inviting kids to wedding?

I know how you feel but you can have your family kids only. It your wedding and you can make the rules. for my wedding I will have only family kids.. or you can also saying kids til 10p for the adults still have some time to enjoy the dance floor.. but I think that if family is flying in that they should all be able to go to the wedding..

If you don't want children there I'd say yes you need to provide a baby sister.

If you feel strongly about no children, I think offering to hire a babysitter(s) on site or at the hotel where you have room blocks is a really nice gesture. That being said, not everyone will be okay with leaving their children with a stranger that you choose to hire. So it may not be a 100% solution.

If you are comfortable, I would suggest discussing it with your family. Some people get offended, but in my experience, a large majority of our guests understood and we were able to have a candid conversation. Put the feelers out and see if your family would be willing to make it work if children were not invited.

I felt the same as you..the kids we inviting are family only and my two best friends because their kids will be in our wedding. I have been to two seperate weddings where kids were not "allowed" for one my friend flew with her mom and the kids were part of the ceremony, but went back to the hotel with the mom. The other one was FH brother and they had a babysitter take care of all the kids.

It's entirely up to you if you open it up to children. If you want children at the reception you'll have to invite them to the ceremony too otherwise some parents will skip the ceremony just to come to the reception. I know some couples don't want children at their wedding at all because they worry they'll scream and cry, but hopefully your guests are decent human beings and will take their kid out of the room to not cause a scene. Our wedding guests consists of only family and close friends, so I couldn't imagine having all the kids there especially when we have 4 ourselves. I think they add so much life to the party because they love to dance and might entice some adults to get out on the dance floor that normally wouldn't.

If you wanted to, you could hire a sitter to come to the ceremony location and watch the children while the adults enjoy the ceremony and then the sitter can either leave for the reception or you can have them stay to continue tending to the children while all the adults have a good time. I've heard of sitters being hired for weddings to keep the kids occupied, take them to the potty, or help with food and drinks. So just think about it all and decide what you want to do. It's your day and you should be happy and not stressing about everyone else's needs. At the end of the day those who will want to be there will make arrangements to be there regardless.

Decide if you want kids there or not. If you don't want them there, you can't just provide a babysitter and expect your OOT family to drop their kids with a random person....you have to acceot the fact that they may not come if they can't bring their kids.

If you do invite kids, then you can still offer a babysitter if you want. I have kids and have a few others invited to the wedding, and I will be hiring a sitter (who I know and trust already) to keep the kids entertained during the wedding. I am supplying some toys, coloring books, and a room right across the hallway from the reception room that has a TV.

We did 21 and up. 90% of the weddings in my family/social circle are 21 and up. Cousins were either 22 and up or 18 and below; no families were split up.

And we didn't give a free pass to the 2 that would have to fly. Their family had a nanny and the parents travel without the kids. Obviously, living at a distance I'm not close to those cousins. In fact, at the time of my wedding, I had met the younger one (then 9) twice in my life. There was no way we would invite them to attend when the groom's cousins, who we see a few times a year, were not.

When we were originally going to have a more formal reception, DH and I were going to hire out the day care center that my kids used to go to, since our siblings have almost all had children in the last year (5 out of 8 total siblings for us combined). I figured that would be best since we were going to be on a boat, and they had cribs and play stuff already. I would of course supply food.

That said, our families were all OOT... so nobody knew sitters. I would suggest inviting kids, or finding a baby sitting service.

Are you having the wedding in the same hotel that you would provide a babysitter? As a mom, I would find it hard to leave my kids with a stranger and not on-site, close by.

Is there a specific reason you don't want kids there? We had lots of kids and it was a blast.

The wedding & reception are at a catering/conference center on the NAS Base, and the hotel is about 5-10min away, off base.

My initial reason for not having children present was the additional cost, as we are paying for 95% of this wedding ourselves.

I just counted my family side only, and already have come up with 22 kids, 18 and under..... I haven't even looked at his family side list yet.

We are having a plated dinner, not buffet, so.......

I'd say yes to all kids no kids at all (except the ones in the wedding party). If you allow some and not others people will definitely have something to say. If you provide a sitter great but they'd have to be on the premises. Honestly as a parent I'm not leaving my kid with a stranger at night where I can't pop in a check.

We're saying no kids, but we don't have many out of town guest so most will be able to find their own prefered babysitter for a night. I also know this will give us a few declines which will suck but hey......

My venue offered a kid's meal option that was much less than the adult meals. They got to choose chicken or mac and cheese. Ask your venue so you can figure out how much the extra cost is. Then you can compare it to the price of a babysitter at the hotel. But yeah as PP said, talk to the parents you want to invite and see what they think.