Five-year old kid pulled the fire alarm

Yea I can see the appeal of a kid free wedding. I also had the 250 person kids are welcome wedding and it mostly went fine but that's also because the parents caught some things before they happened. E.g. kids ran up to the cake and were an inch away from touching it before the cake cutting even began but the parents pulled them away fast enough.

You can’t make everyone happy so just stand your ground and know that some people may decline if their children aren’t invited. Regardless of ages or babysitting arrangements, only parents get to decide what they are/aren’t comfortable with.

Ugh, that five year old sounds awful. Stick to your guns and keep your wedding child-free if that's what you want!

My kids are 9 and 12 and if you had offered me free babysitting for your wedding I'd be all for it. I love kids. I love my 10 nieces. But there's a time and place for them.

Thank you for your feedback. I'm just still sad about it because its just my elderly mother and two brothers. Both brothers are declining which means I have to fly out to their house, pick up my mom, and fly with her back to my area and then do the same to take her home. All that because the kids can't be with a babysitter for four hours. We were even offering the family a suite for free during their stay.

Ohhhh yes! We had a kid-free wedding and it was much less stress. My family has a lot of children and they manage to find a way to ruin so many happy event (they’ve eaten wedding cakes with their hands before the cake cutting, destroyed a DJ stand, damaged presents at showers, and one delightful bridal shower we had this March one of my cousin’s kids vomited on the buffet line).

I’m glad your decision was validated. Wedding comparison can sometimes be really hard.

We chose a kid free wedding other than my 14 year old niece and our great-nephews (3&4). The nephews can't make which is actually a bit of a relief in some respects. But when our closest friends told us their daughter was initially upset that she wasn't coming to the wedding I felt pretty bad. I decided to sit down with her (she was 13 at the time) and explain we had such a small venue that we decided to make it kid free except our family and that as much as we would want her there, then we would have to invite our other friends kids and some of them would be impossible to wrangle. Heck, one couple has 4 and another on the way!!! She understood. So if a 13 year old gets it, I would think a conversation with your sister-in-law should suffice. If not, legitimately ask her what else she expects. That might make her realize she's going overboard.

View Quoted Comment It is a shame that your brothers and sisters-in-law have done such a poor job of socializing their children that they can not be with any other caretaker for a day without having a problem. Do your sisters-in-law go to school, and all social things with the kids? School dances, school activities, all sports? She is raising socially backward children if she cannot let them not be with her , such a shame.

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I'll stay out of how she is raising her kids because I don't have kids of my own. But I do take issue that both of my sister-in-laws refusing to allow my brothers to fly out to my wedding for one night. When I talk to my brothers they sound like hostages.

I mean that's like worst case scenario. How someone wasn't watching said child and how he reached the fire alarm is beyond me. I feel confident knowing something that preventable and disastrous wouldn't happen with my family cousins invited to our wedding. It's a shame your brothers can't come to the wedding. I think that is ridiculous if their wives refuse they should at least be their for their sister's wedding.