Pressure re baby at wedding

[DeeDee40]

Hello AIBU? Getting married in a matter of weeks. Decided not to invite kids due to cost,type and size of venue. Means that DHs nieces cant come too but thats choice were happy with. A friend contacted me today hinting re inviting her baby who will be seven months by then due to bfing! The message said that her family will have to keep him outside church and reception and phone her when he needs feeding and she hopes the next wedding she goes to will invite him!???? does she expect her family to bring her baby into my wedding ceremony and reception.so she can bf him? My DH not happy as he feels shes trying her luck majorly and if others can find babysitters some of whom have smaller babys then so can she. Not happy

We had a 'child free' wedding but of course did not excluded breast fed babies! If we had done this then the guest would not have been able to attend. It is a ridiculous thing to say to a new mother that 'we want you to attend our wedding but not bring your child who is dependent on you for their food and drink' yabu to offer this invitation. Yanbu to choose no babies, but you shouldn't expect guests to attend without their babies that they are nursing.

YABVU. sound lovely as well your poor friend! best bet is that she doesn't attend as even if the baby does take a bottle she will be in a LOT of discomfort when she starts missing feeds and the letdown begins!

IMO YABU. I would decline the invitation if I were your friend, particularly if you suggested I try a bottle, as if it's your place to make such a suggestion.

YANBU to have a child free wedding, of course, but you are BU not to make any allowances for individual circumstances.

Are you/have you ever been the parent of a 7mo BF baby, OP?

I would decline too, and be offended.

The guest isn't obliged to put themselves out massively if the invite won't work for them any more than the B&G are obliged to allow children to a child free wedding if they don't want to / can't afford to / don't want to have to invite the lot.

Totally agree with this Tiggy. The OP is long gone, but I think where she went wrong was the : "Furthermore there are parents that have had no issue with younger babies who are alternating bf and bottle and are happy to leave them with bottle for one day"

The expectation that your wedding day is so important to other people that they will massively put themselves out to attend seems to be growing and growing. As is the attitude that it's some kind of grand honour to be invited. I blame the internet, I really do.

I think the friend was a bit crass with her 'hope the baby's invited to the next one' comment, but testing the waters as to whether bf babies are an exemption was perfectly sensible (as evidenced by the number of posters who did have that exemption at their own weddings). And any bride and groom have to accept that, with tiny children, circumstances can change and you might find that you can't leave them when you thought it would be possible. So the guests might have to cancel after initially accepting. You smile graciously and aren't an arse about it and everyone's grand.

tiggy I know cost and space was mentioned in the OP, but that is usually the reason given for not inviting everyone's children. I find it a bit sad that the groom's own nieces can't attend on cost/space grounds, whereas presumably some much more distant friends can.

Well, since the OP is long gone, iirc from her present thread, it's 4 (one a newborn, others primary ish)

Absolutely agree about it being difficult to predict whether a baby will be able to be left at home or happily attend a ceremony months in advance.

ItsMine Seriously? You think our son will be sad that he doesn't appear in our wedding photos? What a bonkers suggestion.

I can assure you that it doesn't and won't ever bother him. He is 23 now and I don't think it would occur to him to care about his parents old wedding photos. I'm sure he is glad his parents have a happy marriage but I think looking at our wedding snaps is a step too far.

How would you know whether it would be sad if the nephew and nieces could attend? Some children would find a wedding very very boring - sitting still, boring speeches, long adult conversations, strange food - that sums up many weddings that are lovely for adults but just not child focused.

i think whether you were not born or were too young to remember, not being in your parent's wedding photos is not that traumatic.

It's amazing to me how entitled some people are.

I choose to breast feed my 4 children up to toddler age and so doing missed child free weddings and hen dos, girly weekends away and engagement dos.

That was my choice and it never crossed my mind to try and force a host to accommodate me just because I was breast feeding.

To be honest I would have rather ripped off my arm than take a toddler or a baby to a wedding. Absolutely no point and unless there's a huge amount laid on for them how bloody boring.

Listen one of my sons is 23 too. Hilarious to even think if him pouring over our wedding photos and grieving he wasn't there. Ha ha ha.

If anyone is offended that their pfb isn't welcome at a child free wedding then they need to get a massive grip. Accept or decline with good grace. Anything else is rude and entitled.

To those who would decline would you decline of your child/children were older and not invited?

Once mine were older I would go if I could get a babysitter/family to babysit. Or I would go and DH would stay home or vice versa.

I accept/decline depending on childcare issues.

When I had breastfed babies I would decline with they were exclusively breast fed, accept if they would take a bottle.

Now I generally have to decline as I cannot rustle up care for ds1. Previously if it was someone very special then dh or I would go alone and the other would look after ds1. Now that's becoming impossible as for the moment ds1 is 2:1 care, so unless my parents are available to help out or ds1 is in respite, we would refuse.

A really good friend of mine got married when my DD was 15 months, and she said "no kids". We weren't bothered as we were happy to have a night away. However, another good friend, whose DD was the same age, was appalled and refused to leave her child. She asked our friend if she could take her, and was told sorry, but no. I felt that this was fair enough, but it turned out that the bride's nieces and nephews were at the wedding and meal. She probably could have let our mutual friend take her DD.
I do understand when people don't invite older kids though, as venues often charge the same price for an adult meal as for the kids.

LilyMayViolet I wouldn't decline if children were older, unless I couldn't get childcare for them for whatever reason and then I'd have to.

The OP's fiance thinks the friend is "trying her luck majorly?" What, you mean that trying to find a solution that means she can come and witness your marriage and support you in your special day means that she's trying to diddle you in some way?

Charming.

I couldn't attend a child free wedding because I was BF'ing my baby.

Babies under the age of 6 months (including formula fed babies) were allowed in but babies over that age weren't. My DS was 6 months and two weeks so was told I couldn't bring him. The groom was a very close friend of my DH's and I knew the bride really well, but they still wouldn't let me bring DS even though they knew he was BF.

They obviously thought that when a baby hits six months of age they go from being EBF the previous day to then miraculously changing overnight to having 3 meals a day and taking bottles when thirsty.

As a result our friendship pretty much came to an end. It was pretty difficult when all the wedding photos came out and there were lots of bottle fed babies there but my breast fed one was allowed.

My husband was really upset over the whole thing and he didn't go to the wedding either.

We really didn't mind the fact it was 'child free' but my husband was very disappointed that his friend wouldn't make an allowance for our BF baby because he was 2 weeks over the cut off point.

I do understand the concept though of if you make allowances for one you have to make allowances for others etc and then where would it end? So I can see their point of view to a degree but it got awkward and messy.

It's been 10 months since their wedding and we haven't even seen them since. That certainly isn't because we are avoiding them but I think they feel uncomfortable about it all.

The way DH and I saw it was that if we were getting married and a really good friend of ours was breast feeding there's absolutely no way I would tell her that her baby isn't welcome. I would never jeopardise her attendance just because she had a baby, it would be ludicrous. I think we all judge others on the actions we would take and I guess it taught us that my DH probably wasn't as good a friend to the groom as he thought he was. We both know the decision came from his Bridezilla fiancé though.

Anyway OP - you have the right to make any decisions around your wedding but as has been said, if you exclude babies then there's a good chance you are excluding their parents too. You just need to ask yourself if it's really worth it and in the grand scheme if things, does it really matter if a baby is there if it isn't actually going to cost you anything?

I missed heaps of weddings when the dds were little and I was breastfeeding my then one year old exclusively as she was just refused anything else. I saw it as part and parcel of raising little children and didn't try to make the bride and groom feel guilty.