Child age limit

You should address the invitations appropriately. Explicitly name anyone invited on the envelope (inner if you’re doing one; otherwise outer). Some people will also suggest putting “__ seats reserved in your honor” on the RSVP card.

This can be a tough age cutoff because you may have families with 10-11 year olds and 5 year olds. It's generally frowned upon to split up families, so in your case I would just say "wedding party children only" and cutoff the age at 18. That would work!

As long as you are not splitting up families, I would say to explicitly state the names of who is invited.

In the event that you were splitting families and said “we have reserved 3 seats in your honor”, if I was a theoretical guest with an 11 year old and a 5 year old I’d bring my 5 year old because they can’t be by themselves at home for a few hours like an 11yo.

View Quoted Comment When it comes to children, it is okay to split into different categories, even in one family, if you are not doing it arbitrarily ( like, one family has 6 kids, another 3, another 2, and you let parents bring 2 for each family, would be arbitrary.). Buy in fact are doing it for functional reasons. Functional reasons would usually be developmental. Young children's meals, bedtimes, and level of supervision needed, are legitimate things. Every part of our society splits children by age groups, and parents do too. Family goes to a 8-11pm sports event or movie or party or theatre , that is not specifically for children, most leave those usually in bed by 9 pm home with a sitter. For a Jr. High and high school dance, all the kids age 4-18 cannot go, it id not age appropriate. If family has a 5 year old, and a 9, 10, and 13 year old, you can invite the older children and not the younger ones ( except infants.). You are inviting children who routinely, in school, sports, social group, scouting, need minimal supervision for 3-5 hours at a time, with 1 adult for 8-20 people, with minimal accommodation for meals, simply smaller portions. If they do find a mixed drink or sweet liquor laced coffee someone has abandoned, or even 2, it is not good, but not serious. Where a young child is smaller body weight and could be poisoned with 1 drink, convulsions or serious injury from 2. Younger kids hide under table cloths, pull at electrical cables to food warmers and lights, on and on, dangerous things when not closely watched. So if you are diving around 3rd to 4th grade, or 6th -7th, or high school age, you are making decisions about the nature of the events for health and safety, and the appropriateness of the activity and time, and supervision level. Those are acceptable divisions in every level of society, and are also acceptable at weddings. . .Instead of doing a cut off by age, some do it by school grade, because people accept that more readily than, her kid is 7 year 11 months, no, her sister's kid is 8 years one month yes. Then, carefully make exceptions.try not to split kids very close in age to your boundaries, in one family, if there are natural gaps. If 2 kids under 5, and a third grader 7 yr 10 mo and sis is also 3rd grade, 8 years 8 months, invite both older kids, do not split both 3rd grade siblings. We realized we had no kids of guests who were between the ages of 13 and 15.5. So instead of saying age 16 as we intended , for a 7pm to 1 am formal affair, we included 15.5 up. Got rid of 4 of sibling splits of 15 and 16 yr olds. And big gap, almost 3 years, full 3 school grades, between too young and old enough. Any aren't who questions you, without very good reason, is rude. And it is okay to say, we chose an age appropriate for the time and nature of our event. As hosts, we have that right. Stay general. Do not get into discussions of whose kid is better behaved, who usually stays up late , anything. . . We have 2 kids who just turned 4, a 9, 13 and 15 year old. They have frequently been divided by age group, older go, younger not, at any point between the 4 ages, and that is the right of the hosts, not guests. We can always decline, but only have for a child sick, when 1 patent required not a babysitter. Parents decide how many children to have, and are responsible for their care. Not party hosts.

We are having an age cutoff of 13 because we don’t want young children there (and honestly young children won’t enjoy it anyway...) so we decided 13+ which is basically high school and up, is considered not really a “child” anymore.

We just addressed the invitations to who is invited. Did online RSVP so there would be no confusion. On our website, said: “our ceremony and reception will be limited to adults and adolescents ages 13+”

Just do note that infants are the exception to the rule as many breastfeed, so if you have any children that are only a few months old the mothers should be allowed to bring them.

Invite the people you want there and don’t invite the people you don’t want there. If you don’t list their 4 year old on the invitation, they’ll know they aren’t invited. You don’t need to explicitly tell them their child isn’t welcome.
Nursing children, however, should always be included.

I just had an idea. What about an adult only ceremony but an all inclusive reception? That way the family members with younger children can still come celebrate but just come later?
Does that seem like a bad idea?

View Quoted Comment Unless you are having a long mass or service, well over an hour, the kids are usually excellent at the ceremony. It is first, not bored yet, seating is completely hemmed in, and everything is clear and understandable by the kids. The problems usually come after the transition time after ceremony and before reception, then worse in a totally unstructured cocktail hour. Then the receptions, especially ones where people do all these custom entrances, extra spotlight dances, 4-6 hours of barely structured time after the ceremony is the problem area for most kids, if any.

View Quoted Comment

Did the age 13 cutoff work well for you? We are thinking of doing this for my wedding, but I am still concerned that some people will get offended if they have say 14 year old and an 8-year-old. I'm still trying to evaluate all the kids' ages on both my fiance's side and my side to pick the best cutoff age for kids. My side of the family is huge, so if we were to invite all the kids, there would be 40+ kids on my side alone, and many of them are under the age of 10; this isn't even counting the kids on my fiance's side yet. The kids alone are just eating up our budget and seating space so that's why we thought doing a no small children wedding would help remedy this issue. I'm completely fine with teenagers being at the wedding, it's just the younger ones we are worried about running around and getting into things the entire evening as our venue is a hotel ballroom.