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

Presumably they went home early to relieve the babysitters

If I was your friend, I would have declined the invitation so that I could ensure my baby wad fed and so that I didn't have to a) try to impose a bottle on a baby known to refuse bottles or b) try to wean a baby before I'd intended to so that I could meet your wedding deadline

Your friend seems much more accommodating and generous than me, though, and she's bending over backwards to find a compromise. YABVU.

Agree with all pp who say that you will burn with shame when you have a baby and look back on this.

I thought a wedding was a coming together of all the significant people in a couple's life to help them celebrate their union.
Don't the guests matter at all had a great day!I find your attitude incredibly shallow, maninawomansworld.

You have have had cardboard cut outs for guests,

They came along, were 'off' with us, went home early and have barely spoken to us since . Oh well, don't care, we had a great day!

This astounds me- why invite these people in the first place if they are so meaningless to you that you can dismiss their value in your life so casually?

You are right about two words in your post- selfish and entitled but I am not sure they are endearing qualities- even in a bride.

We had no children at our wedding - including now-DH's DNs - and, believe it or not, we're not monsters!

We had a tiny shoestring budget wedding: registry office, single figure number of guests, no evening do, no specially written vows, no meringue dresses, no hand-dyed ribbons on the favours exactly matching the chair covers (because no favours or chair covers). DH barely knew/knows his niece and nephew thanks to BIL's ex being difficult about BIL's access, meaning BIL barely got to see them never mind DH; I hardly knew/know the children of my oldest friend because we already lived 300 miles apart and kept in touch via email by the time she had them, and one other guest had a stepchild. To have invited them would have meant half as much cost again as they were all old enough to have a proper meal, and would have meant five people that we didn't really know in attendance when we'd already pruned back the list to the barest of bones meaning people that we did know much better weren't invited.

Blithely ignoring the last 400-and-odd posts (and the fact the OP has disappeared) and going back to the point...OP, YANBU to want a childfree wedding. Your friend INBU to want to bring her baby. She WBU to use the emotionally-blackmaily "next wedding" line rather than simply making a decision like an adult to attend or not. YWBVU to talk about her and her baby in the terms you used, which didn't suggest real friendship or respect.

Your wedding day is the most important day in your life, not everyone else's.

I don't understand this fourtothedozen. If you feel strongly that children should be invited to weddings why don't you take them when they are invited to one? The respect goes both ways. You made your dh's niece's wedding sound like a terrible chore that your husband had to endure. If someone felt like that about our wedding I'd really hope they didn't come at all.

Your wedding day is the most important day in your life,

I cringe when I hear stuff like that.

Is that the message we want to give to our daughters? And it is primarily DDs who are fed this line.

Is that the most important thing we can aspire to?

Jesus wept. I despair.

With 50% of marriages now ending in divorce now there are a lot of women going to be left with a very sour taste in the mouth.

well said four

Agree four
Ditto fairytale wedding all little girls want to be princesses for a day
Utter tripe.

And one reason I hate going to weddings. All this idea about "one day my prince will come", carried away on a white horse by some vacant knight to live happily ever after. The dressing in Barbie-esque dresses with curls and ringlets, the wanting the day to be perfect, all moats and ivory towers.
Yeauchh.

Aargh, I didn't mean that as baldly as it reads (especially as I was very definitely not fussed by having a wedding at all, let alone a big white one)...I meant in context of what's currently going on in bride-to-be's life as opposed to the lives of her guests - it was clumsily expressed shorthand for "you can't be surprised if no one else thinks your wedding is as important as you and your DH do", which would have been a better way of putting it.

Because Bunbaker churches tend to be very acoustic and any noise carries. I have been to plenty of weddings where some screaming baby or toddler at the back has pretty much drowned out the vows or rendered other parts of the service inaudible because some parent does not step outside as they do not want to miss anything. As pointed out it is very distracting and runs the very real risk of spoiling the ceremony. As an usher in the past I have had to someone to take their wailing baby outside and was told ?he will calm down in a minute?, I had to then firmly tell her that the bride and groom don?t have a minute as they will reading their vows in 30 seconds, she went outside in a huff with baby still screaming. I can fully understand when some bride and grooms opt for a no children policy.

To be fair I find myself agreeing with you a bit there fourtothedozen! Some of the conventions around marriage are archaic and sexist.

FWIW the noisiest child at our wedding was a 2yo; we barely heard a peep out of the breastfed 6mo we had there (as I'm guessing the boob did a fab job of keeping him occupied if necessary). At the reception we sat them near the back so they had plenty of space to sit/crawl on the floor and he was good as gold.

Also the only times the children caused a disturbance really was during the vows (helped eveyone relax a bit though! ) and during the church ceremony, which incidentally, you have no control over and hordes of random, crying babies could attend if they wanted to! But we didn't mind, I didn't even notice until we watched the video back.

Aren't the best events those that consider the needs of the guests? Why not just elope otherwise?

It's a party. It doesn't have to be all things to all people. There are plenty of events and occasions to which children aren't invited and many people decline wedding invitations for many different reasons.

Breastfeeding is 'icky'?

How old are you zee?

When I was about 7 and DB was 2 we were the dn and dn in this situation.

Made worse by the groom's parents expecting my DPs to put up others guests and both drive (to fit said other guests in) to the venue a good three hours away but not asking them. It all blew up when they declined as no one to leave us with, when the plot was revealed.

Ddad speaks to his sister every christmas sharp now, and I haven't seen any of them in person since except at my dgms funeral, when I was 18, and was blanked by the lot of them as if it was my fault.

If I ever marry DP, I'm not sure id invite my cousins either though. Too bloody childish (although now approaching 50) the lot of them.

The daughter of a friend of DM had a limited children wedding, that we also didn't make the grade for. Given I was 13 by then and had been involved in umpteen church activities with her (music, Easter garden type stuff etc, not "in a different part of a youth club") I was very hurt not to be invited. Would never say so, though didn't bother to keep in touch after that point. If it had been no under 18s it would have been easier, I think.

Sorry haven't finished the thread but I do think OP Is getting a bit of a hard time 6 pages in.

The fact is that before you have a baby you just do not appreciate that there is not always a solution to a 'problem' where caring for an infant is concerned.

She has been trying to get the baby to take a bottle but he won't. The upshot of that is that he still needs to be breastfed on the day you get married, weaned or not.

Seems like you have both been a bit pissy with each other over this. You expect her to 'deal with it' and she expects you to make an exception for her baby. Both U IMO.

Our reason for not inviting DC was not that we wanted a perfect day with no risk of noise, it was that we had a restriction on numbers and if we had invited children in would have reduced the number of friends and relatives we could invite. For example, DH has 16 cousins most of whom have 2 or 3 children (some of whom we have never met as they live in a different part of the country). However:
(I) none of our siblings had DC - we would have made an exception for them
(ii) we had an exception for babes in arms
(iii) we did indicate on the information we included with the invite that we were sorry we could not accommodate children but that if anyone was really struggling for childcare we would try to accommodate if we could.
Obviously with (iii) we were taking the risk that everyone would ask for their children to come, but we were comfortable that people would be sensible about it (for example, none of DH's cousins invited cousins' children to their wedding for the same reason so we knew they understood).
In the end, one 4 month old baby came.

I do think excluding nieces and nephews and small babies is harsh. I have been to lots of "child-free" weddings and most have made these exceptions. In fact, the only couple who were very strict (and got upset when a couple of people then didn't come) have now had children of their own and have had an enormous strop and refused to attend when they have been invited to child-free weddings! I have always avoided the temptation to remind them about their own wedding, although one of the people who couldn't attend their wedding has pulled them up on it!

YANBU, lots of people love a child-free wedding so you can relax for once without the DCs (who DO often scream/tantrum at the wrong time and drown out the service). And I'm sorry you've had some of the nasty comments on this thread - there's a bullying pack mentality takes over sometimes, and people say the nastiest things on here that I doubt they would ever say in person.

Accusing people who do not even know each other of being part of a "bullying pack" because some disagree on some aspects of a post sounds both dismissive and spiteful, quicker than engaging though.

I always thought bfeeding babe's in arm were the exception to the no kids rule?

Tbh I don't get child free weddings anyway, have been to a few and it was a pita to sort out, when dh and I got married in may I think there were as many kids as adults, if not more. Obviously we had our own five children and most of our friends have kids, we had about 50 guests and half at least we're children. Lovely registry office wedding, photos in the garden courtyard then round the corner to the forum for lunch at Pizza express. I made party bags for all the children and it was a lovely relaxed day. My frirnds son Said it was the best wedding he had been to. The children were a big part of it, it was a celebration of our family and that includes our children, my nephew and my friends and their children.

Meh each to their own but to not invite nieces and nephews and step children etc seems very off and as I said bfeeding babe's in arms have always been the exception to the no kids rules ime.

there's a bullying pack mentality takes over sometimes, and people say the nastiest things on here that I doubt they would ever say in person.

On threads like these there's always one or two who pop up and say "why do people have to be such meanies, do you speak like that IRL?" - of course not, the Internet gives you license to be a bit more free with words - not to mention tone is hard to get across in writing.
Not everyone is going to agree, going against the OP is not bullying

I can't believe people are still on about this. Having read today's updates I am even more firmly of the view that this is why I hate weddings.

I can not think of many other subjects which bring out the worst in Mnetters- weddings, along with Child/Parent parking spaces vs Disabled parking spaces, and women who dare to not wish to breastfeed are just like lighting touchpapers.

If I was not already married, I would be telling DH we were just eloping having read this. it confirms everything, everything I hate about weddings.

Incidentally, SIl is getting married in 3 weeks. We are invited along with DS - who will be 8 months by then. It is a small wedding - close family and very close friends and DS is the only child going.

We were going to go but having read this and the other 3 wedding threads at the moment, I just can't bear it. There will be people somewhere grumbling that Ds should not have been invited, that I am bottle feeding and not breast feeding, that Ds is noisy (he is), and that SIL is mean to not ask every child and step child of family and friends and anyone passing by. We are telling her tomorrow that we are not going and we are staying at home with the curtains shut and we don't want anyone coming round.