a wedding with an age limit?

The only polite way to navigate would be to simply list on the envelope who IS invited from the household. For that one with the 18 and 15 year old, you would write “The Jones Family” indicating those kids are invited, but on other households where you are only inviting the adults, you would write “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” or however you are addressing the couple, that way they know it’s only them 2 invited. If the couples ask about their children, give them a very general answer “I’m sorry but we can only accommodate those that are listed on the envelope.” Don’t mention that you’re not inviting kids or they will attempt to suggest “fixes” to the problem to negotiate being able to bring them.

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This is super helpful. Thank you!

View Quoted Comment No problem! And if you’re doing online RSVP, I know The Knot and I believe WeddingWire will have it to where you can input each person’s name and it will be there to check off when they go to respond, so that will get the message across further. So like this:


🔲 John Doe🔲 Jane Doe

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I agree with all of this.

If you're going to have a wedding website with an FAQ page, I'd list the "question" as "Can I bring my kids or a date?" and the "answer" would be something along the lines of "Unfortunately, we are only able to accommodate those named on the invitation." If you're sending response cards, I'd make sure to add a line on them saying "___ seats have been reserved in your honor" and fill in the blank with the number of people the invitation is addressed to.

Kids are a touchy topic. Some people have cutoffs of their own children, the flowergirl/ring bearers, arbitrary ages which mean some children are invited while others must stay home within the same household, and so on. Guests do get upset when they are told they must leave their children at home or use a babysitter offered by the couple whom they don’t feel comfortable with and then they see other children in attendance who don’t have to follow the same rules. They will never tell the couple they are upset so the couple believes that all guests are happy with their decision when the opposite is true. As far as the newborn loophole, not everyone feels that is polite either. Not all children are the monsters they are made out to be at the same time not all children are angels either because some parents let their children do anything without supervision or consequences. Those who do behave in social settings are taught from a very young age with consequences when they misbehave.


Those who do choose to not invite children or only invite half of the household must be respectful when the invited couple declines the invitation.
Regardless of what you decide, you put each invited name on the outer envelope and stick to your count when they rsvp.

Children can be a separate category, for example, no children or only children over 15, but you can also make distinctions based on relationship. For example, etiquette does not require you to invite all children or none. That is a myth. You can invite the children of siblings only, siblings and cousins only etc. It would be unreasonable for other guests to be offended in that case.

The correct way to address the invitations to children is specifically by name as mentioned. Exact wording depends on whether there is an inner envelope, just an outer or an evite. It is considered rude to write "Adults Only" or anything on an invitation that is exclusive in language. If someone does RSVP for an uninvited child you can address that person individually but the operating assumption should be that most people are capable of reading an invitation.

Is there a way to include them in your wedding (any role you could give them to walk in the processional, like carrying vows or escorting a family member in the processional)? That way it's easy to say something like you're not allowing any kids at the wedding except for those in your wedding party/entourage.

Mentioned this on another post about kids:

We also noted on our wedding website that kids weren't allowed outside of our two nephews in the wedding party (page boys/ring bearers). We also included a Q&A section on our website that detailed all this and also mentioned that only those addressed on the invitation were invited and in our invitations we included a card that specifically stated the number of seats reserved for them.

We love kids, but we're among the last of our friends to get married so most of our friends have kids and when we initially made the guest list, if everyone invited with kids brought their kids, it would've been 40-50 kids at the wedding. That's like 4-5 extra tables! When we told this to people, even they were like yeah that's way too many kids, haha. It's not a classroom and it wasn't in our budget to hire on-site childcare or provide children's entertainment on top of everything else.

That said, many of our friends with kids have stated that they're excited to come and drink with us and some friends from out of state are just flying in their own nanny (or parents) to care for the kids while they party.