To think that they had no self-awareness? (It's a child-free wedding one)

The pair of you sound like you must be absolutely insufferable in real life 😂.

I’ll never quite get this air of martyrdom about getting something that, presumably, you always wanted. As PP have said, if you were terribly selfish pre-kids, that’s on you, and not on your friends who are probably expected to bend backwards to accommodate you.

Some babies refuse formula, some babies have alergies, some babies refuse a bottle full stop. Just give formula really isn’t so black and white….
one pp got it right - when does it stop being your wedding your choice and start being mean cruel and narcissistic, alienating close family from a special day for the insta wedding. You want an exclusive wedding, you need to be ok that it excludes people

Even before I had my DC I could understand why childfree weddings might be a problem. Growing up my own parents didn't have on tap childcare, our grandparents would look after us for the odd evening out but nothing else. Obviously if your only babysitters are wedding guests too you won't have anyone. You don't need to have had kids to understand that.

I couldn’t agree more!

Lucky for me my friends are starting on their parenthood journey and the struggles are becoming real for them too.

That happened in my extended family. The couple with the baby were told their tube fed baby wasn't allowed at all. But only after said couple paid for supplies to painstakingly hand make some wedding fripperies. A few years later the bride, now divorced lost her shit when invited to a child free wedding when the 7yo could easily have gone to her dad's that night or her other granny who always took her.

Personally I love kids at weddings. We had a family only one but all kids came. There's something adorable about kids at weddings for me. Seeing them dance with mum and dad or little ones being flaked out asleep in a booth down the back with dad's suit jacket tucked around them is so sweet.

You don't know 100% why they had a child free wedding we have friends who will never be able to have children without intervention and didn't want reminding of it on their day. So we left DS at home.

We had kids including DS at our wedding so it was anything but child free, however I am not in the omg breastfeeding group of woman. If little one can be left with DH then express or use formula. The fact mam can't be away from baby in the modern world is one of the big reasons we need to be pro formula even as a mixed feeding approach. Luckily our friends are equally balance minded.

2 examples of how weddings have got out of control. It seems having an Insta moment is more important than almost anything.

On the one hand its within your right to dictate what you want at your wedding. At what point does that become an unreasonable narcissistic choice - where babies are fed in car parks and people are ‘thrown out’. Just wow.

Hilarious they got told to leave, after they policed you using a car park to breastfeed.

I think people who write comments this ignorant (and refer to other people as 'breeds') are the more clueless (and selfish, ignorant, and batshit) ones, personally.

You really think that people who care for disabled or elderly relatives, work in caring professions, who have ever been in a romantic relationship or friendship, who volunteer, who campaign for better conditions and rights for others, have 'never had to think of anyone else?' If anything you could argue that people who do any of the above are less selfish than those who 'only' have kids, as they voluntarily choose to care about others rather than just selfishly focussing on their immediate family unit.

That really says more about you, if before dropping a sprog you only thought of your own wellbeing, perhaps you selfish, but that was a you problem, not typical of the rest of the population!

Can't edit my previous post to correct my appaling spelling!!

Have you actually listened to yourself? You clearly have zero self awareness or have deliberately wrote a goady response. 'Never had to think of anyone else so can't see beyond themselves'. You quite obviously cannot see beyond yourself and that it reflected in your ignorant attitude towards non parents.

I do understand child free weddings and do totally support them. HOWEVER we were invited to a child free wedding of a very close relative when dd was 1.5 years old, all family invited so not an option for a baby sitter.

When we relayed this information we got very kind suggestions of swapping nursery days (leaving us without childcare on another day) and having a babysitter pick dd up and keep overnight, leaving her with a friend of another relative (registered child minder but we had no met her so did not feel comfortable, i was even asked how DHs family felt that we didn't trust them to have DD overnight.

We thought we had found a good compromise by hiring a nanny for the afternoon and night until who would be at the venue with dd in our room and out of site all day and night. This was not good enough they did not want her at the venue at all. At this point i lost my shit and if it was not for it upsetting another close relative so much if we did not attend I would not have gone and only went to keep the peace. The day of the wedding all was fine and then we found out bride had asked the nanny not to take dd outside the venue whilst we were inside as she shouldn't have even been there. At breakfast the next morning we did take DD with us (breakfast was for close family only) and bride just completely ignored DD. I was absolutely livid at this and so upset, I do have to say the relationship will not be the same.

As i said i completely support child free weddings but absolutely draw the line about being told what i should do with her!

Oh piss off. I've only been a parent for 10 weeks but I wasn't a completely ignorant brainless narc before then. If people are make stupid remarks it's because they're stupid, not because they don't have children.

The only thing I now look back on and think 'eek' is staying with a friend abroad when they had a 3 month old. I must have been even more of an imposition than I thought at the time, but in my defence they had invited me, I didn't just turn up.

How patronising is that? We who have bred are the special ones, all other women are idiots!

I don't have children but can empathise with and make allowances for those who do. I'm often made responsible for looking after many people as I'm the one with 'all that free time as you don't have children' - that's the sort of crap I have to push back on.

This is utterly insane. Plenty of people without children think of others before themselves. And if you never did thought of others until you had children, something is wrong with you. And there are millions of painfully selfish parents out there.

Jesus. This is an appalling thing to say. You may have had crazy things said to you by non-parents, but you've just said an incredibly rude thing TO non-parents. Just because you and your friends can't see beyond your immediate sphere of experience doesn't mean the rest of us are so limited. And plenty of childfree people are carers for elderly relatives etc, some are incredibly selfless.

Maybe that was why they let the OP refuse to bring the baby. They didn't want the baby in the venue, but they knew they would look pretty heartless if the OP told any of the guests "I have to pop out now to the car park to breastfeed the baby, my husband's just arrived with her..."

@piccolorhinoceros for reference no, that isn't what I meant.
Unrealistic expectations, people invite family & friends and naturally with that combination comes kids.
Bride & Grooms getting face on or bitching about someone because they paid for said guest but now said guest can't attend because childcare plans have fallen through and it's too late to get a refund on that person or they are unable to get a replacement person etc. Yet they are the ones limiting who can actually attend.
People can have child free weddings of course but they should expect attending guests to be limited.

They sound like two utter bellends. The fact that they said no to you breast feeding your baby in the car park of the wedding says it all really. I could not be bothered having 'friends' like this. I'd point it out thought. Embarrassed for them!

If anyone invited me to a wedding so ungraciously I wouldn't go anyway.

This sounds hilarious 😂 and deserving of its own thread.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a couple to request no children at the wedding, as long as they accept that it means some people will decline the invitation. It's not reasonable to deny you to feed your child in the car park, but tbh, it wasn't necessary to ask.

I'm always really surprised at these issues with weddings. Yes, the couple often don't have children, so may not understand the challenges of a young baby. But the parents of the couple are often involved in planning and certainly do! We had a few small babies at our wedding, and my mum thought of all sorts of thug that I didn't - she contacted the mums to ask about what they might need for naps/feeding etc, and although we were totally fine with people bf wherever, she also set up a small area for feeding mums in case they wanted privacy/quiet. If any/all of my children Marry it's the sort of thing id think it was my job to remind them of.

Cant believe they said no to you feeding in the car park! DC4 was 4 months old when I was invited to a child free wedding. Luckily it was only 45mins away so my mum came with the pram and walked the baby round the hotel grounds until it was feeding time. There were other grandparents/dads doing similar.

my mum just said "what goes around comes around then" (she's much braver than me!) and they changed topic VERY quickly.
Love it!