappointed but we didnt go. My dad didnt ask why, and to this day I wonder if he knew that the kids were not invited, he has never mentioned it since. We havent been invited to any other weddings/parties/christenings on their side of the family since. I didnt want to appear miserable so I did send a wedding card and gift voucher with our best wishes. Still do feel very offended though.

When I got married it never occurred to me not to have children there, there were quite a few young ones, as it is a time when families get together they are part of those families and I think should be included. Its up to the parents if they would rather have a more relaxing time and not bring them, I wouldnt mind. If my own children were unable to keep quiet when they were supposed to I would take them out immediately rather than spoil an important occasion, and I would expect/assume that others would do the same for me, I had no problems on my wedding day.

jellyhead

it does all depend on how close you are to the children involved i suppose. when my stepbrother gets married next month the children will all be invited, the more the merrier and people will be looking forward to fussing over the kids outfits, getting cuddles from children they don't often see, holding the new babies etc. in fact i'll probably get a bit of grief (but not from the bride and groom lol!) for keeping my baby away from the ceremony, but as long as he's at the party nobody will really be upset. i really don't think he should be at the ceremony - he's a little baby and will cry, it's just rude. likewise he wasn't at church this morning for my sons boys brigade enrolement ceremony. other mums left their babies at home too, they were there after the service to be patted on the head while the mums drank coffee. there are churches where screaming babies are accepted, but the general feeling at this church was leave them at home. same with weddings, up to the bride and groom i think. some people were REALLY offended by my making my reception non-smoking, i think if i'd put it on the invites some of them wouldn't have turned up :rotfl:

if the wedding's a long way away though it's not so easy for people to just pop in and show their faces for an hour. a friend is getting married soon and the party will be at their house, hundreds of miles from us. kids are welcome but they all smoke, they smoke indoors next to their own baby but i don't want anybody smoking next to mine, haven't decided yet if we'll all go but my husband will go without us if we decide we're not all going. if you say no kids and people live far away then perhaps one of the couple can come, the other stay at home.

shykins

we got married on saturday and invited all the children,, there were about 18 children out of a total of about 55 people.... most of my friends are divorced/single so if i hadnt invited their kids probably they couldnt of come

the reception was at home .....we had quite a late ceremony and didnt get back til about 5.30.. we ate at 6 and thereafter the kids played in little uns room or watched DVD's.. they were as good as gold and added to my boys enjoyment of the day having his friends around

its a hard decision to make but u have to go with what u feel at the end of the day .. good luck

xx

Poppy9

I think step families can add a whole new set of problems to wedding planning. Potentially much trickier area than kids.

I think with immediate family (not cousins but brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews etc) if you are close contact then it's rude and will usually cause offence not to invite the children. With friends then it's a personal decision. If a friend didn't invite my child to her wedding then it would not offend me (unless she invited other friends kids!)

You would hope that most parents would have suitable control over their offspring so that they know what behaviour is acceptable etc. Sadly from watching supernanny it doesn't seem to be the case.

I have taken my daughter to church since a baby (again it's a family occassion) as I did since the year dot. I was never given bribes as I knew I would be in trouble if I didn't sit quietly!! No eating was allowed at all during the service. Same with my daughter. I never had to take toys, books etc as the people sitting behind her was enough of an amusement.;) I always tried to sit in front of older couples who love to coo and pull faces at young children. Maybe I was lucky but she never had a crying izzy either so no need to take her out. The biggest disruption was as a toddler with constant loo visits.:whistle: But even the church has become intolerant of kids as they are encouraged to go out for 30 mins for sunday school during the service. If children don't learn to sit quietly for short periods with their parents I dread to think what their behaviour is like in school.

Bossyboots

I haven't read all through here, but we banned children from our wedding. That was mostly an economic issue though as my dad's family is huge and they had a lot of children. We couldn't afford to have everyone there and in the end the fairest thing was to say no children. No-one was offended because they had come across it before. They solved the problem by having one of the older "children" taking care of all the others at my uncle's house and then they all came to the reception. It worked well for us but I am not sure whether it would have been the same if there had been young children on my mum's side as they can take offence more readily.

None of our friends had children at that time so we didn't have to worry about that aspect.

purplepatch

We had no kids at ours other than dh's son (my stepson) and 3 nieces/nephews. The venue we chose had an upper limit of 50 guests and if we had invited kids, there would have been over 20 of them and hence a lot of our closest friends would have had to have been excluded.

We both decided we would far rather have friends there than kids that we barely knew. We just addressed invites to Mr & Mrs and didn't say anymore than that.

Most friends with kids were delighted to come without them so they could let their hair down. Only one friend was a bit funny about it - we'd invited her and her husband and she said that as he couldn't come she would be bringing her child in his place as she couldn't get a sitter. We had to say sorry, that wouldn't be fair on other friends as they would see your kid there and wonder why yours was allowed when theirs weren't. It wasn't as though we could have gone round on the day explaining the situation! She came on her own in the end.

The venue we had wasn't child friendly anyway - a huge open staircase in the hallway, 2 ponds in the grounds. And at the time, having no children myself, I certainly didn't really feel that my day wouldn't be complete without having kids there! I still get irritated when I watch the video and half of my dad's speech is inaudible due to my stepson and his cousin mucking about . :mad:

My advice to the OP is to do what suits you. Real friends will respect your wishes and if they get huffy about it, let them. If they refuse to come on principle then they probably aren't friends worth having.

Now I've got my own daughter, I've been to weddings both with and without her and it is much more stressful taking her with us. It's nice from the point of view of dressing her up prettily and showing her off to people that haven't seen her before or for a while, but once that bit is done, then it is hard work imo. Much prefer to go on our own. Like an earlier poster, my hubby is best man next year when daughter will be 3. He'll be sat on the top table and I'll be on my own with her and don't know a soul at the wedding other than the bride and groom, so not looking forward to that one much! If I could leave her with grandparents I would, but they will be on hols and we don't have any other options.

As for those that say weddings aren't complete without kids skidding on their knees across the dancefloor :rolleyes:, that's just a matter of opinion! Just have the sort of wedding you want, that's all that matters. It's your special day after all.