To be pee'd off DD is not invited to friends wedding

[Kentmummy]

DH and I have been invited to a good friends wedding in feb. We live in Kent and wedding is in Scotland. DH has been asked to be an usher.
The bride and groom are good friends and we were very excited to be going... Until they said no children were invited.
I appreciate this is their wedding and I understand the no children policy if it was down to numbers but our DD is only 9 weeks old so won't cost them a penny or take up a seat. I said I'd sit at the back of the church and leave immediately as soon as she made the smallest noise.
They have refused.... The problem is I'm breast feeding so I can't leave her for the day and night as she would starve and my boobs would burst!
I've tried to give her a bottle so I can go and leave her with family but she just won't take it.
As DH is an usher he still has to go but without me... Also means we have to travel to Scotland so I can sit in a hotel while DH is at wedding.
AIBU to be pretty pissed off and think they are being a bit mean?

Not all children run riot/cry/scream during an 'intimate' ceremony (I wonder how many people will be at this 'intimate' ceremony - perhaps some will even have winter colds and have the temerity to cough, sneeze and put the couple off their vows) - plenty of children are very well behaved. A 9 week old b/f baby, sitting at the back of the venue with its mother and removed the moment it utters a sound is hardly likely to spoil the whole day for the average couple. If you really can't face anything going wrong during your wedding day, then you really need to get a grip on reality and chill.

Some are some are just noisy little sods. And maybe people who think the world revolves around them and their offspring need to get a grip on reality as well!

What a pair of knobs your "friends" are being. YANBU, and it would be totally reasonable for DH not to go too.

I can totally understand why people would not invite children from a numbers perspective. While I find it difficult to get my head around not actually wanting children at the wedding (for me and DH, the whole point of the wedding was to say "we are a family now" before we embarked on having kids) I can accept that they have the right to make that decision. But in this instance they have made it impossible for you to attend. What kind of friends are they? Tell them to go shag themselves.

How often do you see these friends out of interest?

When I read the title of this thread I thought 'oh hear we go, another precious mother whinging that her darling dd hasn't been invited to a wedding so the couple are 'odd' and the bride's a 'bridezilla' and weddings are 'suppposed' to be for families (everyone's family, apparently).

But when I read your post I was completely on your side. You have a perfectly good reason for wanting to bring your dd and have acknowledged that she might not be welcome if she cries and ceremony/during speeches and you are prepared to do something about that. YAdefinitelyNBU.

The OP who wants to bring her 9 week old b/f baby has got a perfect grip on reality - more so than the couple.

Having said this I have missed 2 weddings that DH has attended in the last 3 years for the exact same reason, ie kids weren't invited. I didn't mind DH going as I could manage on my own and they were his friends not mine. Both were horrid tory beer swilling rugby type with vile wives, and neither have bothered to visit us since we moved out of london 2 1/2 years ago despite repeated invitations. One couple has never even seen DS1 (now 3) never mind DS2. I hope for their kid's sake that they never have any as they obviously hate them!

I can't understand why DH would want to attend the weddings of such vile people but I wasn't prepared to be the bad guy. These "friends" have edited themselves out of our lives without me having to lift a finger. OP your Scotland couple will probably do the same if you choose to take the path involving the least conflict and your Dh attends without you.

I just don't get how people don't understand that they are not the most important part of someone else's wedding! You have been invited, along with x other people to a child free wedding. You can go, or not go. End of.

There are so many reasons why people don't want kids at a wedding; they think its 'off' to bf in church; they want to be the focus of attention all day; they dislike children; they want their dcs to be the only ones there; they don't want noise (all of these genuine from past weddings btw).

FWIW we had everyones dcs at our smallish wedding, bought them all a bridesmaid outfit and gave them jobs. But not everyone can do that/ wants to do that.

Just respond to the invitation, yes or no, and don't sour someone's big day by trying to change the rules for you.

I do not get the "poor" bride being harrassed by guests - I can see why someone would want no toddlers and above (except close family), but frankly if you exclude BF babies then you can only expect the calls surely? I certainly would have asked.

And by the way, I really do not gethow anyone would exclude their own nephew/niece from a family celebration like that (whilst the parents are invited). I would have been gutted as a child if someone had excluded me because I was a child.

I haven't read the whole thing so don't know if this has already been answered... have you mentioned to them that you're baby is BF and being so young etc you won't be able to leave her? It may not have crossed their minds that it wold cause you a problem.

'Both were horrid tory beer swilling rugby type with vile wives'

If you dislike them that much why be bothered they haven't visited you. The feeling is obv mutual.

I always wonder if couples like this have a checklist, and anyone less than 'perfect' doesn't get to come to their wedding. In our family's case, that would rule out DFIL (when he was still with us) with Parkinsons and Alzheimers, and my step-nephew with special needs - both of whom could cause far more 'disruption' to their precious ceremony than any of the DCs.

Coco - yes, she did tell the couple that their baby was being b/f, but she's still been told no.

She's been told no because they don't want children there FGS, if the OP wants to go to a wedding with kids, she can renew her vows and have as many kids as she likes there. If they don't want to do something they don't have to. They are funding a celebration of their commitment to each other, not a creche, not a day out for the kids, not a comfy seat while bf, a wedding!

{leaves, frothing at mouth]

I agree entirely with both Chopitychop and Grumpypants. I think a lot of people are thinking about this as though the bride and groom have deliberately set out to make life difficult for people with children. Weddings are such a social minefield, not least because guests do seem to have a tendency these days to forget that the day is about the bride and groom, and focus on their own wishes and needs. If they don't want children there, it is entirely up to them. It doesn't make them bad friends, or mean-spirited or spiteful or selfish. It just makes them focussed on their own wants and needs for this one event in their lives. If you can't have things all your own way on your wedding day, when can you?

It would be an entirely different story if the couple then proceeded to guilt-trip the OP and her DH about one or both of them not attending, but as long as they accept the situation then I think it is unfair to assume that they are bridezilla and groomzilla.

I have been to so many weddings that have been spoiled by screaming children and, in my experience at least, people tend not to take their children out at the first whimper. They tend to hang on in there, smiling a bit wetly until it becomes truly unbearable. Pre-DS I went to two weddings where I finished up taking out friends' children because they weren't moving - they were quite happy for me to miss the ceremony though!

Since DS I have missed on wedding as it was no childen - DP went alone. I have been to one child-friendly wedding and missed the whole ceremony standing outside with a screaming baby. I have been to one strict no-children wedding where one couple turned up with their two small childrn anyway and there was nearly a riot as everyone else had had to arrange a full weekend's childcare.

It's entirely up to the guest how they deal with this - both go and make some sort of arrangements where possible, one go and one stay at home with the baby, neither go. Whatever choice is made, however, there is no reason for it not to be made graciously and with best wishes to the couple.

I am also slightly surprised about how many people think it is unacceptable for a father to leave his 3/4 month old baby for a couple of nights. I was first alone overnight with our baby at 3 weeks old due to DP's business trip. Neither I nor our DS exploded.

Grumpy by name, Grumpy by nature. Unclench, dear...although your views on what a 'wedding' is (and isn't) make for interesting reading

Kungfu, Chopity and Grumpy - what were your weddings like, I wonder?

I think it's absolutely fine to have a 'no children' policy but I think there has to be a little bit of flexibility built in for exceptional circumstances. These are friends and relatives we're talking about, not people who've signed a contract that has to be adhered to.

I don't agree with people getting huffy because their children weren't invited, or turning up with uninvited kids or babies. But I think the OP has a good reason for wanting her baby there. I also get the impression that if they had just been invited as ordinary guests she wouldn't mind but because her dh is usher she would paricularly like for them to make the effort to attend.

Hee hee Maisie I should confess that much as we had a load of kids charging around at our wedding, technically it was the reception. We got married the day before, then hired a country house and had a party the following afternoon, with cakes, speeches, dress etc. But, the fuss caused by not inviting parents or our dcs to the actual exchanging of vows has made me hardened to special pleading - why force yourself where youre not wanted?

The thing is, I doubt the bride has the faintest idea of what breastfeeding a nine week old baby entails. She probably thinks the couple could leave the grandparents with six bottles of formula and swan off to the wedding with no problems, resuming breastfeeding when the mother got back. The fact that a nine week old is fed every 2/3 hours if you're lucky, and that boobs are full to bursting every 2/3 hours to oblige this, isn't the common knowledge it ought to be.

In fact, perhaps when you decline, Kentmummy, you should spell this out in the letter?

Something like...

... it's possible you are wondering why I can't just leave the baby for 48 hours while I'm breastfeeding. In order to minimise bad feeling, I thought it was worth spelling out what this would entail. DD feeds every x hours, day and night. In order to facilitate this, my boobs are full to bursting every x hours. If they are not drained, they will keep on filling, the ducts will block, and I will be in huge amounts of pain and probably contract mastitis, an illness with flu-like symptoms and a high fever. I could try to express / pump, but this isn't as easy as it sounds (a feed takes half an hour, but expressing isn't as efficient and could easily take an hour) and so I would have to disappear from the wedding for one hour in every three, pumping away. Including overnight. Perhaps with this in mind you'll understand why I/we can't come.

(NB, our dcs were fine; other people were outraged that a couple of under 5s would miss sitting in a registry office for fifteen minutes)

Flexibility, Grumpy, can be a wonderful thing...you definitely need to unclench!

Ah, x-posts. The thing is, the wedding in question is not a 15 minute registry office affair down the road - which is probably why the majority have said that she's NBU.

Sorry, disagree profoundly with Grumpy and kungfu panda. I can understand (kind of) not having non-family older children there, but excluding BF babies means excluding the mother: why bother inviting her?

And I am bored about this "kids make noise" (no kidding); I have a friend who has a deeply disabled son - he cannot speak but vocalises with deep guttural noises, who can be quite loud to some people. I would never exclude him from a wedding because "he could make noise".

If you want a perfect wedding with no noise and only perfect people there, just have a registry office affair with the two of you.

yeah Grumpy, lighten up.