Awkward wedding family situation

[Pepper12]

Hello all sorry this may be long!
Backstory I have 2 brothers. Brother 1 is getting married in March. Been together a few years no dcs. Brother 2 married for years has 4 kids from 7 to 2 months.

Brother 1 has asked brother 2 eldest child to be flower girl as she was so excited about wedding. All fine and dandy-dress shoes etc bought last week. Invitations have now arrived and wording as follows ' we respectfully inform that with the exception niece and fiances niece no children will be permitted at the wedding'. Brother 2 wife has gone mad how dare her 3 other kids (who to be fair are 3,2 and a baby) be excluded hence the eldest is now banned from being flower girl. Brother 1 and fiancée have stood firm and explained that niece is old enough and others are too young. Fiancées niece being flower girl is an only child. Cue me getting phone calls from sil and two brothers all wanting an opinion ! Is it awful that I think your circus your monkeys? Grrrrr

They seem to be the norm now though I can't understand why.

I had a lower age limit to exclude young children, a choice made as a direct consequence of seeing the behaviour at my DSIL's wedding. Many of the same people were going to be invited and they allowed their dc to run wild, it was both dangerous and destructive.

Either a wedding is child free or it is not. If child free weddings float your boat, fine (as long as you don't then get in a huff when parents who don't want to, or cannot, leave their children decline your invitation. But "some children are ok but others are not" is just daft. And in this case, rude. Who is supposed to take care of the not wanted children anyway?

Who is supposed to take care of the not wanted children anyway?

I guess you mean 'uninvited' by 'not wanted'? The same people who take care of the children when their parents go out to any other adult-only event. A babysitter, perhaps.

Unbelievably rude and callous of brother 1 to do this to his brother and his family. If I were brother 2 none of my family would be going now.

Well yes Sarah, but I don't happen to have any family or friends nearby who are able to take DCs for a whole day event like a wedding. We can pay for a sitter but when we have lots of weddings in one summer for example we can't stretch to a sitter for every one and end up having to decline some. That's fine as long as the bride and groom are ok with it. The problem comes when people get annoyed with us for not attending when we just can't afford another sitter.

I've been married so I understand each guest costs a lot of money sometimes, but when we got married we just invited less adults (no colleagues or friends we don't really see or know well anymore) in order to accommodate the children of family and close friends.

Sarah - yep, an all day Nanny (and as the youngest will only be around 6 months old, it'll have to be a Nanny, not just a babysitter) will set them back around £100. Yet they still don't get to have "child-free time" and make the most of it, because they've got to look after the 7 year old.

Sounds like a rubbish, expensive day.

I'd stay at home with the DCs (all 4) and send DH to his brother's wedding alone in that situation. No way would I send my DD off to be an accessory.

Andro fair enough but do you think your situation is the norm? I've been to many wedding with children and never seen children "running wild". And yet nearly every wedding I am invited to these days is child free.

The happy couple are wanting to use the 'ornamental' child (as a PP said) while putting the rest of that family in an extremely difficult position.

Tbh I find child-free weddings pretty narcissistic. It seems to me to be about 'staging' the perfect day. Plus the self-absorbed expectation that parents take effort and cost upon themselves to magic away their kids in order to attend the Big Day. But this situation is a step further. If I were your db, would be letting the dd be flower girl, but sending her with her grandparents or another relative and staying at home with my wife, who after all has 3 under 4 to manage, incl a very young baby. And I can't say my fraternal relationship would be brilliant thereafter.

ofallthenerve - it's probably an age of bride and groom thing - if you got maried in your early 20s, then most people hadn't had DCs yet, so there wouldn't be 30+ DCs at the wedding. We got married in our late 20s, but only one friend had a DC (youngest cousin was 15 so I didn't really count her as a 'child'). That was 8 years ago, if we got married now the same group of adulds alone would have an extra 25+ children between them (it was a reatively small wedding of 70 guests). I can see why if you've waited until afer most of your friends/siblings have had DCs and the same wedding would now cost you a lot more if you invite DCs, it would become tempting to leave out children who aren't guests in their own right (by being neither your friend nor your family member).

The same people who take care of the children when their parents go out to any other adult-only event. A babysitter, perhaps.

Except this isn't an adult only event is it? They have invited the decorative children. Also, it's a wedding, which is a long drawn out event, and one of the undecorative children is a baby.

Actually thinking about it, the wedding venue had a limit of 85, so we would have had to book somewhere bigger/more expensive, or limit DCs if we got married now.

Very true Dino, when we got married there were fewer children around and you make a good point.

My personal choice if we got married now would probably still be to invite fewer adults and include the children of those we did invite. I appreciate that wouldn't be everyone's choice though. I just prefer weddings with children and always have. I don't think they are adult events, but family events. That's probably just based on my upbringing and the weddings I went to as a child.

I do love adult only events occasionally, but I think weddings are so long and it makes it difficult for both parents to attend w/o DC especially if there are a lot of weddings in one summer.

Tbh I find child-free weddings pretty narcissistic.

Agreed. Our wedding became rather raucous as the evening progressed. Having children there would have completely changed the tone and I wouldn't have liked that, nor would I have liked all my friends to leave early. In hindsight, I recognise that it was borne of narcissism.

Forgot to italicise the first part of my post, oops.

I think children make weddings wonderful. I will never forget at my wedding my friend's ds aged 3 (now a strapping 16yo!) said when I first walked in to the church, "Wow, it's a REAL princess!". Just so special.

What I find irritating is the b&g saying 'I hope you don't mind it being no kids but we thought you would enjoy a night off'

Because it's not true - you are not thinking of me but yourselves and can you at least own the decision

Personally I don't take kids to friends weddings but do to family weddings. I've also missed a couple of weddings or gone alone because of babysitting issues/baby too young to leave.

dino That's exactly why we made the decision to ask children not to come. We had space for 80 people (all family and close friends). If we had invited everyones kids (and of course you have to assume they will all accept even if you know some won't), that would have taken up 20 places! Just not doable if we didn't want to leave people out. However, as I said, neither of us had nieces/nephews at that time, that would have been the exception, plus babes in arms but we we were lucky with timings in that there weren't any!

Sarah,

Did you have any nieces or nephews when you got married?

Yes, I had one niece and she was 2.

"I think children make weddings wonderful."

Some probably do. But some don't. I have been to other family events, christenings and funerals specifically, where SOME children really detracted from the event - I didn't want them at my wedding.

You cannot assume all children will be starry-eyed little angels at weddings, because a lot of them aren't. And if they have those parents who refuse to actually parent their children or stop their bad behaviours, then so much the worse.

I don't mind either way about kids at a wedding but it would never ever occur to me to invite one child and two parents from a family with three other children. That's just bloody weird.

I just can't imagine not inviting nieces and nephews (unless due to particular circumstances). I think it puts unfair pressure on your siblings. We've turned down weddings for cousins and friends where the kids weren't invited and we couldn't make alternative arrangements. Which is fine. Their choice, and cousins generally aren't that close that it's that big an issue to miss their wedding.

But if one of my siblings got married and they said we couldn't bring them, I would feel like we had to attend, even if we didn't want to leave the kids with a nanny. And I wouldn't enjoy it as a result.

What a shitty thing for DB1 to do.

I think people grow up these days with little understanding of children and are not used to having them around.

It's a good point about getting married later though, or rather later than peers. However when I got married the polite social thing was to invite the whole family if it was to the reception, the evening do you could get away with inviting only couples.

I think weddings then were much less showy more casual perhaps.

We are turning my cousin's wedding over Christmas, as it's no children. I don't have a babysitter, the rest of the family are at the wedding. They seem surprised, we don't have childcare, but I think it would be unfair to expect me to pick someone out of the yellow pages who my children have never met before for a one off occasion. Different if you are planning to get a regular babysitter you can build up gradually.

Bridezilla has stated that she doesn't want children as she wants all eyes to be on her. Says it all for me! Not sorry to have to decline!

God yes BYOSnowman! Have a child free wedding if you want, but don't make out like it's doing the invited parents some kind of favour. You're having no kids there because you don't want them, that's all. I wish people would just own it.

The same goes for people who make out it's to do with the venue. Very few people have no choice in where they get married. In the vast majority of cases, if the place you've picked isn't child friendly, or only seats 80 and if you invited everyone's kids you'd have 90, or you can't afford the extra guests at the venue you want, the reason for that is because you made the choice to hold it there rather than somewhere that would accommodate children and/or was cheaper. And you're allowed to do that if you want to. Honestly I much prefer it when people don't hide behind excuses and platitudes.