Kid-free.. Kinda?

This is only my opinion, but I think you have to invite in groups. For example, children of immediate family only or children of family only. It will get messy if you start to pick and choose based on whether they would attend without their children. What if you allow your out of town friend to bring children but not your cousin? It's totally within your right but your cousin might not understand your reasoning. Ultimately, I think you have to draw a line and stick to it, whatever it may be.

I personally think you should just keep it immediate family children. If you start to add OOT guests, then the in town guests might get offended, etc. Do you have a lot of OOT guests? If there are only like 3 OOT children, then maybe you could allow it. Otherwise, I'd just take the risk of them not being able to attend. That is the risk that usually runs with kid free weddings regardless.

A lot of couples who opt for a kid-free wedding, often have a few children present, as they are in the wedding party (ring bearer, flower girls, etc.). But everyone does it differently. Some couples actually hire childcare for the reception; someone to watch over the little ones so their parents can party. I personally hate that, as I believe if you're going to bring your kids to a wedding (primarily an adult event), you should be responsible for watching them and caring for them yourselves. But one of the reasons couples choose a kid-free wedding is because they know that a lot of people will not watch their kids, will let them run wild, and it's better to just avoid any problems by saying no kids. Just because you and FH have a child, and he will be there (along with a couple of others), doesn't mean you have to allow all kids at your wedding. Read up on the forums on this topic. It's a hot one that has discussions at least every week, if not more often.

Inviting kids of out of town guests is a nice thing to do. But not inviting the kids doesn't mean their parents won't come. They are certainly free to find childcare for the couple of days they will be gone--a lot of parents do this. What are grandparents for? lol

Sorry this got long winded. It's just one of those hot-button issues that people have very strong opinions about. Just go with your gut. Do what you and FH want, and don't let anyone else intimidate or manipulate or bully you into the decision they want. You'll never get this day back, so do it how you want it.

While we aren’t have children in our wedding party, my FH and I are only having children from our immediate family only. We know that our second and third cousins are going to be a little peeved but we don’t have relationships with their children so we won’t be guilted into it. Don’t be guilted by anyone especially if you don’t have a bond with them.

I say decide what kids you invite and which ones you don’t. Make a number for instance a table of 10 and stick to it. Depending on your venue you might be able to get a baby sitter or 2 and have all the kids in a room, with movies, games, kids meals and that might be even cheaper than kids at the reception.

I am only having my future nieces come as children. But I also don't have many guests with children or that wouldn't be able to make arrangements. You should also take into account your budget as some caterers will charge for kids meals. I recommend keeping it to immediate family members' children. If a guest privately mentions they have issues finding childcare, maybe handle it on a case by case basis.

We did family only children and children in the WP, which totaled 3 kids and 1 baby out of 118 guests. My 2 cousins were in the wedding and their baby sister was obviously invited since she was only 5 months old. H's cousins live in CO they brought their daughters (they have two, but one is an adult, so I didn't count her in the "child" head count).

I think only children of the wedding party is a good line if one needs to be drawn. Whatever you decide just stick to it and don't change it.

I thought about this very hard doing our wedding. And what I have decided (after talking to one of my closest friends', who have kids & live out of town - but the kid is not coming), is that the invite will say adult reception. However I am going to allow OOT children to come (if they RSVP with the kids - bc you know not many people RSVP properly). There is a few reasons for this, most of the time it is easier to get childcare if you live in the area, than if you don't. OOT are making quite a financial investment to make it to your wedding; travel, hotel, etc.

My FSIL did this with their wedding a few years ago, and the kid count was minimum (3x and 1x was a newborn - who had to come).

Sometimes I think that we (believe I am very much included in this) stress ourselves out more than needed, because we imagine the worst case scenario. When I told my friend about the concern with the kids (mind you she is in the WP, traveling from out of state, and has 2x kids) she said, yeah I can understand why OOS guests would be allow to bring kids. If I didn't know anyone living in the state, I wouldn't be comfortable leaving my kids. Fortunately, she has family who lives in the area and will watch the kids. She also said that they were using the wedding as a date night, w/o the kids (she had no interest in bringing her kids to the wedding). I even said, if it had an adult only reception and you saw kids would you be mad - and she was like no, being a parent you know that things happen & besides it's your wedding you get to decide on who is invited, even kids - I'm just going to sit down and eat my free food, and drink my many free drinks & celebrate your marriage.

Where I live child-free weddings are the norm. I wasn't invited to a wedding until I was over 18 and my parents went to plenty without me. However for me and my husband's wedding child-free was tricky because my parents had me much earlier than their siblings had kids so I have first cousins that are 12 and under that I'm super close with and my husband's mom got remarried later on and has children under 12 as well. What we did was have my husband's half sisters and my cousins (7 kids) in the bridal party so that we can say only kids in the bridal party are invited. I will say that the kids made the wedding SO much more fun. There were a ton of people that probably would not have got on the dance floor if it wasn't for the kids. Our wedding was at a hotel venue so people still drank and behaved as if it was a normal child-free wedding. But... if there's more kids than adults like you're saying then it will probably turn into kids running all over and acting silly which isn't something you'd want.

So.. if child-free weddings are NOT the norm where you live then you FMIL may be correct that it will be an issue for your guests, you might want to put all of your nieces and nephews in the bridal party some how and be VERY clear with your invitations on who's invited. It helps to write ___ out of ____ in the accept or decline spot and fill in the second blank. So if just a husband and wife are invited you'd write in 2. If child-free is the norm, then just invite the kids that you want there because other guests won't be expecting to bring the kids anyway.

I vote for immediate family children only. We want our nieces there but I don’t think my cousin’s child that I’ve met once needs to be at my wedding.

We invited family children only and one exception for FH’s friend cuz he hangs out with his whole family. They’re basically family he buys their kids birthday presents and all lol 🤦🏻‍♀️ But we have a few friends with kids and if they ask I am just telling them family only because we have a lot of little 2nd cousins. We found out from FH’s cousin that she doesn’t even want to bring her twins. We are fine with that, maybe more of our family will take that mindset 🤷🏻‍♀️