People offended by kids not being invited to wedding

[Timeforachange2018]

Going to a family wedding in June- the couple aren’t inviting kids apart from their own 2 and have made that clear. It’s for financial reasons and they are keeping the wedding small to 50 people.

Found out that some relatives are offended by this because their kids aren’t invited and were off with the groom about it.

Aibu to think WTF is wrong with people. I have been to plenty of weddings where my kids were not invited- I totally get why that would be the case & I am not remotely offended by it. I am just happy to be invited and am looking forward to a childfree day sipping champagne and celebrating with the couple.

Aibu to think WTF is wrong with people?

'I am really laid back about these things but if my friend turned down my wedding invite because she couldn’t find a babysitter that would be the end of our relationship. '

I'd consider that an excellent result. Wouldn't want to be friends with someone who expected me to pay a babysitter 'for a minimum of 24 hours' just to watch her swan around. Wouldn't even know where to find someone to do that in this rural area, won't leave my kids with a stranger and my son has ASD so can't be left with just anyone.

Anyone who would drop a friendship because another person won't bend over backwards to attend their function isn't worth having, IMO, so I'd think, 'Good riddance to bad rubbish!'

I agree as well. I think we just got used to being bored as we didn't have the distractions that children are provided with these days.

That is a really goady post Slanetylor. Only the really self absorbed would get upset about a guest not being able to get a babysitter. Get back under your bridge

Exactly Janey

OP YANBU

A regular opinion splitter on MN - as to whether children and wedding mix well - but there is never a reason for people "to be offended" at being invited to a lovely day. If they don't want to go, then it's fine, they can decline, but it is ridiculous to "be offended" at being invited.

I’m genuinely not trying to be goady. I have children and I know how tough it is to get babysitters and I never expect anyone to bend over bs learns for me. I’ve brought children to weddings or left them st home according to what the couple want. And if a wedding is too far away or too hard to arrange childcare I’ll go to my friends weddings or my husband will go to his friends wedding. I just genuinely can’t get my head around not going to my friends wedding because I can’t bring my husband. I just can’t understand that at all. I would take that in the spirit it was intended, that they didn’t want to be friends or celebrate my life. If I go to a wedding in my own, there is nearly always single friends there too, who are also able to celebrate a friends wedding, despite not being in a couple themselves.

Well Slane when the kids were little dh worked miles away from home from Tuesday to Thursday & I worked on Saturdays so there was no way our precious time off was going to be spent apart from each other or the children.

Alexanderhamilton going to a wedding is always a balance when you have young children and a partner who works away ( as I do 3 days a week). So of course you turn down invites to unimportant people. But there’s always a shirt list of people who are important enough for the sacrifice. That’s my point. If you are close enough friends to think you make that short just, it can be upsetting to know you’re not. But at least you know and can continue on with life knowing where you stand.

If I was close enough friends with someone for it would really matter (such as dh’s best friend) it would upset me if that friend didn’t value the friendship enough to enable us to attend

I agree OP. Don't understand why anyone would be seething, and to actually say something to the groom is obnoxious.

I've had to turn down an invite to a wedding this summer (DH is going alone) because we can't sort childcare - I am a bit gutted I can't go but not at all annoyed at the bride & groom.

All of you rolling out the "in my day all the kids were invited" line - weddings were loads cheaper then! Not because people are having showy weddings now either - it's been hugely commercialised and costs have gone up exponentially. Read this if you don't believe me. www.buzzfeed.com/megkeene/heres-what-my-parents-1974-wedding-would-cost-in-2017?utm_term=.tuxV0Ml9x#.jiBD74ymn

AlexanderHamilton, would you really not let your husband go to his BEST FRIENDS wedding if you and the kids couldn’t come too!!!? That’s of course your own choice entirely but I just didn’t know people lived and thought like that. It’s just been a huge eye opener for me.

I don’t tell him what to do & he doesn’t tell me what to do. We are a team but also are our own people. Our family time back then was incredibly precious & came before anything else. Your children are not little for long & time lost can never be re-gained.

But dh’s best friend would never have dreamed of excluding us from his wedding , Ds, Who was 6 months old at the time is his godson & he takes that role seriously despite living at the other end of the country.

None the less people can’t possibly put the needs of 100 different guests before their own desire to have their own kind of day. It’s just not possible. Why would anyone get married with that kind of pressure.

We are not talking of 100 guests though, you were talking of special friends. Dh & his best friend were each other’s Best Men, we would have done anything to ensure he could celebrate with us & vice Versa.

But that can’t work. “No children allowed unless they are children of special friends. More details to follow.” But you wouldn’t have done anything to celebrate with him. If he had a child free wedding you wouldn’t have been bothered.

You are not making sense.

If they want no children, but make an exception for “ special friends” everyone else is going to feel pretty crap.

If he had a child free wedding then dh would have declined the invitation to be best man.

He had a very small wedding, our two children (aged 6 months & 2.5 years) & a couple of the brides nephews & nieces were the only ones invited.

Out of around 40-50 guests maybe 4/5 were children. The children of distant friends & Family were not invited.

At our wedding (held 5 years earlier) dh’s friend had only just finished his postgrad & was about to start his first job so to make things easier we arranged for him to stay with a family member instead of a hotel.

I’m shocked at that. Truely

As I was shocked by your earlier statement.

Luckily our closest friends & us have a very different kind of relationship. Whether it makes a difference that we were engaged before dh even met his best friend (they went to uni together) I don’t know. But I suspect that people with similar views on such matters tend to become close, those that don’t tend to drift apart.

Were weddings more child friendly years ago? My wedding was child free 30 years ago and so was my sister's nearly 50 years ago. As a teen I frequently babysat for family friends and neighbours while they were at weddings.

'I am really laid back about these things but if my friend turned down my wedding invite because she couldn’t find a babysitter that would be the end of our relationship. '
Sounds like a win to me, I’d be wondering why we had been friends to start with.
My bil told us our ebf 6 month old wasn’t invited to their wedding. We had travelled to Australia for it so apart from the ebf and wouldn’t take a bottle, no one had met him to know him to look after him, my mum is disabled so couldn’t, dhs family were all at the wedding, they knew all this. We didn’t know he wasn’t invited till two weeks beforehand when we arrived in the country and they were adamant. I don’t think dh has any idea how close I came to telling them all to just fuck off and to not go, in the end my dad came and sat upstairs at the reception with him. If there had been no solution so I hadn’t gone it is an understatement to say it would have been a long time before I could give them the time of day given we had flown to Melbourne for it.

I'd say it really depends on who is doing the inviting. The fact that the couple getting married have their own kids who are attending is probably the bit that is getting people's backs' up. I expect that means that a lot of their friends also have families. Claiming it is to keep costs down seems a bit cheap or that they are trying to have a wedding that their either can't really afford or that isn't really appropriate for them.

Me and DW are going to be invited to a young couple's wedding shortly and I fully expect it to be child-free. I have no problem with this as they don't have kids and don't have lots of friends with kids.

I don't agree about people saying that wedding are 'just more expensive' these days. It's simply not true, most people just spend more and have higher expectations stoked by the industry that has developed. My mum and dad had their reception in the local church hall and my gran made the buffet! That just doesn't happen for most people anymore.

My uncle did my buffet. Dh asked for a whole salmon as a centrepiece then he was so nervous he didn’t eat any.

Me and DW are going to be invited to a young couple's wedding shortly and I fully expect it to be child-free. I have no problem with this as they don't have kids and don't have lots of friends with kids

Surely the fact not many of their friends have kids is (if relevant at all) less of a reason to have a childfree wedding as they’d have fewer kids to invite? I think it’s where there’s loads of kids among the guests that there is more of a reason to go child free, or at least limit which children you invite.