Will children ever be invited to weddings again

[georgianwindow]

We have been invited to quite a few weddings in the last 12 months - seven of them. All of them have been child free. The postman has just been, with another invitation arriving, also adding to the child free wedding invitation pile.
We have a 5 year old and are expecting a baby in 2 months time. Two of the recent invitations have said that we can bring the little one but not the eldest. The ones that do not welcome the baby have been declined because we can not leave such a young baby.
We don't have childcare options readily available to us and have to drive a 2 hour round trip for this.

I have done a couple of the weddings on my own, and DH has as well (and the other of us has stayed at home) but this isn't particularly enjoyable for the one of us that goes to the wedding.

I understand that everyone can make their own decision regarding their weddings but it really it a shame missing out on events because of this, especially when in most circumstances, the bride & groom have children themselves so know how tricky childcare can be. It is the decision of the bride and groom for their wedding day, it does just mean that some guests will decline attending, or attend but possibly not stay for the reception.

Light hearted thread but will children ever be invited to weddings again! We had them at ours and many of them brightened up the day, making people laugh or getting involved, there were no issues regarding behaviour of children and parents were sensible with keeping them occupied during the ceremony. I can't remember the last time I received a wedding invitation that didn't cause some level of stress.

I had a child-free wedding. We had no children of our own at the time and we wanted a grown up wedding that children would not have enjoyed. The exceptions were our nieces and nephews who were all invited. And people were welcome to bring young babies, though nobody did.

It’s very much the norm where I live for weddings to be adult occasions apart from close family members. I think we’ve been to about 8 weddings since we had kids and they’ve only been invited to one of them, which was a family member living in another country so we had a family holiday around the wedding. Kids had fun because they had some cousins there but found the speeches etc quite boring. Oh and we took our eldest to my brother’s wedding as she was a baby. If it was really difficult to arrange babysitting one of us would go and the other stayed home with the kids.

Ooo @DataNotLore I also think it's a class thing, but didn't want to start a typical mumsnet class debate 🤣 but since you've said it, I'm curious which way round you think it is!

We had a childfree wedding because we'd have had to cut our guest list by a third to accommodate all the children.

The only kids I would have actively liked there (as opposed to having been invited because of their parents) were my my two best friends' children. But they were small enough not to know what was going on and their mums were both glad to catch up with all our uni friends etc without being on parent duty, so that was nice.

We looked at this option and would have loved the type of wedding you suggest.

However, we found that it was much much more expensive than the "posh" package of a fancy wedding venue.

For example, venue rental costs were approx 5k rather than 7. But you have to provide caterers who bring own plates, glassware, cutlery and even cooking equipment in some cases. You have to source tables and chairs (crazy expensive), lighting for evening, music systems, an mc/day of coordinator (or ask a guest) and all decor rather than using the venue's own.

And then because you have to diy, you need to pay for the hall for the whole weekend so you can set up and take down, meaning rental of everything is for 3 days rather than one.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thread where a bride is complaining that people with children haven’t been able to attend her child-free wedding. There are at least two every week from people complaining that their children aren’t invited. Just decline, people get it.

I've never been invited to a child free wedding, all the ones I've been at have had kids of various ages at them. Both ceremony and reception, close family and friends kids. Some of the weddings did ask parents to pay for the kids meals if they were bringing their kids to the full day, which I thought was very reasonable and a nice balance between cost saving and still including everyone.

I myself am child free and personally I like having kids at all family occasions. I don't see them as a problem and it's nice to see them interacting with everyone.

We had something like that for ours and it was really good fun. We had a sweets table and a dressing up box.
I find childfree weddings odd too, but I guess I'm in a small minority. I haven't enjoyed lost weddings I've been to - all the formality, the seating plans, a three course meal with loads of speeches where you're all stuck at a table for hours with people you don't know. I suppose I can see why kids would be potentially a bit of a nightmare then because they're such tedious, tiring events!

DD is getting married next summer, and children are very definitely invited. A wedding is a union of families, established traditionally for the procreation of children - it’s a multi generational celebration of life. Each to their own, but I think an adult only affair rather misses the point.

I've not been to a wedding where there were children.
One of my uncles had children at his wedding but it was before I was born, and a couple of my cousins played up.
I've not been to a funeral where there were children either.

Basically every wedding I have ever been to is child free except for family children. Its far too expensive to pay for so many children now unless it is a buffet you are having and when numbers are limited most people would rather have all their family and friends there rather than limit which friends they can invite due to inviting children.

I think we all know!

Inviting kids is fine if you're 25 and most of your friends are child-free or maybe have a babe in arms.

In your 40s, some people have been married 2 or 3 times and have 4+ kids of varying ages.

This!

My observation... we got married and had children at what is now considered young (i married at 24, had my children at 25&26. ) For the first few years, it was easy to invite our children as they were a rarity. There were 5 children at our wedding, similar numbers at the rest of weddings in our late 20s.

As we've progressed through our 30s, more of our friends have children. So weddings are childfree or close family children only. Otherwise there is simply not space.

Space and money aren't infinite in weddings, a choice has to be made.

Crikey @Unbridezilla 5K?! For a village hall?? Ours was going to be £600 and we thought that was a rip off but we went ahead because it's the nicest village hall in the local area!! Our own village's parish hall was much less still, can't remember the exact figure now though.

by the time we get married I expect most of our immediate circle will have a child - but we also want to get married abroad so I expect there will be children there

It’s not remotely weird to have a child free wedding!
Most weddings are not really set up for children anyway.

I reckon it's one of those things where upper mc/posh people have children at weddings, and so do wc people, and it's the people in the middle who are all going child free.

however, everyone we know that has got married in the UK has had a childfree wedding!

I have kids and had a child free wedding, except nieces/nephews, and even when offered I don't bring my own to weddings as they haven't enjoyed it when the did and neither did I.
If I had allowed kids I would have had roughly 30 kids there 😬 so you could you imagine the additional cost. And if you allow one or two then you can't say no to the rest. My friend had kids, about 18 in total under 10, had a room and area set up for them but even the meal was chaos as they were all running around, nearly knocked the cake over one went fave first into a table and knocked plates to the ground while sliding across the floor.
In theory it's great but Kids get excited, run mad and while a couple are ok when there's too many it's hard to manage. You also can't account for how people parent and deal with their kids now behaving in public

The 3 weddings I've been to in the last year (inc my own) weren't child-free. I would respect someone's choice for a CF wedding but I don't really understand it. Kids having a blast is half the entertainment 😄

There are plenty of reasons not to want children at your wedding- having to deal with their unpredictable behaviour and noise during the service/speeches/at any point really… not wanting to pay for all the extra space and meals… not wanting everyone who is there with children to peace out at 7:30 in order to get home for bedtime… we had a child free wedding and of the very few non-attendees I don’t think any were on account of lack of childcare.

While children may go free / half price at some venues, don’t they still count towards numbers in terms of fire regulations / health & safety / insurance coverage? I’m assuming there must be a maximum capacity right?

I'm going to a friends wedding next month. Both the bride and the groom have a large number of siblings each, who all have children or grandchildren of their own.

They've decided children at the wedding are limited to their immediate grandchildren only. If they start inviting the children/grandchildren of their brothers and sisters, they'd be over run with children and not have space to invite their adult friends.

I think that's a fair compromise.

Hopefully, I find this trend of child free events horrendous. As a child I used to go to quite a few weddings and loving it . It’s a pity children these days cannot be included , especially if it’s within the family