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 :)

Had a child free wedding a decade ago, didn't give it a second thought and nobody cared

Agree

I can see how this can be annoying IF they know that family is your only babysitters.

Many people have more than just parents.

Yes, the recent thread makes this clear. The OP’s sister (bride) and mum expect her and DH there with the DC left at home with paid childcare. Not a chance I would have agreed to that.

I quite like the idea of a child free wedding. You can have a night off from parenting and let your hair down, have a drink and dance without having to supervision young children.

However, if you have a child free wedding you have to accept some people aren't going to make it. Whether it's childcare issues or not wanting to be away from young babies.

There is a thread running where the OPs sister is having a 3 day destination wedding and fully expecting her to leave her toddler and 6 month old baby to be there. There would be drama if she declined to attend.

As long as you accept that I see no issue. People shouldn't make an issue about wanting to bring their kids also. Just accept it's childfree or decline to attend.

I’ve no problem with child free weddings at all as long as the bride and groom are totally fine with invitees declining because of their kids.

I can remember myself and my two siblings aged 6 to 10 being left at home with a babysitter we'd never met before while my parents went to my uncle's wedding. That was in 1967! So yes child free weddings are not a new thing. I think what made it memorable was that my parents didn't go out much so we were never left with babysitter and this was a real novelty!

30 years ago we had a newborn and a 2 year old when my husband's brother got married, 500 miles away. DH went to the wedding, I stayed at home. No one took umbrage.

In my experience young children do disrupt/dominate/change the dynamic of weddings and it's not unreasonable for the bride not to want that kind of day. Just as it's also reasonable for the bride to value and welcome the noise and chaos young children bring. As a guest at a wedding, I can't think of anything worse than having to monitor and distract a rampaging three year old the whole day but then there are parents who would not find that at all stressful.

I think the issue is people taking offence where none is/was intended. My elderly mother who'd long since stopped accepting invites to any social occasion, was really angry when she didn't get an invite to her sister's great grandson's wedding. Not sure she'd ever met the lad either! She even admitted she wouldn't have gone had she received an invite.
Just be kind to each other out there.

I don’t believe majority of weddings during the 90s were child free by order of the bride & groom. Far too many photographs of flower girls etc to disprove that.

I think where the confusion arises is whether you’re a direct relative of the bride and groom. If not directly related, you were likely to arrange a babysitter like grandparents because your entire family would not be invited plus nice evening for parents sans kids.

It is this recent trend of no kids allowed whatsoever because the sight of one, yes even one that may be their very own niece or nephew would send the bride into a meltdown is very much anti child culture which is on the
rise.

Do they have kids now? I do wonder if they’re slightly remorseful towards you now that may have children of their own?

Not challenging your experience - no-one can/should - but just because those were the ones you enjoyed most doesn’t mean everyone will feel the same, whether they have children or not. We got married around 40, neither of us has children, our friends are a mix of with/without. We went child-free so the day was about us. One family member with a young baby elected not to come, we quite understood. Others with older children (from toddlers up to teens) appreciated a night out without them. I would also say that child-free is not always stuffy/OTT and you seem to have correlated with /without children into not stuffy/stuffy!

I totally agree OP and is why I had a child free wedding

Same here, have never been to a childfree wedding, all the ones we were invited to when my now adult children were children they came along. And ones in recent years, family ky and friends, have not been child free. V

Voted YABU I lost a friend because she did care I couldn’t go due to no childcare.

I was born in the 70s from NW UK. Child free weddings have never been a thing where I come from, until recently. I got married this year and we had around 20 children there and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way

I had a cf wedding in 1987.

I think it comes down to the fact that child-free weddings are fine, but the B&G can’t demonise someone who can’t attend because of their children. End of.

No, not yet. I think they will someday and I hold out hope they will feel bad about it!

I got married in 1987 and it was child free, we had loads of nephews and nieces but somehow everyone managed to get babysitters and it was a lovely child free day. No regrets

It seems straightforward really.

It's up to the bride and groom who they have at their wedding. They're not "precious" if they don't want kids there.

It's up to invitees with children whether they attend weddings, especially child-free weddings. They're not "precious" if they can't get a babysitter or don't want to leave their kids with strangers. There should be no expectation that invitees with children will necessarily be able or want to leave their kids for your wedding. It might be fun for them, it might not, but it's just not that important. It doesn't justify parents feeling obliged to strategize and plan on a par with Napoleon's invasion of Italy or them taking out a second mortgage to attend. At some point, it's ok if parents say "you know, we could make this work, but it's just not worth the stress".

A wedding is an invitation not a summons. Falling out with someone because they can't make your wedding or they don't want to spend a great deal of money on coming is quite frankly stupid.

Couples who have weddings abroad and expect anyone apart from the two of them to be able to make it are somewhat entitled. While it would usually be reasonable to expect close family and friends to dust off their best frocks and hats and share a £30 taxi to the nearest country house hotel, and barring money troubles guests from afar to splash out on a cheap hotel, when you're getting into airports and flights territory, and hotel stays of multiple nights, you've really got to question whether that's a reasonable ask of even quite close family members, let alone Penny who was in the university drama club with you.

Every wedding I have ever attended (bar one where no-one was young enough to have small children) and both of mine, has included children. They add to the joy and remind people of one reason why we get married.

I had a child free (except for bridesmaids and tiny babies) wedding 28 years ago. It wasn’t new then. Aged 29, I was one of the last of my friends to marry and many of them had two children. Inviting the children would have meant them taking the places of half of our friends and relatives. I always loved attending weddings without any of the subsequent three children that we had. Freedom for a day! Hooray!

It's bad enough I have to come to your blasted wedding (& pay for a wedding present) without having to arrange childcare as well.

I refuse all "child free" wedding invitations on principle.

And why to use contraception 🤣

I agree with most of what you say apart from that historicaliy child free weddings have been the norm throughout the world.
Historically throughout the world, weddings are family events with children attending.
Perhaps in a country as young as America it has been the trend for more weddings to be child free than in European countries.
I also find that you are very dismissive of other peoples experience of attending more weddings including children than not, in so far as saying their life experiences are very limited ( perhaps it's your life experiences).
I will say that within the UK, historically, child free weddings were more common within the upper classes (more access to childcare such as Nannies, children away at Boarding School,etc.)
Certainly fir the working classes, weddings were more a family event with children in attendance.

I remember taking out oldest (at the time only child at about 20 months) child to a friend’s wedding where he was their page… so obviously he attended. Had we had another child they would have to have been present to, or we couldn’t have attended at all ( no suitable family nearby, and only I drive).