No children at destination wedding

[RubyRed6878]

Apologies if this should be moved to Wedding thread but think it's more suited to AIBU...

Wedding is being planned in Mexico, about 100 guests will receive invites. Before people jump on and say we're being selfish, in invites are exactly that, invites not expectations at all. We'll also be having a UK celebration so will emphasise that it would be amazing for as many friends and family to be there as possible but we totally understand if people can't / don't want to make it.

The issue: DP and I are 100% sure we do not want children at the ceremony. We've been to too many weddings / events where screaming/chattering babies / toddlers have disrupted and we are too scared to take the risk for our own day. Children are more than welcome at the reception.
The issue is DPs brother, we are 99% sure they'll come to Mexico (invites not sent yet) but I'm very nervous about saying "no children at the ceremony" considering they'll have travelled all that way. DP is determined to stay firm and insist on no kids.
WWYD? Is it totally U to ask them to put their child in the kids club for an hour or so during the ceremony? I'm nervous of backing down and then having a 2 year old screaming over our vows and wishing we'd stuck to our guns, but equally am aware of what a big ask it is to leave a young child in a hotel kids club

On our order of service we said something along the lines that whilst we love kids we'd also like everyone to be able to hear the ceremony so if any started crying/playing up please could they pop out. Don't think anyone got offended & one or two did exactly as we'd asked.

Right thread this time!

We were in Mexico fairly recently and there were a few weddings held in the hotel we were in. They certainly aren't private, everyone turns up for a gawk. They were all held outside and there was noise/music from the pool areas, children shrieking, having fun. Personally it would be my idea of hell.

I can't imagine a lot of the 100 you have invited will accept. 10 hour flight and it's not a cheap holiday if you choose a high end hotel.

YABU to say no children.

I suppose you could get married out of school holidays then the parents with DC couldn't come anyway

Will the 2 year old in question have siblings or close cousins that'll be in the crèche with them?

There's no way my 2 year old would be left with strangers without being extremely distressed. I'm not precious- it's just her personality.

However she has two older siblings plus cousins on both sides. Assuming they'd all be there together then it'd not be that much of a problem for her.

Most of your 100 potential guests will probably be secretly relieved not to be invited, I know I would. I would not be using my annual leave and a big chunk of my annual income to go to a far-flung foreign country on somebody else's terms.

Is a wedding really spoiled by a crying child? It's only a wedding ceremony, your husband-to-be sounds very precious.

I don't see why children are an issue at a wedding even if they make noise.

There is a difference between making a bit of noise and screaming the place down so no one near them can actually hear anything. yes looking at you dear cousin

As long as you upfront about this i dont see an issue. Its an invitation so if not liked the invitation can be turned down. Your wedding your rules.

Oh and just to add (years ago), my dd was 18 months old when my brother and sil got married. I said to them that she was a chatterbox (they knew this obv) and I would be happy to stand outside the room with her whilst they said their vows as it would actually be impossible to keep her quiet. They said they wouldn't dream of it and it didn't matter if she spoke during the ceremony. She did speak during the ceremony. She said "nice day nice day nice day". Nobody minded and in fact the occasion was lovely. I apologised to them anyway and they said that they did not even hear her say these words, despite being a few feet away.

Do you really know 100 people with enough money to pay to go to Mexico for your wedding or are you expecting that to be their only family holiday? I have a 2 year old and even though she goes to childcare in the UK there is no way I would leave her in a crèche or with a nanny in Mexico. Not a chance in hell. We went to Mexico a few years back and it was lovely but the nice hotels are not cheap at all, you're asking a lot from your guests.

If you want to have a wedding ceremony attended by your wealthiest, childless friends only, then YANBU

I don't get it though, not at all. Why do you need to get married in Mexico? Call me old-fashioned, but couldn't you get married where your closest friends and family are (kids or no kids, I'd always have the kids there for light relief but what ev's) then go on honeymoon to Mexico?.

And if you must get married in Mexico because its, like, so significant to you or something, wouldn't you be prepared to have the children of those (presumably relatives or dearest mates) prepared to travel across the world at vast expense, there with you? Why on earth not?

Peace and love etc but I diagnose a massive case of bridezilla.

YANBU.

It's your wedding and up to you how you do it. Just when you send the invitations make it very clear what is involved and what the options are. It's up to each family whether they decide to go or not, and whether they are happy with the childcare options.
I got married in Spain (DH is part Spanish) and we invited friends, family and children. In the end no-one brought children. Some parents came for either the weekend or just the night of the wedding - obviously not possible in Mexico. We invited 100 too and ended up with 65 which was great.
I also have friends who got married down under. We knew straight away we wouldn't go as it was expensive & we didn't want to use all our holiday for the year doing that, but quite a few of our friends went. They had a party at home too which we went to & didn't feel left out.
So long as you don't mind less people coming, go for it.

" massive case of bridezilla."

yes quite.

...oh, it's not your rellies, it's your DF's
that explains a lot

OP, not sure why you're getting a kicking here.

It's your wedding day, you are entitled to have it the way you want. You understand not everyone will be able to make it.

Your BIL sounds like he's quite happy to let his screaming child overshadow peoples' events, and your DP is keen on not allowing him to do the same on your wedding day.

I would not take my 2 year old to Mexico anyway so that would solve the problem for me. Loads of reasons why from safety, standard of healthcare, needing vaccinations, long-haul flight etc.

However, I couldn't get exercised about leaving my child for an hour (and probably a lot less, our ceremony took about 10 minutes) with well-qualified childcare.

I attempted a childfree wedding at home not abroad. No one cared about our request because on the day people just bought their children anyway we ended up with 12 kids, with a ceremony venue with restricted seating and a sit down meal finding seats for 12 extras was difficult and stressful.

I am now trying to think which hotels have crèches for two year olds in Mexico but I can only think of the mega cancun style resorts with thousands of guests and personally much as I love Mexico they wouldn't be my choice to get married at, conveyer belt springs to mind.
Just be absolutely sure that the crèches do take toddlers, "kids club" normally means age 4+.
There is nothing wrong with sounding out wedding ideas it's how you rule things in and out. You are not doing anything rude or unacceptability as long as you are sure that there are options for the toddlers.
I would say if you are inviting 100 people, be sure that all of them are people you would want even if nobody else was there. You don't want the wedding to be you, your dhs cousins and 2 work colleagues. Awkward.

This may be irrelevant, but if I had any intention of having babies in the next couple of years, I would be avoiding South America completely because of the Zika virus and all the unknowns there. So it may be that family members with small children who are considering having another will not want to attend anyway.

I wouldn't leave my children with someone I didn't know, including a Mexican nanny. But I would come along and look after the kids outside while my husband watched his brother get married. I wouldn't be massively impressed, but I'd suck it up.

If you're going to do this, then it's absolutely your responsibility to organise and pay for suitable qualified childcare.

And I think you're being wildly naive if you think it will be quiet - your own family children will be squirreled away with a nanny, but what are you going to do about the other hotel guests? Or are you booking on a sole-use basis?

Frankly I wouldn't be impressed to travel halfway across the world to see my sibling marry and not be allowed to bring children, especially if the ceremony was then disturbed by the noise from general hotel life anyway.

Oh yes zika that could be an issue for you and your guests.

Mauritius is lovely for weddings and similar price to Mexico but much longer journey.

Just checked and Mexico not safe from Zika. OP if you were considering starting a family in the next couple of years, you might want to do a little research to check safety.

Hey OP another thing to mention - and I'm sure you've looked into it - is a lot of destination venues that are also hotels/resorts won't give you absolute privacy, depending on where you actually say your vows. So if it's on the beach for example, you might find there are a random tourists with screaming children a little further along the sand.

Same for in the hotel - this could have been bad experiences, but I've been to two destination weddings and there were other guests milling about quite close to the ceremony (not inside obviously) so if noise is really important to you, do make sure you check this kind of thing with the venue you choose. Obviously if you do have 100 guests or even 50 you are quite likely to take up more space, therefore have more 'private' space for you and your guests.

On another note, I don't think you're being unreasonable, maybe slightly unrealistic in terms of planning - as long as you're prepared to have a bit of fall out (I had plenty at my wedding and that was a local, UK based child free wedding!) and a small guestlist, it's your wedding, do as you wish.

While I get the point about it's an invitation not an expectation, I don't get the whole getting married abroad thing to be honest. When planning my wedding, one of my main objectives was to have as many of the people I love and who love me all together to celebrate. In order to do this I considered distance and accommodation options for the people I wanted to attend. Having it abroad when this would exclude people who can't afford it, or not allowing kids, potentially meaning some people will not be able to come as a result would therefore seem counter-productive.

If you aren't bothered about having people there then why invite them at all? As others have said, why not have a small wedding abroad with no guests, and then a big party at home.

Apart from the fact I couldn't afford to go abroad for a wedding, I absolutely wouldn't pay a fortune to take my kids with me to go to an event they can't attend.

And I'm with Engineersthumb in saying I don't understand what the problem is with kids in a ceremony. It is a supposed to be a happy celebration occasion not some kind of perfect performance conducted in silence. I love kids at weddings. I would be very surprised if anyone allowed a young child to scream its head off through a ceremony, so if that happened, the most that is likely is a brief moment before the parent either managed to shush the kid/shove a dummy or boob in it's mouth, or take it outside.

The decision to have a destination wedding is fine. The decision to have a child free wedding is fine. However, somewhere along the way all these reasonable decisions have accumulated and nudged you and your DP over the edge into full-blown zilladom.
If you don't care if any of your 100 guests attend your ceremony (you've said you don't care if you are on your own), why ask any of them to sacrifice thousands of pounds and precious annual leave to travel to the other side of the world for a ceremony where their children aren't welcome and you aren't that bothered about then being there.
Your guests will stress and worry about your invitation, finding the time and money, making the flight, letting you down. Do them a favour and rethink your plan.