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'd cancel now so they have 8 weeks notice. Hi cousin, we hope you have a wonderful wedding day. We won't be able to attend as we have no childcare for after 5pm in the area.

Lot depends on the type of hotel. Check if hotel have a kids club. This to me sounds like no kids meal available. If a kid club kids could go in there while the meal on have fun, eat. The meal part wedding drags on kids don't find it fun.
No doubt after meal once dancing starts they won't notice kids coming going dancing.
Even if children all together in room with take away parents could take turns sitting up with them over the 2-3 hours.
I'd be surprised if sitting for meal by 5. Could be couches around hotel outside dining room kids happy to watch tablets/phones.

I'd go.
You're staying three nights and only a few hours have changed.
If a babysitter's not possible you stay for dinner etc while DH looks after kids for the evening (food, pool maybe) then bed.

I could have guessed that it was the groom you were related to btw. The talk about kids on the cousins WhatsApp probably went straight over his head, especially if he doesn't have kids himself. Men! ( I know it's a stereotype but I do think there's a truth behind it!)

Perhaps you have a fairly small family?
If the bride has 20 cousins or so it really wouldn't be reasonable to ask all of their children to attend everything too.

Anyway, if you can afford it I'd still go and have a lovely weekend with family (even if it's slightly different to what you expected). Your children will probably be able to meet up with some of the other kids again the day after the wedding.

bow out, crazy amount of money for one of you to sit in a hotel room.

Personally feel that either children are invited, or they’re not. I think you made a reasonable assumption that as children were invited to the main event, they’d be included for the evening (at which time I assume you would likely have to leave a little early anyway, compared to non-parents as, at 4 and 8, they probably won’t last much past 9pm). If they were excluded from any part, it really ought to have been highlighted sooner, especially to those with children travelling long distance.

The bride & groom are totally entitled to have the day they want, but consideration from family members with children, disabilities, travelling significant distances is a matter of basic decency.

I would probably cancel at this stage as, like you, I would never leave my children with a babysitter they do not know and that I have not met in their own home, let alone in a strange hotel.

Stuff like this is why I have not had and will never have a wedding! Just not worth the hassle IMO.

£1300!!!!! What a ludicrous amount of money to spend on attending someone else's wedding! FFS. Cancel now @TemporaryName123 Tell them you have no-one to look after your children. Giving the date for a wedding that's in March - the March BEFORE - and not mentioning it is child free til ten months later (8 weeks before the wedding) is shitty behaviour.

She knew what she was doing. She probably thinks it's too late now for you back out. I would cancel for sure.

It's your cousin's wedding, why can't you go to the whole thing and your partner stay with the kids in the evening? Or you go to the whole thing by yourself and the rest of your family stay put, if you were thinking the kids could stay with granddad anyway? If the wedding is a family thing then it isn't like you won't know anyone if you go without your partner.

Yes it's a bit shit that they wait to notify you about this eight weeks before the wedding, but that shouldn't stop you going if you were looking forward to it.

Ask your dad to have dc but leave earlier

I think you made a reasonable assumption that as children were invited to the main event, they’d be included for the evening .

But it wasn't clear they were invited at all at the 'save the date' stage @BusyMummyWrites01. That was just a WhatsApp message sent to a large group.
OP made an assumption they would be invited only because cousins' children were included at previous family weddings. Not because it said so on any invitation.

I think the B&G are entitled to have a childfree wedding and the OP is entitled not to attend the wedding. So the issue is how to decline the invitation politely.
How about:
Dear Bride & Groom
Thank you for confirming the arrangements for your wedding. We will now have to decline your kind invitation, largely due to childcare issues, but continue to wish you all the best for health and happiness. I hope your special day goes well and we will be thinking of you.
Lots of love etc

Maybe. But why should they, particularly bearing in mind the expense?

They can do all that at home.

It also wasn't explicitly stated that they weren't going to be invited. This should always be made abundantly clear from the get-go.

The OP is vastly inflating the necessary costs of attending the wedding.

A five hour drive doesn’t necessitate a three night hotel stay - it may be their preference but it’s not a necessity.

New outfits for £200 aren’t necessary.

£200 for a wedding present for a cousin! is completely unnecessary - £50 is fine, £100 plenty.

8 weeks for invitations is fine and the perfectly good etiquette. The Save the Date (WhatsApp! Message) had all the information needed for booking time off etc.

Go or don’t go OP - either is fine. If you go then get someone to watch the children in the room or DH can stay with them. If you do decline there is no reason to explain why.

As an aside… you can book a 2 bed lodge for 4 nights at Center Parcs for less than £1300 in Mar/Apr. Kids welcome…

I would send a quick reply to your cousin along the lines of.

Hi Cousin, Hope you're well, not long to go now til the big day. Unfortunately though as you've now mentioned children must leave at 5pm this is going to make it really difficult for us to attend. Being so far away, we won't have any childcare to take the kids at 5. So sorry, but we'll have to gracefully bow out. The whatsapp group chat gave the impression that children were invited and we worked on that assumption. As we can't guarantee we can find childcare in the next weeks its best we decline, although absolutely gutted to be missing your wedding day.

Sure, they could stay at home. But OP was obviously looking forward to meeting up with her extended family, with her children and they can still do that, it's only a few hours of the intended plan that needs to change. If the DH and DC lean into having a fun night and leaving OP to enjoy the wedding everyone can still have fun.

I would find out for sure first if there are any other families staying at the hotel or living nearby who you could share childcare arrangements with. If you think your children would enjoy that. It could be lots of fun.

Otherwise I wouldn't want to pay all that money and go all that way with my kids if they were only invited to the boring half of the day.

It wouldn't be unreasonable at this point to say thanks for the invite but we'll have to give it a miss as no childcare for the evening. Not your fault you didn't assume correctly at the start, when I got married children weren't generally excluded from weddings.

B&G are being unreasonable however if you do still want to attend, could you leave the kids at home with DH family or a friend? You could reduce your stay to two nights and I would also be reducing the gift amount!

also wasn't explicitly stated that they weren't going to be invited. This should always be made abundantly clear from the get-go.

It usually isn't made clear in my experience. Probably because all the details haven't been ironed out yet?
I've had several similar 'save the date' invitations from cousins and friends over the years and would never automatically assume my children were invited. In fact I've always assumed they weren't! (Correctly as it turned out.)

Aside from all the other good points made on this thread, it's extraordinary that the adults are being called for the evening meal at 5 pm, at which point the children have to leave. i.e. the point at which children are going to be getting hungry and will soon be needing an evening meal.

So, even if one parent were to take the children back to the hotel, what possibilities are there for feeding them? They can't just sit in a hotel room all night, they're going to need a proper meal somehow. I don't know whether the hotel is in the middle of nowhere or a town with restaurants around, so organising food for them may be different degrees of easy or difficult. Still, it's certainly another piece of the planning that would need to be considered if OP were to attend - and which the B&G don't seem to have considered at all.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs and entitlement to choose how much of your wedding you want to allow children at, expecting children (and their carer) to leave at this point of the day so that the adults can sit down and eat without them, is very much the action of people who don't have children, don't care much and haven't given a thought to any guests who have.

Nowhere. They go to room with non-cousin parent.

Suck it up and move on

I know the thread has moved on, but I just find this such a weird attitude to a party invite. Suck it up?

Suck it up applies to unpleasant jobs that just have to be done, not to party invites, surely.

@DorsetandBeyond have you ever been to a hotel?

They serve food. It’s amazing. Some of them even bring it to your room.

Really? So I spend £1500 do my spouse can sit with the kids in the room? I would rather stay home and save my money.

You really think your wedding is worth all that? Not to me.

@LittleBearPad no need to be snarky. Yes, of course, I have been to hotels. But they do have varied arrangements (and levels of expense) for the provision of food in the evenings and the need to arrange this in advance (or not). I've been to hotels where nothing is available except snacks or exorbitant room service or meals at very set times which might prove difficult in this instance and of course, others in which it would have been no problem at all. It doesn't change the fact that it's another element of planning the OP's family has to unexpectedly factor in, they didn't choose a hotel with this consideration in mind, and it's yet another expense.