Children...is this a bad idea?

[alltherightfriends]

I'm about to book my wedding and am making a list of people to invite...I have just added it up and have 100 people including 20 children. These are all family children except 2, and I know that my family will need to travel a long way if they come so I don't want them to have to leave children behind...I just think that a fifth of the guests being children is quite a lot! I'm a believer in having children at weddings and want to make it fun, it will be in Easter holidays so I was thinking of an Easter egg hunt amongst other things for entertainment. Has anyone else had a lot of children at their wedding and if so have you got any tips for how to make it as family friendly as possible? Thanks

[alltherightfriends]

The children are mostly between 2 and 10 with 3 or 4 young teenagers, if that makes any difference!

[CMP69]

We had about 10 preschoolers at our wedding. No entertainment they were no bother and had a ball. Their parents wouldn't have been able to come without them so I ignored DM and invited them anyway

[SantasFavouriteHo]

Our guest list is about 40/50 people and about 10 of those are children so roughly the same proportions as you OP
Ours range from 10 to 14 months (both DPs nieces with ours at 4.5 and 2 in there too!)
We're having a bouncy castle (in a separate kids room) and some wedding colouring/activity books on the tables (packs from Amazon) so hopefully they'll be ok
Think the Easter egg hunt sounds a great idea! Is there an option to do it indoors if the weathers bad? Are they chocolate ones or those plastic ones you put a 'prize' inside?

[Nervo]

Easter egg hunt is a great idea.

We had loads of children at our wedding. We made up special activity bags for them for the speeches. For the rest of the time, they had a ball being around so many friends and family.

[littlesupersparks]

We had a Christmas wedding and did gingerbread house kits - it was fun :-) something to keep them occupied between ceremony and dinner.

[Hassled]

Disposable cameras for the kids - that'll keep them happy for some time.

I think as long as you make sure the food is going to be enjoyed and have the sort of tolerant attitude you show in your OP, it'll be fine.

[NinjaPanda34]

We had 120 at our wedding, 25 under-16s. We didn't do anything different for them apart from give them a red love-heart helium balloon each. So in the en masse photo - which we got done in black&white, we got the red of the balloons photoshopped in. Makes for an amazing photo. The kids made our wedding, they brought a great energy to the day. We did have a dance-off during the disco break between the ceilidh music. Hope that helps. :)

[alltherightfriends]

Phew! Thanks everyone. No idea what sort of eggs it would be yet but could do it indoors or outdoors - will have to rope DP and bridesmaids into helping plant them all. We have no children yet so not really used to entertaining large numbers of children for any amount of time! Activity packs are a good idea as well, I can do that hopefully the weather will be good and they will be happy...around half of the children live abroad and their English isn't very good yet so I just want to make sure they don't get too bored.

[alltherightfriends]

Also love the helium balloon picture idea and disposable cameras! I imagine you got some interesting photos from them

[YolandiFuckinVisser]

We had 12 children out of a total 80 guests. Ages between 9 months & 12 years. It was brilliant, we loved having them all there. It helped that it was mostly outdoors & plenty of room for running about etc on a lovely sunny day

[maccie]

We did little activity bags for each child with bubbles, balloons,cameras, crayons and a wedding booklet with pictures to colour and simple word searches in.

We also made one of the food choices very child appealing.

[emwithme]

Having been a bridesmaid seven times before I was 12, I was adamant that my wedding wasn't going to be boring for kids.

We had foam pirate swords and bubbles and activity packs with colouring/word searches/crosswords (different levels in the packs for different aged kids) with crayons and a sharpener and rubbers.

[DrEllieSattler]

I have a similar number to you OP.

I'm also changing the "brides room" into a crèche.

[DeladionInch]

Friend of mine is hiring nannies... I can't wait!

[Jackieharris]

I think if there's more of them it's easier as they can play together rather than having a couple of bored ones.

If there's space a bouncy castle is a great idea!

I'd give them a party bag too.

[crazykat]

Friends had quite a few children at their wedding. They set up a 'sweet bar' with lots of big tubs of sweets and paper bags and had a bouncy castle for them to burn off the sugar rush. It was brilliant and the kids were no trouble as they had something to do.

When my uncle got married the dj did half hour of party games for the kids which entertained them and they loved having something different.

Activity bags in the children's places at the table is a good way to keep them quiet during speeches. A small gift bag with a pack of crayons, small colouring book, stickers etc in.

[museumum]

We had about 20 but mainly very young and many babies. Ours was a v informal ceilidh in a barn so no worries about them running about. We just provided balloons and no long waits for food and it was all fine. But then my friends are relaxed about stuff.