No kid rule except family.

My cousins on my mothers side have A LOT of kids (like 3-5 each). Our church friends also have A LOT of kids. There will only be 3 kids at our wedding: my fiance's younger sister and his older sister's 2 kids. We want a small wedding and we didn't want to have to leave a bunch of people out because there were so many kids (It would have been about 20-30 kids, out of a wedding of less than 100 people).

I've told some cousins directly that we aren't having kids, but we'll just address the save the dates and invites specifically to the parents, as opposed to the "_____ family". All of our RSVPs are online, where you have to select your name and say whether you're coming, so it'll be pretty obvious that their kids are not invited because there names will not be in the system.

Someone gave us the idea of hiring a few babysitters for the evening and telling people that they can drop their kids off nearby for the evening. Some parents thought this was a great idea and some where like "there's no way I'm leaving my kid with a stranger!" (so be it, IDK how they find babysitters). We decided not to do that simply because we're already at our max budget and planning bandwidth.

Just be sure to make it very clear exactly who IS invited.

It’s fine to invite children of your immediate family only, but your family friend isn’t immediate family. When you invite some friend’s kids and not others, that’s when you look rude and hurt peoples feelings.

We are having kids of family only (not kids of friends). We simply didn't put the kids' names on the invitations/save-the-dates. No one has been bothered by it.

We’re doing the exact same thing! We addressed the invitations to the parents only as well as put a section in our FAQ on the wedding website about needing to keep the wedding to adults only. Most people do understand, and they want to enjoy your wedding without worrying about their children! We haven’t run into anyone so far that’s really put up a fuss and we let people know far ahead of time so they can arrange for childcare. Good luck!

View Quoted Comment The only reason we are inviting the one kid who is pretty much family to us..

View Quoted Comment Yeah, I don’t think there’s any polite way to say “hey, we’re close to this friend so their kids can come, but not yours.”

We're just doing immediate family kids as well. It's a good opportunity for the parents to enjoy a night away for a little bit!

My FH and I come from a very religious and conservative state where everyone has 6 kids each. Sooo.. I'm not the most kid patient person and am electing for a kid free wedding. We've discussed this with our parents and while some of them were not happy with the idea of excluding kids, they realized that it's our wedding and it's what we want. So they're religion does not condone alcohol and my family drinks alcohol so we are serving alcohol and a disclaimer is on the RSVP so attendants know. We are also planning to addressing invites only to the parents, not the family. If they have a problem with it, they don't have to come and that saves me cash, I'm fine with it. I may sound heartless but in the end it is my day too.

We're going back and forth on this one too. My FH has 2 kids and his sister has 4 kids. We were initially going to invite kids of our friends, but looking at our head count and costs, not inviting kids (outside of immediate family) would cut 25. Our venue, a winery, also does their head count for cases my total head count, not just 21+. Part of me feels guilty or rude not inviting friends kids, or that it could be awkward conversations with people asking, knowing our kids will be there.