A ‘children at wedding’ one….

[TemporaryName123]

First off, 100% accept that wedding is about bride and groom, not my family and I (before I get flamed lol!). My conundrum is as follows:

• 2 kids (4 and 8)
• Cousins wedding
• save the date was almost a year ago, wedding now in 8 weeks
• 5 hour drive away, hotel booked. Total cost of attendance will be around £1300 (petrol, outfits, gift, hotel etc).
• this evening cousin messaged to say official invites in the post. Fab!! However in the same message, said that our kids welcome to the ceremony and reception but from dinner (5ish) onwards it’s adults only…

We were all so lookIng forward to it, especially as we only see my extended family once every few years. But don’t feel comfortable travelling all that way to have our kids only enjoy half the wedding day. Plus our whole family at the wedding so we would need to get a babysitter or someone they aren’t familiar with to mind them in the hotel. Which seems rubbish for them to have to leave the fun (very social kids!!!!) and sit up in hotel room.

So as not to drip feed, my dad lives close by (parents seperated so he won’t be at wedding) but my girls see him at best twice a year for a couple of hours and while I know he’d offer to have them, we wouldn’t be comfortable with this as he doesn’t interact well with them and they don’t know him enough to be solo with him for 5 hours or so. So this is not an option really for us.

We have said all along we would go, my AIBU is:

Would we be BU to politely say we can no longer make it (and please, any short and sweet suggestions of how to reply much appreciated!)?

YABU: suck it up and go to the wedding and find a babysitter
YANBU: the goalposts have changed and it’s fair that you change your mind and RSVP no

I feel that it's true that it's the choice of the bride and groom whether or not to invite children, yes, but they need to be prepared to accept that some people won't attend if they choose not to. Those are the rules.

I agree. I think this applies to anything to do with weddings.
Want a destination wedding? Knock yourself out, just don't get pissed off it people can't come.
A colleague of mine is arranging a child free destination wedding far away. It sounds and looks lovely, but she's fuming that her sister (a single parent) isn't coming. She's not generally an unreasonable woman but this wedding has sent her batshit. The cost, logistics and inconvenience of this for her sister have totally passed her by.

I'm absolutely lovely, thanks. I just think child-free weddings are self-absorbed nonsense. Parents can choose to leave kids at home if they like. Parents should ensure kids don't disrupt proceedings. But I don't see why you should ban kids any more than you should ban over-60s.

Very often, the couple getting married have kids themselves a few years down the line and come on here to complain about child-free weddings.

@XiCi and no: the kids are not allowed from 5pm onwards.
the day is:
wedding ceremony (kids allowed)
reception (drinks/canapés - kids allowed)
dinner (no kids)
evening do (no kids)

This is so bizarre! Who on earth invites children to a wedding until 5pm? Do they really expect parents to bring a babysitter with them, or just have one parent sit in the hotel room until the end of the night?

I'd be so annoyed, especially as you've only been told eight weeks before the wedding when everything else has already been booked. I love going to weddings, but man, I'd probably tell them I can't go.

A middle ground for your AIBU vs AINBU is go to the wedding and ignore the 5pm curfew. What's going to happen realistically. Might upset a few people. If its an issue say you are putting them to bed in a bit... 3 hours later passes and the wedding party are drunk...

Shamelessly marking to see how this goes.

im completely with the OP- people can have whatever wedding they want but details need to be explained, dumping the children at 5pm isn’t a side note.

I think the confusion is around the term "reception", here it would be drinks reception, reception (main meal), evening reception. But at the same time you've been clear from your OP that they're not invited to the meal!

That would mean bringing the children uninvited to the meal, which would be astoundingly rude.

‘Hi Cousin - thanks for the invite, arrangements look lovely. As we don’t have childcare in the area we won’t be able to attend, but hope you have a wonderful day!’

Well there'll be nowhere for the kids to sit at the dining tables and no food for them. And that's just the beginning...

I think it’s fine for children not to be invited (I know some people don’t like that but I’m very much pro the couple having the day they want) but to have not been upfront about it from the start is not on. They must know people plan and pay out for these things more than 8 weeks in advance? Aside from not feeling very comfortable with it/it not being fair on your DCs, a babysitter will be a huge extra expense now. I think YANBU to decline and would probably just say “ah, we didn’t realise about the evening do. Given the cost (plus added cost of babysitter) it’s really not going to be practical for us, so apologies but we are very reluctantly going to have to miss out”

i think some couples don’t appreciate the headache and admin involved in the kids/wedding saga. I know I didn’t when I planned mine. So they’ve probably just made a blanket decision which they might flex on if they understand what it entails for you.

The thing is people's community these days are not all within ten minutes of the church. People's friends and families are far more widespread and if half your guests are going to be travelling many (hundreds of) miles, possibly cross-border, you feel obliged to respect the effort they're making to attend by reciprocating with a nice meal etc, which is obviously going to bump up the cost per head and in turn reduce the number of guests you can afford to invite.

If UK-based, 8 weeks seems plenty to me. Are you incredibly close with your cousin and his soon to be wife? This seems unlikely given the distance you live from one another, but if you are, share your sitter issue and see if they can broker a solution. However, if not that close, just rsvp 'no thank you' - this would not be rude of you at all.

For me, there would be two choices.

leave the kids at home with a sitter and you and husband go. Send apologies for kids saying it’s not feasible for them to come with the 5pm curfew. Or simply don’t go, send apologies that it’s too far to travel for half a day at the wedding.

Both reasonable solutions

What's going to happen realistically.

There will be no dinners planned for the kids, so either they sit there with nothing in front of them or the kitchen are put under pressure trying to rustle something up with no notice. Definitely not a good idea.

OP, you have a few choices that I see. It depends how much you want to go at a personal level.

A) Decline, explaining that you made an assumption that the kids would be invited, but that it's not possible to go under current circs.

Which could lead to B) B&G helping you out by inviting kids or seeing if they can be babysat with other cousins

C) You all go to the first bit, DH takes kids off and they have their own fun evening elsewhere, you go to the dinner.

Go, life's short! And I love my children but feel like it's a bit of a 'gift' when couples want their weddings kids free - all the adults get to let their hair down properly. Just ask for their help to find a babysitter. Your kids aren't that young, they'll be fine. See it as a challenge.

Weddings should be a bit like a harvest festival, about the whole community marking a rite of passage for a particular couple but not some big vanity fest about expressing your own terribly special unique identity.

You dont get to tell others what their weddings 'should' be about. The B&G get to decide that.

Bearing in mind most people don’t have any experience of organising a wedding I doubt the bride and groom set out to piss people with kids off. I get fed up when people slag off couples decisions without knowing the details

Save the dates are for when the bride and groom have found a date they can both do and possibly ( or maybe not ) a venue. They won’t have worked out detailed numbers and costs at this point otherwise they would send invites.

Once you have given all the people who would “expect” to be invited or live a distance a way the heads up you can look at numbers and costs. You know not everyone invited will make it , so you send invites with enough time to juggle food or invite someone else

Maybe they wanted kids there but worked out that having everyone’s “ fun and sociable “ kids means they lose 20% of the places for their actual friends. Or maybe they didn’t want to spend £50 a head on a child’s food or maybe they wanted a wedding not a family party. These are often things that aren’t apparent until you have more than just a date and an idea in place.

I'm sorry to be disagreeable but an invite is just that, it is someone else inviting you to attend their day (at their cost) - its not a debate or an opening gambit. Anyone confused by this needs to check their event etiquette. The OP has specified that the bride and groom wish for their dinner to be adults only. What is it that is at all tenuous about this? For all you know they may be expecting Uncle Simon to drink too much (at an adult dinner) and do not wish for small eyes and ears not to bear witness to it.

@NoCloudsAllowed Fully agree with this. What on earth is going on at these wedding parties that is so bad that kids can’t see it? Very classy, not.

If I had invited everyone’s children it would have nearly doubled the guest list and therefore price. If you get into inviting some but not others it would be seen as unfair. However, if your invite included the children’s names then I’d have assumed that meant all day and night too. It’s poor communication and I can see why you now feel torn.

This is practically very difficult. I mean child free weddings are fine but only welcome to the second half? Nah. UNLESS some kind of creche/entertainment is organised - it does happen

ideally leave the kids behind entirely with someone, and go adults only. Or if no one available don’t go at all.

Yes, I guess it's different for different families.

I've actually never been at a child-free wedding either as nephews and nieces of the b and g ( ie their siblings' children) have always been present. But in my family and friend group, cousins' children or friends' children are typically not invited. There would simply be too many of them! (DH and I have about 45 cousins between us for a start.)

I appreciate this varies from family to family. There are always two families' traditions involved when planning a wedding though and that needs to be remembered too.

Given your updates, I definitely wouldn’t go.

It is poor form to invite people to a wedding just 8 weeks beforehand when the save the date had minimal info.

Just politely RSVP with a decline. Don’t go over explaining that you can’t come because xyz, loads of examples of unworkable options. Keep it very simple and brief and wish them well.

I am surprised their caterers etc are happy to leave it so close to the wedding date as they are presumably giving invitees two weeks to respond, to allow for holidays etc

Fuck me. It’s just as well you’re not the wedding overlord.

Wedding’s ’should’ be celebrated in the way the actual couple getting married and them to be. Again, if you don’t like it, then don’t go. I doubt anyone is desperately craving your approval, or indeed presence.