Brides to be with kids already

Do you have a grandparent or great aunt/uncle that is still capable to watch the children? My mom and aunts partied for my cousins wedding and left me and my cousins with my grandma. My grandma was more than able to still function and care for children and was bound to leave a little but earlier because she wasn’t as young as the other crowd. Just a thought.

View Quoted Comment Unfortunately I don’t 😕 that would have been a great solution though.

Have you thought about hiring a nanny to watch all invited kids in a separate area of the venue during the reception??

View Quoted Comment I’m not really worried about the reception. I wasn’t super clear in my post, I’m more worried about who is going to take them home to be put to bed and watch them until we get home.

My FH has a 6 year old who is the token kid who will be at the wedding for obvious reasons. She will be leaving at 8:15 so she can be in bed at 8:30 as usual. Our wedding planner/DOC has a vetted babysitting service that will be hired day of for us that will be taking care of her so the grandparents don't have to leave the party early. I would ask your DOC if you have one for something similar or look into trusted babysitters like care.com.

I’m hiring a babysitter/nanny service for the day. They’ll still be apart of the whole getting ready process and stuff but the nanny will make sure they eat and keep them entertained for the day.

Oh to add to my post Our venue is at a hotel so the nanny will put my kids in my parents room and that’s where they’ll sleep for the night and my parents will be with them.

I planned to send mine home with my dad, but he's informed me that he's staying overnight to party and hang out at the hotel. So now I'm thinking my sister!

My dad and step-mom took ours home with them at the end of our reception so that DH and me could go on a mini-moon. But our reception ended at 6pm so bedtime wasn't an issue. How old are your kids? Is it possible you could set up an area for them to go rest when it gets late and just take them home yourself? Mine are 9 and 12, so old enough that staying up late in the evening or crashing on some blankets in a corner is fine for them. But I know with smaller kids it's harder.

Do you have a sitter you normally use that can come to the wedding?

View Quoted Comment My mother in law babysits for us, she already told me she doesn’t want to leave the reception early. It’s going to be hard figuring out a way to get them home and in bed & watched for the night but I’ll figure something out lol eventually

We are renting an extra space next to the reception hall, and I have coordinated to have two babysitters on-site. I’m providing the room, pack n plays, a large unfolded gym type mat, food, glow sticks, drawing stuff, a projector and movies. All of this will be close to $800 (mainly the room rental is most expensive) so I’m asking for the parents to pay for the sitter. The sitters came up w a good rate ($20 per kid for the whole night) so I don’t feel too bad asking people to pay for the sitters. I mean if they left their kids at home they’d actually be paying more for the sitter ($10-$15 an hour).

This is way my out of town guests will have their kiddos close yet far enough away to enjoy the night as adults.
I’ve set up some details on our wedding website and this is allowing people to figure out what they’re going to do NOW. Like some local invitees are choosing not to bring their kids at all which is FINE by me
Less food and fun stuff to buy for the kids now.

The thing is: most of my go-to sitters are family... but I want me family to have fun. I don’t want my mom busy w my girls. I want my mom on the dance floor, having fun w her family that she hasn’t seen in years. By me setting up a room, the kids have a place to go, babysitting is taken care of (I’m paying the flat fee for my girls too!) and all of the guests, young and old, are free to enjoy the night (I hope).