To put "adult only reception" or not?

Our families kind of flipped alittle when they even heard through word-of-mouth that we are having an adult only reception so i would absolutely make it as clear as possible on the invite so no one can come back with "oh, i didn't know". I have a very strong willed irish family though so it may not be like that for everyone!!

We're not writing it on our invites (WW will tell you that's bad etiquette, but I've seen it done many times), but we are putting it on our website. We're hoping between the website and putting only adult names on the envelope that our guests will get the hint.

Yeah as a guest I think I'd be a little put off seeing the wording on the invites. But I don't really want to have to deal with guests adding their kids names to the rsvps either.

We didn't put it on our invites, though I've seen it done and it doesn't bother me (regardless if what etiquette says). We just addressed the envelopes to exactly who's invited, listed how many seats were reserved per invite, and started telling people that it's adult only. We don't have it on our website, but I know a lot of people put it there too.

I'm in the same boat.

I'm doing adult only names like @cristi and I'm going to still her idea and add it to my website as well.

So would it be acceptable to have the RSVP cards say something like "please reply by date. We've reserved 2 seats for you.

_______ & _______ will be attending or regretfully decline."

I've never thought about putting the reserved seats wording but that might work.

I think that wording would work. Ours say something like: _ seats have been reserved in your honor. Please respond by (date). Then we added a spot for them to add names and a place to check attend or decline.

@Brandy thanks for your example. I like the reserved in you honor wording. So you printed all of yours out and then wrote in the number of seats by hand right?

I like that idea Kimberly. A little more work, but it would be worth it to avoid all the frustration of turning down extra RSVP's.

I put in on my website and spread it through word of mouth. I didn't know it was bad etiquette until WW. I had thought about putting it on our invites, but there was no room.

We put adults only reception on the bottom of the reply cards. We had to as our families would not pay attention to who it was addressed to.

@Amy - Yeah I'm not doing an inner envelope so you're probably right... I don't think many people would pay attention to who I addressed the outer envelope to.

Ours is an adults only as well, and I think I'm just going to say screw etiquette and add Adult Reception to Follow on the invitations...no matter what, someone is going to be offended that Junior is going to have to spend the night with a sitter, and its going to be those same people that are going to be offended with my wording that it will be adults only reception.

@ Maltese, you have a point. It may be bad etiquette, but so is adding your kids names to the RSVP when they aren't invited. I think sometimes you have to be more realistic than etiquette allows.

I did some research outside of WW. Putting it on the invitation itself is bad form, but putting it on the reception card is appropriate.

So, that's what we're doing. Also, we are putting a note on the card to direct people to the website for important info, including childcare arrangements (we're assisting with this).

The more places you can spell out the details of your reception, the better. The last thing you want is for someone to miss this information until the last minute.

@Kimberly, yes. We have a family member who is married this summer she did the same thing.. That's actually where we got the idea from (though I know a lot of people do it).

I did word of mouth, on our website, and right on the reply card. I figure between the three of those things, you'd have to be pretty dim to RSVP with kids. Worse case scenario, if somebody does reply with kids I'm assigning whichever parent is closest to said guest to call them.

We put it on there. It's all over the website too.

We put it on our website and people could only RSVP the guests names who were on the invitation. If you don't want kids you need to male it clear

@ Andrea - I second the assigning parents to make the phone call. I don't want that stress!

@ MrsZotolla - pretty! I like that you mentioned cocktails. It makes the no kids thing sound more reasonable.