That so many AIBU are about no children at weddings?!

[Nomad68]

I’ve only recently been looking at these AIBU threads, and just can’t get over how many relate to dilemmas about children attending weddings.
What on earth is happening that it’s suddenly okay to exclude children from major family events. Surely these are the events that become the big memories for children. Peter Kay describes the joy of being a child skidding on the dance floor.
I know weddings are ultimately up to the bride and groom, but really what has the world come to that younger family members are excluded from these events… just why?

Ha ha yep those. The truth in most cases is that everyone thought how cheap they were and longed for a nice meal and shindig in a posh hotel!

Children and weddings can be tricky. It's expensive, and to be frank there are a lot of crap parents about who do/would let their children make a lot of noise or run riot during a wedding. I have 6 kids, it would be fucking expensive even for someone having a relatively cheap wedding to invite all of us!

The only time I've ever had an issue with a child free wedding was when a bride went ballistic because I couldn't go. Had 2 kids at the time. Their dad was abroad working so couldn't have them. Their Grandmother was mid chemo and couldn't have them.

The bride was my cousin. She met my other cousin at my 21st. So my entire family, both sides, were going to the wedding. All my friends were going as the bride and I were part of the same friendship group and my DD's childminder was also going.

I literally had nobody I could ask so politely told her I couldn't go. She hasn't spoken to me for 20 years over it. Apparently I could have found "someone".

We had a small wedding venue with limited numbers. One of DH's close friends has 7 kids, their family would have made up an entire table at our small wedding and meant that we wouldn't have been able to invite all the people we actually wanted there. We didn't have kids because we didn't have an unlimited pot of money. People were free to turn down the invitation.

I had intended on a child free wedding and then got endless pressure to invite my husband’s two young cousins. One of them fell over on the dance floor after trying to run across a bunch of people and screamed his head off and the other one ate too much at the buffet and threw up on the floor. I should have held my ground!

I have kids and never assume they’re invited anywhere. But we also don’t feel guilty for saying no if we can’t make it work. We don’t have babysitters so just miss things if it doesn’t work for us. I see no issue with this. Not everything is meant for children - and to be honest, I don’t love having my kids around people drinking anyway so am happy to give it a miss.

Exactly this, in response to both posts in this trail. I'm unsure where this cant about 'the joining of two families' comes from.

How often do your parents see your in-laws? In the case of mine (we eloped) that would be precisely never. The same goes for almost all my friends as well as my parents' parents.

I don't think this is at all unusual.

I imagine it dates back to when marriages were based less on love, and more on cementing alliances between families. The good old days indeed.

Yeah but kids are a PITA and Peter Kay is shit.

I don’t think it’s a new thing. I’m in my 40s and I remember not being allowed to attend a relative’s wedding aged 10 as children weren’t invited in case they didn’t behave. I was a very well behaved child and can guarantee I would have behaved. Same relative came to my wedding with her children, who definitely did not behave but who I accepted as they were part of the family and I wanted them there.

What has changed, in my family at least, is that the next generation are not getting married! Or at least, not at the age that most people (in my family) used to. My cousins and siblings and I were all (bar one) married by 30. But there are 8 resulting ‘children’ in their mid 20s to early thirties and none of them are married. That seems a massive change in one generation.

I know people always say it’s so parents can relax, well if you have managed to get a sitter and you have to clock watch/drive it’s not that relaxing anyway.

Part of the problem I found is weddings aren’t local anymore as your friends are all over, so I was invited to one over 300 miles away. No children. She was pissed I didn’t come. She is super close to her mum who takes her children for weeks at a time but not all of us have that. So either we took DD and tried to leave her with a total stranger, and she would kick off, and we make a holiday of it. Or I went on my own and spent 8 hours and a small fortune on public transport getting there. It was just too much grief either way.