Some Kids Welcome, some not?? HELP!

This is a question that gets asked often here. I think that you can invite only the children in the wedding party and then no other children. People understand that children in the wedding party are exempt from the "No children" rule but outside of that, it's all or nothing when it comes to kids at the wedding.

I don't know! I am in the same boat. Hopefully someone will have a good suggestion!

Just make sure if you invite one kid in a group (e.g., one of your FH's nieces or nephews), then you should invite all of the kids in that group (e.g., all of his nieces and nephews), but you don't need to expand that to more "distant" groups/non-family.

Thanks these are great suggestions!

I agree with all the other comments- all or none in a particular group and bridal party doesn't count. I'm in the same boat. FH has 7 nieces and nephews so we made 4 into bridal party members and 3 into ushers and guestbook security. Other than that, no kids. As one of the last of his friends to get married, if we invited kids we would have 67 kids! Hell no!

We have a few out of town cousins that would probably appreciate if they had someone to watch the kids, so we will consider hiring a nanny for a night and watch the kids at my parents house if they can't find any other arrangements.

We are inviting children in the wedding party which consist of my fiance's niece and 2 nephews. We will also have 1 niece who will be around 4 months old at the time of our wedding so she will be there too with her parents. The only other kids that will be at our wedding will be a cousins children of my fiance's who is also a groomsman. They are traveling from out of state so their children will be invited.

You basically have an adult only reception with the exception of children in your bridal party. You can make this known through:

word of mouth

wedding website- you can create a FAQ page. Have one of the questions be

1. Can I bring my children?

Unfortunately, due to limited seating, we can only accommodate the children in our bridal party. We hope that you understand.

invitations- you can either address just the adults on the envelope and hope they get the point OR you can include RSVP cards that look like this:

__ seats have been reserved in your honor

___ of ___ attending.

Only write in the number of seats for adults.

Hope this helped

It is very simple you DO NOT invite them. If they cannot figure out that the three children at the reception are the three that walked down the aisle then they are too stupid to understand no matter how many times you explain it.

However the flip side of this is that you have to remain firm. You cannot make exceptions to this rule.

We are having my son be ring bearer and my cousin be the flower girl. 2 other cousins (one from my side and one from his) are also bringing their children (each has one). If anyone complains: well the 2 that are in the wedding are obviously invited and the other two live 6hrs away and otherwise would be unable to make it, as they would need a babysitter for a full day rather than just an evening.

We are doing a "No Children" rule; with the exception of the flower girl and ring bearer. Otherwise, you must be 18 or older to attend. We are paying per person & our venue does not have a different (cheaper) price for children. We're forced to implement this rule; otherwise we'd be paying too much money for food...(that will probably be wasted).

Just address your invitations to exactly who is invited. If you put things like "and family" then its an open invite for whoever wants to come. If you address it to "mr. and mrs. james" they should know there 5 kids under the age of 10 are not invited. Some people are stupid though....just saying....

I am having an adult reception, but allowing a few kids to attend. The kids that are attending are either coming from out of town/state or are in the bridal party. I think there's only a total of 4 children coming- 2 are babies. Pretty much I made a deal personally with the parents (keeping it on the down low)- all the other parents have no idea that some children are coming so they wont ask me if they can bring theirs because the invitation says "adult reception only". So pretty much:

1.Advertise your wedding as Adults only

2.Its kind of given that the kids in the wedding party will be attending the reception and its really no big deal.

You don't. It's all or nothing.

Only kids of the wedding party for me too. I just do not want a lot of kids around especially smaller ones who can interrupt. I say do you and stick to your budget.

This is a question I get asked often. If you ask your guests to not bring their children, they will be offended if they arrive and there are children present at your ceremony and reception. Although a touchy subject, it's best to either have children or no children at all. Some couples opt to have their children in their bridal party be part of the ceremony but make the reception adult only in order to avoid hurting their guests' feelings.

I'm doing only family kids allowed...there are only 3 people not related to either me or him that have kids so those three people I'm going to put only the ones that are invited on the invite and we're having a laid back, informal reception on a grassy area so I don't want people wearing spiky heals to get stuck to the ground. So I'm throwing a small slip of paper in with the invites with--dress causal (something like that) and Only children related to the bride or groom allowed please.

where I'm having the wedding/reception at has a small pond and one of the three people doesn't do a good job watching her kids, they'd end up in the water! running around destroying things and would ruin my day!...she is the reason this will be enforced.

if it wasn't for her I would allow the other people to bring their kids but with non-family I'm following the all or nothing rule.

Macksgirl, I'm doing the same. We're having a large wedding and there might be 10 kids under 13 there and they were cherry-picked. We certainly don't want to offend anybody, but there might be a couple of people who ask why their kids couldn't come. I'm prepared to respond with just that, but do you have a great response prepared just in case? Thanks