To think weddings are not ALL about the bride and groom??

[procrastinationsupremo]

People are generally so generous to people who are getting married, they travel, buy presents, dress up etc etc. Not to mention close friends and family who may well have helped out with preparations and organisation and made financial contributions to the proceedings.... Yet otherwise reasonable people seem to lose all sense and think it's fine to expect people to wear things they're uncomfortable in, pay for things they can't afford and leave tiny babies behind at home.... Surely it's a lovely, warm, happy, family/friends celebration and you just want everyone to be comfortable and have a good time?? What's the point of a perfectly stage managed wedding where everyone's miserable and trying not to resent you!!?!?

I mean.. it's nice to include/please other people if they've helped you.
But is IS all about the bride and groom. Leaving babies at home, the dress code.. they're entitled to that at their own wedding I think!

You're probably right lady, I guess it's easy for me to say because I'm not really bothered about most of that stuff, so I didn't care that some of my friends wore jeans and various children ran about/shouted during our ceremony. I probably would've have been miffed if no one had danced though or something else that was important to me.

If you are invited to a wedding that doesn't welcome your kids, or is in the arse end of nowhere on a weekday

My DB did exactly this. I also live in a different country and had an ebf baby too at the time. I can't begin to tell you how guilty they made me feel. My Dad threatened not to go if I didn't attend and all hell broke loose. I had absolutely no choice but to decline but it's never been forgotten.

The wedding is about the couple, other than the required witnesses everyone else is irrelevant.

An invitation to a wedding is up to the invitees to decide if they wish to attend, it is not a summons.

The service in church is about the vows between the bride and groom and god. The breakfast is a thank you to the guests and the reception is a chance to party!

Our wedding was all about everyone being together for the first time in about twenty years. Children and babies weren’t left behind at all. Babies were more than wrk one and I’ve never heard of anyone asking to leave their kids at home. I’ll admit I promised a NO BREASTFEEDING rule at mine because my grandma refused to come if “ridiculous things like that were happening”. It only affected me though -my son was only two- and I knew I could boob in secret so no one lost out.

I 100% loved my 45mins of it being just about us and our bridesmaids/readers/pageboys/witnesses but I made everything else about the guests. We paid for all accommodation, food, drinks and asked for no gifts except a heart we had sent out In the invites to be returned into our guest frame with a message written on it.

There will always be someone who is not happy with what you planned. Kids at weddings is always a hard one. Fine of it means 5 kids. But if it means 80 adults and 100 kids, then no.

The wedding is definitely about the couple committing publicly for life - and before God if it’s a religious wedding.
The breakfast is meant to be about making your guests comfortable, ensuring they are fed and watered and can enjoy a shared meal with family and friends.
The best weddings are those where people feel included, where they understand what is happening and where they aren’t made to pay more than they can afford or wear silly outfits. A warm welcoming village hall buffet and disco can be so much nicer than a stage managed, lifeless, conveyor belt country hotel event with everything including guests having to be colour coordinated and stage managed.
It is the brides mothers job to ensure all runs smoothly and the guests are content, leaving the couple to circulate and spend time with each and every guest.

Curiously I’ve never been to a child free wedding either, OP. But then I haven’t been to a wedding for some years, I went to a lot in the 1990s and 2000s. Maybe it wasn’t such a thing back then?

My own wedding couldn’t have been child free, as we wanted all our friends to be able to come and some of them had young children and lived a long way away.

I remember working at the table plan for ages to make sure everyone would be happy and arranging lifts from the ceremony to the reception. So I did put a lot into pleasing the guests. But it was also an expensive day, as we wanted it to be special.

original what you have written is exactly what makes sense to me, but on this thread alone there are several examples of exactly the madness I was thinking of. Why would you organise a big, expensive wedding that your own sister can't attend?? Eloping is totally different l think and totally fair enough, because you're not asking anything of anyone else. Really, I know people have said you can just decline, but with a close friend or family member it's seldom that easy.

I mean if I was organising a party for my Mum's birthday it would be 'all about her' in theory, but I wouldn't organise it at her favourite tropical destination if it meant it would be horrendously expensive and difficult for all her favourite people to attend. (my Mum obviously doesn't have a favourite tropical destination, that was just the only crappy example I could think of!!)

So if family weddings MUST be attended, what happens if they’re held in a ridiculously pricey, overseas destination? Are guests really supposed to just accept an invitation because it’s family?

That's certainly how we did ours; we compromised a bit on the day we wanted in order to have alllll our friends and family there. I would have preferred a chi chi hotel with a sit down meal and a string quartet, but we would have had to dramatically cull the guest list and created a day that some of our family would have felt uncomfortable at. So we had a mostly chi chi day with a buffet and an equally beatiful but slightly less posh venue so we could fit our budget, have zillions of people, and not make anyone feel left out instead.

Also, I think it's really churlish to give a little boxed gift instead of what the couple ask for, even if it's money. Plenty of people would like cash to help offset a lovely day, contribute to a house deposit (which let's face it, they may not get another way), or have a honeymoon to cherish, rather than duplicates of things they already own; I don't think it's very kind to prove a point by giving them a small Thing instead. You don't need to give a lot but you can give what people ask for.

Unless they do it with an unforgivably appalling "poem" of course, in which case all bets are off

I would add that we didn't ask for anything, by the way, I just think if people have a thing they want in mind, it's nice and kind to give it to them.

@DancesWithOtters I wanted her at my wedding and I knew it was an easy thing to agree to because no one else at the wedding was BF their child (the rest were either weaned or FF). My GM has said a lot worse. My DS will apparently be sexually perverted and a danger to women now because he is three and inappropriately exposed to breasts. 😆 yeah because seeing breasts as food, as they were designed to be, is SUPER inappropriate!

She’ll throw another fit again soon when I start feeding the next baby and that’s another few years of her walking out a room, passing comment and calling me a pervert!

@Lelloteddy I saved for 18mths to attend my brothers wedding. I was a bridesmaid and mother of a pageboy but it was everything we had so it was our family holiday for 5 days and the entire time was all about them!

@HermionesRightHook even though we asked for no gifts we were still given some money by family and we went on our honeymoon a few months later (outside of school holidays) and it was awesome! I sneakily told the hotel it was our honeymoon and we were upgraded and given a free weeks pass to the water park (we had our son with us)((who am I kidding it was mega fun!!))

We are getting married next May.

I have very much considered our guests. The venue is pretty central and cheap if people do want to stay. We are having the service, breakfast and evening do all in the same place. Day guests will be fed shortly after the service. Night guests will get a buffet. I will say come smart but it will be less formal than a big posh do. I will be grateful for any gifts I receive but won't be having a list or a poem asking for cash. If anyone asks what we would like ( a couple of aunts like presents rather than cash) I will say towels or a vase. Same as I said for our engagement 9 years ago!

Children are absolutely welcome. Everyone except knobhead bil is welcome. Knobhead bil will spoil it for everyone else so he isn't getting an invite.

That happened to us too upsydaisies - we received some very generous money presents, and also some wonderful Things which I treasure (and a set of wine glasses that are so awful they make me giggle every time I see them). And yes yes to honeymoon upgrades - I know it's a marketing thing for the companies but on our honeymoon the individual staff seemed to really enjoy that they were allowed to upgrade us and splash a bottle of wine our way. And we certainly enjoyed it!

I’ll admit I promised a NO BREASTFEEDING rule at mine because my grandma refused to come if “ridiculous things like that were happening”.

I have to say, if that had been an edict at mine, I would have broken my usually cast iron policy on honesty and said 'Oh Grandma, no one I know is breastfeeding', and never given it a second thought - it would have been true at the time I said it, and would not have been true at the wedding, but I would not have allowed one person's odd preference to dictate the behaviour of my other guests or me!

With regards gifts, I think nowadays most people are away that cash gifts are the best option for couple who are buying their first home, or who have lived together etc. I don’t need to be asked for cash. I’ll willingly give cash rather than take a chance on buying a gift that isn’t well received. But the asking for cash is crass and uncalled for.

lelloteddy well that's exactly it, if the people justifying their destination, cocktail dress only, child free, 4 day wedding by saying 'but it's OUR day' just shrugged and said 'fair enough' when close relatives explained they wouldn't be able to attend, then that would OK, but I'm guessing they don't???

Frouby That sounds both brilliant and familiar - can I come??!

Because we compromised on our venue, it ended up being so much cheaper that I realised shortly before invites went out that we had enough spare money to do a meal for everyone, so we couldn't fit all the guests into the actual ceremony, which I hated but the room had a strict maximum, but we were able to invite everyone for the breakfast, which was lovely.

In my experience, OP, no...they don't!

Our wedding day was all about us. Him the groom, me the bride. We were absolutely the two most important people there. We didn’t notice anyone there or care. We indulged ourselves in our own happiness.

We were the only ones there 😁 and the dog....

Why would you organise a big, expensive wedding that your own sister can't attend??

My (ex) SIL did this to my sister. She was 8 months pregnant and couldn’t travel the 600 miles to my brother’s wedding. She had promised she would wait until after my nephew was born but then changed her mind saying “she couldn’t come anyway as I’m not having a screaming baby ruin my day”

She also booked and paid for the wedding without telling my brother. I refused to go, planning instead to travel up to be with my sister, but she told me not to. I never forgave that woman.

When it came to our wedding, my sister was the second most important lady in the room.

Weddings are the joining of two families