Inviting people over a certain age

No as long as you stick to that age as the cutoff. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it

Just a dress your invitations specifically to those you wish to attend. Nobody will probably view teenagers as children.

The problem with making an arbitrary age cutoff is, if you have a family with more than one child, and one is under your cutoff, and one is over, how do you invite everyone but the one child under the cutoff? You can't, really, and things will get very sticky for you. You can, however, invite kids in circles. Like only first cousins, or only children of immediate family or only children in the wedding party, etc... It's perfectly fine to invite kids of family members only, and not the kids of your friends or your parents' friends. But if you invite first cousins on your side, you have to allow first cousins on your partner's side as well.

As long as the teenagers don’t have younger siblings, an age restriction shouldn’t be an issue. You would just invite everyone by name or family. For example we have cousins with young children, their invite was addressed “Mr. and Mrs. cousin,” then we have cousins who have kids who are teenagers so we did “the other cousin Family.” We also did online responses, which is where we indicated it was an adult only event, and each guest was listed by name so there was no confusion or adding of children.

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^^^^ This.

The only time an age cutoff is appropriate is if you're having an adult only event. Otherwise, you risk splitting up families. Children under 18 get invited on their parents' invitation. Imagine having a 16 year old daughter and a 12 year old son, and receiving an invitation addressed to you, your spouse, and your daughter, but not your son. It would feel weird, right? You'd be offended that your family was being split up. You'd also be quite confused if you are a very close friend or relative of the couple getting married and your 6 year old who the couple is also close to is not invited, and you show up and find out another parent who isn't as close to the couple as you got to bring their 16 year old kid.

Rather than apply some random age cutoff that might offend families on your guest list, it's better to invite kids under 18 in circkes. You could simply say just the kids in the WP (if any), just WP kids and the kids of immediate family (your children, your siblings' children), or expand it to just kids in the WP and relatives (which would include your teenage cousins). Do you have other cousins or relatives who are under 16? If not, this would solve your dilemma and would look more fair to your guests, if any of then were to question why their kids weren't also invited. If you, do, though, consider how weird it would be for some of your aunts and uncles to be talking and those who have younger children were to find out some cousins were invited and others (their kids) were not.

I agree with @BlueHenBride. For my wedding, we are doing "family-only kids" meaning only blood-related kids (cousins, and cousin's kids) are invited. On the invitation, addressed it to certain people, and hope that only those people will RSVP.

One of my friend's wanted adults only and put on her invitations "You deserve a night off! Adults only please" and then talked specifically to people who could bring their kids. There was a little drama, but in the end it was her day and she got what she wanted.

Good luck!

If anyone ever sent me an invite that said "you deserve a night off" I would be pissed beyond belief. I can decide if I want a night out. You want a child free wedding, fine. But don't give me that garbage that you are doing it for my benefit.

I see nothing wrong with 16 and over.

Your cutoff should either be 18 or 21, or no kids at all.

View Quoted Comment ^^^^^^ Circles y'all!

Address to the invitations to those teenagers specifically.

We are sticking to a strict rule of no small children. Sorry, we want an adult affair without little ears, eyes and feet running around.

Our RSVP cards will say "X number of spaces reserved in your honor". That way there is no question as to whom is invited.

We are giving something like this a try too.We have 4 kids in the wedding party that will be there as well as those babies still breastfeeding... but other than that no kids. I'm hoping that by addressing the invites etc to exact people as well as posting that it is an adults only event on our website we should be okay. Also, just keep an eye out when they RSVP as to the number they say will be attending. Good luck!

Thanks everyone! I only have one family that has three children over 16 and one child who is 7 which will make it difficult. I just feel that the younger child is too young for the wedding and having that one child attend means I have to have all other children invited which would take up too much of my guest list. I'm talking about having close to 25 cousins under the age of 10. Not to mention kids friends. Yikes. I have a couple family members who's kids are all over the age of 16. I don't want to hurt anyones feelings. Ahhh so difficult! The problem with inviting 18 and over cuts out about 6 important teenage cousins who my FH will absolutely not exclude. Just wanted to make sure that 16 is not a very weird age cut-off.

View Quoted Comment You can’t not invite the 7 year old. That would be rude and incredibly hurtful. Also, as much as kids get bored, 7 isn’t too young to attend a wedding and behave.

@Sarah inviting a 7 year old opens the door for many many children to come and my venue isn't big enough to have a ton of people. I'd rather have 100 adults than 50 adults and 50 children but that's just me. I said I have one family that has a huge age gap in their children which makes this difficult. I was asking how to go about it........

You can’t split up families so the only way to go about it is to not invite any of the children in that family if you don’t want to invite the other young cousins.

I would totally be fine with not inviting anyone under 18 but I guess my issue is more with my FH and his mother. They don't seem to understand the etiquette of any of it and when I tell them we can't invite certain kids and not others they seem think that we can do what ever we want but that just causes problems in the family. I feel like creating the guest list is like walking on egg shells. Someone is bound to get their feelings hurt and I just want to make everyone happy. Sigh

You definitely can't make an arbitrary cutoff age, but you can sneak around it a little bit. For example, I'm inviting all my first cousins (which includes teenagers and older kids around 10), but not any of my friends' children.

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I feel you! The guest list is definitely the toughest part. Good luck!