To not understand the child free wedding scenario?

[witherhills]

why are children so bad? God forbid they should make a bit of noise
Wouldn't have dreamt of not inviting dc to mine, wouldn't even have entered my head

Been to a few weddings where we have left DS at home, but that's our choice and fortunate to have very keen babysitting mother

QuietNinja - do you think that the fact that you already had a child when you got married influenced the way you felt about it?
I would have children at my wedding if I was to get married now, but before children I would no sooner have invited children than invited everyone to bring their pets.

I agree with Lesley- back in the day, if children were screeching and trying to run around in a church (or anywhere else) they were quickly and quietly removed from the scene. Now, if they are, heaven forbid asked to move, or even glanced at, never mind an aggressive tut in their direction all hell breaks loose and we have a 30 page AIBU "FFS they are three of course they are going to behave like children/grumpy old biddies, neh neh" scenario.

If children are going to be there,their parents need to make sure they are not disruptive. And therein lies the rub, because a lot of them can't be arsed.

I do not believe it is to do with cost it is to do with preciousness.

You could always get married / have reception somewhere cheaper if you really wanted the kids there. Blaming it on cost is poppycock.

I have photographed weddings from £1000 total cost to £100,000 total cost.

Well done OP you got yourself 75 posts hashing over a subject that is done to death at least once a month.
You either refuse to see the other side of the coin or just wanted a nice long ruck. So YABU. You can go away smug in the knowledge that you are the superior child embracing earth mother and others are cold hearted bridezillas.

Buccharest - that's basically the reason for my not wanting children at my wedding. Not beacuse the kids might be disruptive, but because the parents would have to be parenting rather than partying.
Most of my friends are so much more wild when they aren't taking care of thier children, and I wanted my wedding to be a party and not a charming family event. Plenty of time for charming family events later in life.

Sometimes infants scream a lot in services and this drowns out all other noise

I don't think so. My nephew is 10 and my niece 7 and there's no way they wouldn't have them at my wedding so unless I had got married as teenager then I would always have them there. Most friends have kids too now so that's why so many. I just don't think they spoil amwedding. I can understand if they start crying but any vicar/registrar worth his salt will ask for them to be taken out wouldn't they? But equally I do feel it's the bride and grooms choice and certainly wouldn't be offended to say no dc.

Popadop - that's not always an option. We had 150 guests, the most any hotel within reasonable distance could accommodate was 125. Therefore we had a marquee - the only decent local caterer available that day charged about the same for children as adults, as they had basically the same food (which was fine - I'd have hated to do nice food for adults then some sub-Little Chef crap for children).

I suppose we could always have resolved the problem by not inviting children to reduce numbers to give ourselves more choice of venue .

Sorry wouldn't be offended to be toldno dc.

That's a bit of a generalisation isn't it Popadop?
Surely some people just want a more adult event? Some of the child-free weddings I've been to were anything but precious (thinking of one that was barefoot on a beach followed by picnic in a field and another that was a very hippyish party by a waterhole in a river with the bride wearing a sundress she still wears regularly). Tones of fun, some terribly non-parental behaviour from some of the parents present and not the slightest bit precious.

It is an option do you really have 150 close close friends and relatives that you see every week......or were you inviting great aunt greta because you felt you should.

Popadop. I know for a fact my cousin and his fiancé aren't precious about kids. They have one fgs but every single cousin has 1,2,3 kids plus any friends that have kids. I know they can't afford it.
We were lucky that we could afford a wedding that could accommodate everyone we wanted there. Some people can't. End of.

I only speak of my experience of course and I have photographed beach weddings and others that are very relaxed, both with and without children.

But on the whole the bride wants the whole ''princess day''.

Having argued for child-free I would also say that in many church weddings a little bad behaviour from a toddler or two is often a welcome relief from the tedium. That or a snoring uncle or a farting vicar.

When you have a prejudice, it's easy to see everything in the light of it. Since I doubt Popadop was present at the planning stage of most of the weddings phototgraphed, it's a gross generalisation appearing to come mostly from prejudice.

Some people don't want to compromise on the quality of their food/venue to accommodate tens of children. Some people might want to have their venue somewhere special to them that doesn't allow children. Why should they have to downgrade their (paid for by themselves) choices to accommodate children? No reason - and it's not necessarily "preciousness", sometimes it's just practicality.

Are you in Essex?

Though thinking about it another reason they've opted for childfree is so everyone can get pissed. Which is a good enough reason in my book

Popadop - no, we have 120 adults who are important to us and who we wanted to invite to our wedding and their 30 children. We didn't do any inviting for the sake of it, the list would have doubled if we had! Plus, I would certainly not have chopped 30 adults off that list so we could squeeze into a hotel venue. These people are our close friends and family.

I always sat at the back so I could take my kids out if they started to cry or be noisy. [It was actually a good excuse as wedding ceremonies are pretty boring IMO]. I wouldn't attend a childfree wedding as I no longer have family who can babysit and I certainly wouldn't pay a professional babysitter. It doesn't bother me at all if other people have childfree weddings though, each to their own.
I was married 25 years ago and I wouldn't have even thought of excluding children. There were quite a few there. We didn't have a 'venue ' with price per head so cost wasn't an issue. IMO the whole wedding scene changed when the law changed to allow weddings outside of churches/ registry offices. That's when it started to become more of an 'industry'.
I also agree with the poster who doesn't get the whole 'princess for the day ' thing. That 's the last thing that I would have wanted.

"sometimes it's just practicality"

Yes - like sending out wedding invites banning old or disabled people from your wedding because the venue you like is a bit inaccessible.

Honestly I think it's very sad to ban children from a wedding.

Weddings are a social event. I think if you're doing the 'it's all about us' thing then maybe a private ceremony with a couple of witnesses is the best choice.

I felt like amprincess but that wasn't my aim for the day. My aim was that all our family and friends had a bloody good day, and they did. The princess thing was a bonus. And probably had more to do with kids being there than not.

I utterly hate this implication if you choose not to have kids at your wedding you are some facist child hating self centred old toad. And 'weddings are a family occasion' crap- weddings are what the couple getting married want them to be, not what tutting and bosom hoiking onlookers say they should be!

Have spoken to my sister. My cousin can't afford all the kids that's why he's not having them. There's 13 children in the family alone, and I have no idea how many kids their friends have so that seems perfectly reasonable to me.

You are so right about weddings having turned from a simple ceremony followed by a fairly standard party into some big self actualisation vanity princess fest

Thats a bit unfair. I didn't want to be a 'princess' on my day, just a bride.

We lived in London where weddings are £££. We tried to keep costs down as much as possible as we were mostly paying for the wedding (friend made cake, friend did flowers, uncle drove his car as wedding car, hired venue as cheap as possible). But we had lots of lovely supportive friends that we wanted to invite (many of whom made wedding possible at low budget). If we had invited children of all guests, we wouldn't have had room in the venue (fire regs). We couldn't have afforded a bigger venue.

We invited godchildren and children of family to service and reception. All other children were invited to the service and a couple of older ones came to the evening do. Of course nursing mums were exceptions. We had plenty of conversations with parents working out what was the best option for them for the day. To my knowledge, noone was offended and we are still friends with everyone! Now have a toddler and if we get invited to weddings that include kids we don't take him. He's your average active toddler with a short attention span - weddings are really boring and tiring for him...and us too! That'll probably change as he gets a bit older but then as teenager he may feel the same way - we invited 2 cousins of DH with 4 teenage kids between them. only the teenage girl decided she wanted to come - the boys had better things to do. Didn't bother me either way!

And what bimbo said.