Child Free Weddings have always been normal - stop pretending otherwise

[thelakeisle]

Just that really. Every other week some entitled family member trots out the "reasons" why she is super special and her children MUST be allowed to attend someone else's wedding. It's batshit, over entitled and frankly weird.

I do not understand this desperate need to control other people's lives or inability to just turn down an invitation politely.

Other people's weddings - no matter who they are or what your relationship is - are not about you. The bride and the groom are the only people who get to decide anything.

No ifs, no ands, no buts.

So, when you receive a child free wedding invitation these are your options.

1. You can ask very very very politely if your children are the special exception - the answer will be no, by the way.
2. You can accept the situation like a grown up and say yes.
3. You can accept the situation like a grown up and say no.
4. You can accept the situation and throw a tantrum in real life, on mumsnet or any other platform of your choice.
5. You can turn up with your kids and be exiled from most family events for the rest of your life.

And for the hard of thinking:

1. Child free weddings don't mean they hate your children or any children.
2. They will be fine with you turning down the invitaiton, you won't be making any great dramatic stand by doing so, few will notice, probably none will actually care.
3. There are extremely good reasons why some people have made the choice to not have kids at their weddings, dating back right through history this has been a common practice.
4. Again, this is not a new thing. Not at all. You're just not very well educated about the past, or are wearing your Pollyanna goggles.
5. Not wanting kids at the wedding has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with adults enjoying themselves unencumbered and uninterrupted.
6. Your kids are only cute to you, your spouse and maybe the grandparents. Everyone else is just being nice.
7. Your personal story doesn't matter to the bride and groom, and nor should it.

I think that covers it. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

Stands back to await the hurricane of entitlement and faux shock and horror.

Posting with a poll for a bit of a laugh, mumsnetters do love their polls :)

Hard agree

I agree too.

I'm glad that every single wedding I've been invited to has included kids.

Well initially I asked if they’d consider allowing on-site babysitting, but DB was rude and snippy about it and his fiancée just said no outright. Then I politely declined the invitation since I couldn’t see how to make it work. Eventually they compromised and went ahead with on-site babysitting which meant I missed most of the speeches and the first dance and cake cutting (because, as predicted, my kid panicked being left with a babysitter even though I was very close). However THEN my DB walked up to me and insulted my parenting out of the blue then walked off. So, i thought ‘fuck it’ and brought my kid onto the dancefloor and there she stayed having the time of her life until midnight!

I felt I had been nothing but nice and compromising and spent a massive amount of money and all our holiday allowance on a pair of ‘zillas who were nothing but rude to me, and at least that way I would be able to participate in the reception.

Throughout our childhood there was always this assumption that I was there to do what DB wanted- I would make him meals, iron his clothes sometimes, he could take my things with impunity and give them away or break them. I think he has carried that into adulthood and was shocked that I may have a priority that was greater than his wedding.

Maybe depends on class and geographical area. Weddings and parties were always for all the family when I was a child. I’ve never been to a child free wedding.

100%. For most people it’s a cost / space thing.

I assume the 30% who voted YABU are the entitled parents who thinks the world revolves around them, their snowflake kids are never wrong, etc, etc.

I wouldn’t.

I voted YABU and I have no children.

Child free weddings certainly have not always been normal in my experience of weddings spanning the 1960s to the present day.

To the best of my recollection I have been to one in all that time. So, very much the exception rather than the norm.

I totally support couples who choose to have child free weddings. When parents stopped parenting their offspring that’s when problems occurred. It is the couples big day and their choices should be respected. I have been to weddings where couples have paid for videos of the service only to have a screaming child providing the soundtrack.

I’ve attended lots of weddings and all but one were childfree except for a few immediate family, like nieces and nephews. We had our four nieces, and my friend’s baby. That was it.

To be honest I’d rather go to a wedding without DD. It’s good to have a bit of “time off” and DD doesn’t want to sit through ceremony, speeches and all the rest of it.

Me neither. Much prefer a grown up event that’s a treat and gives me the excuse to dress up, have a laugh with friends and drink good wine and eat good food. My worst nightmare is this village hall and cheap,buffet with kids doing slides on the dancefloor thing. Although the latter was what I was forced to have when I got married. It was just so miserable and cheap.

One woman’s misery is another woman’s wedding goals!
I wanted my wedding to be fun and inclusive and about family above all else. Not a po faced nightmare of formality and posing and fussing over inconsequential nonsense like whether the grooms flower matches the napkins.
I was all for having a bouncy castle at mine (for the kids - lol) but as I was 7 months pregnant and not allowed a go it got vetoed.
Child free weddings are fine as long as the couple don’t strop when people can’t come, don’t hold a grudge when their 17 year old cousin stops talking to them after being lumped in as a child, and they remember their position when their own kids come along and expect to be treated the same.
It’s when people start to expect all things all ways that the problems really start IMO.

I always said that if I ever got married I’d have a child free wedding

For two key reasons:

1. I don’t want other peoples kids running around, making a racket during the vows and just generally being unruly and annoying

2. The cost. I have many many cousins. If I invited all the kids it would cost a bloody fortune. And honestly I wouldn’t want a wedding that big anyway.

But, I also would be totally fine with people declining to come if they didn’t want to or couldn’t get childcare. That’s just the risk you take if you have a child free wedding.

Never quite understood those brides who get pissy about people declining to attend their wedding.

I'm 50 and never been to a child free wedding.

The only thing that's never changed about weddings is how they can bring the arsehole out in people.

I'm not offended by a child free wedding but I'm often astounded that people invite you to a child-free family wedding ( but obvs their kids are allowed) and then invite your only babysitters (AKA grandparents/parents) and are offended when you aren't able to go. 🤔

I got married 40+ years ago in the 80's and children were excluded apart from soon to be SIL, DH had a lot of siblings so there were plenty of people to help out. Some cheeky sod still turned up with a child that had to be accommodated. As the child was about 10 they were reasonably behaved. Fortunately the venue managed to sort seating out

The reason why I chose child free. Because I'd had to sit through an entire church service where twin babies screamed throughout the whole ceremony as their parents wouldn't take them outside. I did not want screaming babies/kids to spoil my wedding for me

We had a very child friendly wedding about 9 yrs ago whic was very unusual in our friendship groups at the time. We loves setting up the kid friendly bits and loved the chilled out vibe. It was before we had kids and while we were struggling with infertility. As a parent I've been to kid friendly and kid free weddings. I've enjoyed both. Sometimes we haven't been able to attend kids free events as our kids are still quite young. Horses for courses as far as I'm concerned. Upt o the couple. I don't like if the invitation is ambiguous and would rather have it spelled out as no kids or adult only so I know where I stand but we attend if we can, we love a wedding

I went to loads of weddings when I was a child (I'm 61 now). Loads. So I don't think you're correct.

I got married in the 80s and had children at my wedding. My (now adult) children also went to lots of weddings as kids 🤷🏻‍♀️

One of my relatives had a childfree (apart from me) wedding in 1983. My parents didn't push me in. I was invited in my own right because we'd just moved back to the UK and all my mum's family was going to the wedding. There was a huge amount of drama from various relatives because it was definitely out of the norm for our family.

I tend to blanket decline child free weddings. If it's close, I might go on my own but family/university friends etc all live hundreds of miles away. I'm going on sufferance to one on the south coast later this year (from NE Scotland) by myself but only because after I'd declined on behalf of me and dh, the groom (who I hardly know) took it upon himself to organise me a lift with friends of his who are stationed fairly close to us. I nearly said no on principle but dh told me I was being unreasonable.

The only time I've been pissed off though was when dd was asked to be a flower girl but they wanted us to find 3 days of childcare for ds. That was a hard no.

What if the bride and groom are the only ones to bring their baby?

This issue is a Big Deal for you isn’t it? You are very intense about it!

Anyway I am from an Asian culture and went to no child-free weddings in the 70s and 80s. I was a child! So it was not part of my life and my parents never left us at home. We had fun with cousins and family friends our age at weddings. Loved them.

So true. Dictating what guests wear, destination weddings etc. Blows my mind.

YANBU.

One of the most entitled was the daughter of one of MIL's friends who has been invited to the evening do out of duty. Apparently she couldn't get babysitters so she asked MIL if she could bring kids. MIL said yes without asking us despite knowing our stance. FFS! I wouldn't have missed this person (can't even remember her name). We did notice their kids 🤨

This is so true! I said ‘f off’ in my head when people said that, but in front of them I played along and looked delighted! I will decide what I enjoy, thanks.

Personally I think a lot of people are now choosing a child free wedding because of the change in how some people are ‘parenting’ and the behaviour of many children. While I know it may seem a blanket statement, from my own personal observation and experience, parenting has changed and many kids are allowed to do whatever they want, regardless of how it impacts others. I guess in a lot of cases, the bride and groom just don’t want that for their special day and to be honest, nor would I!

I’m 50 and as kids we would be invited to weddings BUT if we’d been too loud, behaved badly or inappropriately, we’d have been taken out and read the riot act!!!

I’ve been to weddings over the years where kids were loud and boisterous, running round the venue, knocking into people, spilling drinks and sliding across the dance floor on their knees all evening, meaning other people couldn’t actually dance. I’ve seen kids be allowed to rush up to the buffet before anyone else, with no adult supervision, fill their plates to overflowing and then not eat any of it (or worse still, take bites out of food items and then put them back 🤮). At one wedding someone’s kids were crawling under tables while the parents got plastered, pulling the tablecloths so glasses and crockery all ended up on the floor! Even then, other people cleared it up and the parents were oblivious. At the most recent wedding we attended, some kids took ALL the instant cameras the couple had put out to capture fun moments from EVERY table and were just clicking pictures of random things like their shoes, grandad’s nose or the inside of a cupboard. The parents didn’t stop them, they just laughed.

If we’d whined and grizzled for our own way all day, spoiling things for other people, our parents would have taken us out, not allowed us to spoil the day for everyone else. Nowadays so many people think their little princes and princesses should be allowed to do whatever they want to, regardless of if they are spoiling the happy couple’s day or their impact on other guests. The entitlement and thoughtlessness of many parents is astounding so yeah, if I was getting married in this day and age, I’d definitely have a child free wedding!

Your title doesn’t match your post - you’ve said child free weddings have always been the norm when they haven’t. Completely fine for people to have child free weddings though.