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

What on earth are you waffling on about? You need to apply grammar and punctuation to your sentences to be understood.

I'd just leave the kids with in-laws/other side of family for the weekend. Or whoever isn't cousin takes kids back to hotel after meal.

Kids that age are bored during the ceremony and formal meal anyway, and the 4 year old is too little to be kept up for the evening party. At that age they either just get hyper and annoying, or tired & tearful, most adults hate children that age at an evening party.

A lot of the local guests will have kids picked up by other Grandparents or babysitters at 5pm
It won't impact that much on numbers.

The Groom possibly doesn't know the back story with Ops Dad and the reasons he's not trusted to babysit

Same, we went to a family reunion in September and my (just turned) 5 year old was tearing up the dancefloor until midnight.

I probably wouldn't go in this case. They could have made it clear much sooner that kids weren't invited.

My cousin is getting married a 5 hour drive away this summer, it's kid free so we aren't attending. Tbh my in-laws could probably have the kids for one night but I've got no interest in spending upwards of a grand to go to a family event my kids aren't invited to. I sent a card thanking them for the invitation and wishing them the best with our apologies. People are welcome to have kid free weddings, but parents are equally welcome to decline the invitation if that doesn't work for them.

Yep! I bet quite a few others will go solo and leave their partner, who may not be well known to the couple anyway, with the kids. Or leave the kids with their ex, if single parents (why is the assumption always that everyone with children is bloody married?). That can be the neat thing about children generally having two parents.

You can get a family room in a travel lodge or premier in for 3 nights for far, far less than £700.

our two are wee late owls! Usually up till 10.30/11pm at family events like this! Especially if dancing 💃
Yes but no one else wants them up at that time. A 4 year old up til 10.30/11 is always fucking hyper and annoying.

It’s alway entertaining how much fun some parents think their 4 year old tearing up the dance floor at midnight is.

I’d cancel and spend some of the money on something for all of you to do the night of the wedding so your not just sat there with your phone pinging.

It’s a shame but it is what it is.

It’s alway entertaining how much fun some parents think their 4 year old tearing up the dance floor at midnight is.

I know. Meanwhile everyone else thinks its bloody awful.

Because it just pushes guilt onto the B&G. A "Sorry, but we have found that we will not be able to make it to the wedding. We all wish you the very best and will catch up with you later in the year to hear all the details and see the pictures/videos. Have a smashing day and we will be thinking of you.
All our love, Jacob, Judy, Jason and Janet Johnson"

IME, parents tend to vastly over-estimate:
• how much B&G want their wedding to involve kids looking cute in their outfits

• how many people will refuse to go to a wedding if kids aren’t centred
• how upset B&G will be if they RSVP “no”

Your kids are rightly the centre of your world, but for everyone else they’re a bit character and the wedding does not revolve around ensuring they can attend and have the most fulsome experience possible.

We come as one package and my children are an extension of me so if they’re not welcome, I don’t feel welcome either.

I think this is really sad tbh. I didn't stop being me when I had DC. Of course I'm welcome in places that my children aren't (and vice versa, I doubt their teachers would like it if I joined the classroom as we come as a package!) and frequently those places involve alcohol, fancy food and adult conversation uninterrupted by jokes about poo.

I can have fun with them and fun without them, and I hope they feel the same.

The problem is that they’re not having a child-free wedding, they’re trying to have a half child-free wedding without considering the logistics of where all these children are supposed to actually go at 5pm when they’re a long way from home. I’d decline as it’s the worst of both worlds and not worth the expense.

OP has said most of the DC are not far from home, and that most of them have local family on the other side. So this could work really nicely for most of the families - kids enjoy getting dressed up, see the bride and groom, play with their cousins and second cousins and then go to granny's for a sleepover while mum and dad can relax and enjoy the meal and the party.

OP is an exception as she has to travel.

I'm of the opinion that people can have childfree weddings if they wish but they have to accept with good grace that some parents will not attend because of that.

Same also goes for destination weddings (or any wedding that will be prohibitively expensive to attend for some of their guests) or that are on dates some people can't attend like a weekday, term time wedding if you have teacher guests.

You can have any wedding you want, but if you put barriers in the way for certain guests they are not obliged to shift hell and high water to attend nor should feel pressured to do so.

I'm of the opinion that those barriers may be intentional...

It’s not really a children at the wedding one, it’s more a late communication of plans situation. I bet they decided it would be cheaper to pay for the meal with fewer people and didn’t consider the consequences.

For me, another option would be to go together to the bits of the wedding all are invited to, then go out for dinner somewhere else. It depends whether it would still be worth the three or four day trip to see family, even if there was no wedding as an incentive.

If I was looking forward to the trip in general, I’d probably still go, but just miss the wedding dinner. But then, I’m not bothered too much about big parties and would be satisfied with meeting the family earlier in the day and on the other days.

Whatever you decide, including if you decide to save the money and spend it on something else, I hope you enjoy yourselves.

I think people saying that the issue is the B&G saying at ‘the last minute’ that kids aren’t invited are wrong. Why OP even assumed they’d be invited is surprising to me (no offence to you at all OP, you seem lovely and very reasonable from your posts!), it just doesn’t happen amongst my group anyway. I’m getting married soon and it wouldn’t even dawn on me to invite my cousin’s kids, nor would they expect their kids to be invited either, it’s not the done thing amongst any of my friends or family. Don’t assume that this was an option that the B&G just pulled away, it was probably never even on the table! And it may not be anything to do with cost either, we don’t want children at ours because we both think they add stress to the day, nothing to do with not wanting to feed them. And to be honest, the kids aren’t the issue a lot of the time, it’s the parents who either refuse to supervise them properly, or want to show them off for some bizarre reason, ‘she was up until 2am dancing, bless her’, when she was actually more likely fed up in a corner, waiting for mum and dad to bring her to bed.

The crux of the issue is that the wedding is 8 weeks away and they haven’t even sent out the invites! Madness! Surely these should have been sent out months ago and then everyone would have had all the relevant information and could have made plans accordingly. The mistake is theirs. Surely they need to give accurate numbers to the venue and caterers. It will be their fault alone if less people now attend than they were expecting.

Oh and yes to add, they’re probably saying the whole take them away at 5pm thing as a way of inviting them ie keeping the peace, but knowing that it’ll make it difficult for people and that they may just leave them at home altogether to make things easier. Make no mistake, they do want a child free wedding, but it’s their day and they have every right to do that.

I’m getting married soon and it wouldn’t even dawn on me to invite my cousin’s kids, nor would they expect their kids to be invited either, it’s not the done thing amongst any of my friends or family.

It just goes to show that all families are different. I have a small and rather scattered family, so cousin's children have always been invited to weddings. If they hadn't then there would have been very few familiy members there at all.

Oh yes @Clara202 'oh bless, it was so cute, she got up and joined in on the first dance, so funny when she sang baby shark over their favourite song!'

My kiddies love a party and would be the last ones on the dance floor too. All weddings we have been to apart from one had all kids there so I would have assumed too in your situation to be honest.
The kids dancing on the dance floor is always lovely to see I think and as long as parents are looking after them then I think they help make the evening!
If you're not happy with your dad having them for a few hours then maybe politely decline. Goodluck

I don't think people actually realise how many extra places would be required if everyone bought their kids along. All my cousins have 2 or 3 kids each and I have loads of cousins.