To not attend family friend's wedding for this ridiculousness?

[Alookerer]

My mum, dad, sister and me have been invited to a family friend's wedding. Known her all our lives.

She says on the invite 'No Under 18s'

We did wonder why our other sister wasn't invited. She's 17 (18 a week after the wedding), and has a DC of her own.

My mum did mention in passing if DSister2 was invited if she could arrange childcare and the family friend's response was "Sorry, but I'm sticking with No under 18s".

I think family friend is being unreasonable. It isn't down to venue restrictions, either. It's a very basic wedding with a little buffet and stuff afterwards. I had my wedding at the same location.

I asked my DH, who usually sees both sides and agrees with the other person and not me, and even he agrees it is very odd!

What do you think?

AIBU to think she should be invited?

Hoping you have a great day with your family, why don't you buy a pressie for your sis and LO with some of the money you've saved on your ex friend. She must be feeling pretty shitty right now.

@Travis1 (I don’t know how to tag sorry so don’t know if that works.. just wanted to say sorry for how things are for you at the moment. I struggled to be around pregnant women after my miscarriage (inc a heavily pregnant bestie) so kind of know how you’re feeling. It’s hard and it sucks hope it all works out for you very soon. OP, you’ve done the right thing, ex-friend sounds like a cunt.

I wasn’t allowed to take my 4 month old baby to my cousins wedding because she had a rule of no children other than first cousins. It’s not like my baby needed a seat or her own meal!

Wouldn't it save a lot of angst and trouble if everyone just eloped?

My, my sister and youngest sister are all off for a little meal tonight at Pizza Express she's still exclusively breastfeeding so baby is coming too! Can't wait

Me and her other sister have also chipped in and tonight we will be visiting a car for her as a little run around. We are hoping she'll like it!

We would've spent more attending the wedding.

I totally agree Dagenham ! If I ever got married again, We would bugger off, I would wear a green silk dress and red shoes! Oh and carry a bouquet of silk poppies, you can see I have put some thought into this...!

Op.. what a horrid patronising and nasty reply to you from the Bride and calling your soon to be 18 sister "one kid" is just so rude.
Fantastic the way you are all rallying round her and your little nephew/niece. Well done and best wishes to you all.

Hmmm this is a tricky one! We didn’t invite children to our wedding (apart from our niece who was 11) but we didn’t have a strict no under 18s policy so I probably would invite your sister. However, my mum considered inviting her cousins children who were adults but then decided against it as we would have had to invite her other cousin’s children who were fairly young. Weddings and invites are a tricky one.

I don’t know what I would do in your position but I do remember once not going to a wedding evening do because my husband wasn’t invited! Daytime i can understand if it’s not plus one coz it can be £100 a head but in the evening it’s usually a free for all party and doesn’t cost the bride and groom much as you pay for your own drinks. Whatever you choose to do will be the right decision :)

A lot of my childless friends have done this because it restricted numbers dramatically and cost less . If it's a very basic wedding perhaps they can't afford to invite everyone , so to be fairer they've done it for all under 18s as if you say yes to one you look bad x

Good for you supporting your sister! She needs her family having a child at any age let alone being so confused as you said at 17. My DS was unplanned and I was youngish but it is so amazing you almost forget your age most of the time. It comes with its battles like judgemental ex-friends thinking their opinion counts for anything but when you have two sisters in the battle with you it's much easier.

Seems a very weak excuse on the brides part to exclude your sister.

I’m all for ‘their wedding, they can do what they want’ and usually would agree with any decision made but this just seems odd and petty.

As for calling an almost 18 year old a kid I class kids as those running around and skidding on their knees on the dance floor.

Also in reply to that text... she's not a "kid". She's family and she's a mother herself. If that doesn't make you grow up pretty sharpish I don't know what does! Your sister is clearly more adult than this spiteful person.

i dont think she likes your ds at al sounds like shes made an excuse for her not to go

I think I would text back, "if you really can't see the difference between 'child-free' and someone who's 7 days off her 18th birthday, then there's no helping you.
And then block the bitch.

shes prob more mature than me!

sorry didnt see your update sound slike words have been said at least you can all see what this person is really like

To be fair I got married at 35 by which time most of my friends had a husband and two, three and one had four DC’s. The venue held 50 during the day and much more at night.
I asked my closest friends whether they wanted their DC there or whether they would prefer to get a sitter. They all overwhelmingly said please don’t invite our kids it’ll spoil our fun and we won’t enjoy it as much etc. So I didn’t. Had I invited friends, husbands and all DC it would have really limited numbers. At the end of the day it’s up to the bride and you should respect this.
Although she sounds like she doesn’t want kids as she wants to be the centre of attention rather than for other considerations.

that is shit.
i am not sure if i would go,
how unreasonable

She's 1 week off 18 and a family friend (as opposed to immediate family), if any questions were asked it would have been easy for her to just say she thought her birthday was the week before/the 12th not the 21st/etc...easy mistake to make.

I hope your family have a great day OP.

salted I don't think the bride was unreasonable to not invite kids but the little sister isn't a kid!

She's a mother

There's "kids" and there's a grown woman and mother who is just a few days shy of her 18th birthday. It's astonishing that the bride wasn't ashamed to be so rude as to refer to your sister as a kid in her text to you. I take it from your last post OP, that there was more to the conversation than you shared here, and I'm very sorry that your friend has let you down so badly. Your sister is fab, and you are a great family.

If she's exclusively BF could she have been calling the baby the one kid?

That being said, you're the one who had the conversation so I trust your judgement. Sorry for the loss of a friend but I bet your sister feels amazing that you stood up for her.

She obviously doesn't like kids in any way, shape or form - to be honest i didn't either until i had my own, i didn't want them around me and i visited people with kids when i felt upto it and could leave when i'd had enough.

Of course it seems very mean to everyone else but the bride obviously thinks more about her own happiness and wants all the attention on her (how sad but people are like that sometimes).

Personally I wouldn't go without my kids, nor would i go if it meant my younger sister couldn't go at 17. And if she has any kiddies in the future, remind her how invisible they are until they're 18.

She sounds an odd one

I think this sounds like they’ve tried to find a cut off point & are being strict sticking to it.
(Slightly different) but My sister got married not so long ago & said other than immediate nieces/nephews, no children. This was because it added about another 30 people to invite list & at £20 pp that added a lot. It wasn’t only about the money, she didn’t want loads of kids running about. One of our uncles asked why his one grandchild was invited (she’s 20) and his other 2 grandchildren (age 10&12) weren’t. It was because they had said no children. One friend took the hump with this & didnt go. A few mutual friends would have been though & therefore if they’d have allowed some children, it would have got back to the other couple & then they’d have probably been more offended. Plus the other guests there who didn’t take their kids. She had to drawer a line.
I do think though for a week off she 18 that’s a bit harsh

my sis got married and I wasn't allowed to go to the wedding or the venue after as 18+ only.. nephew and i (both 17 at the time got stuck looking after everyones kids..) it sucks but :/

Do you know if she has lots of other teens/kids on her partners side that they don’t want to come? Sometimes you have to set a ‘rule’ so that you don’t get overrun with extra guests. For example, at my wedding we ended up not inviting cousins because there’s only two out of about 20 that we would have wanted there, but we didn’t feel we could invite them and not the others.