Child friendly wedding - will everyone leave super early or let the kids stay up? Wwyd?

[Dragonfly909]

We are planning our wedding and want to make it child friendly as we have two kids and most of the guests have children they may want to bring. Ages from babies – ten year olds.

We’re planning to have some kid’s activities and lots of opportunities to eat, for example.

Unfortunately we can’t arrange the ceremony any earlier than 2:30pm due to availability. I think on the plus side this means young children are more likely to have had naps and lunch, but a downside is I’m worried those with children who aren’t staying nearby will leave early evening for bedtime, so the day will be really short.

Everyone will be travelling at least an hour to the venue - we have tried to book somewhere as central as possible to cut journey times but family and guests are spread across the country. Accommodation is being provided for family but not other guests.

For those with kids, what would you do in this situation – would you bring/leave the kids, stay over nearby, or leave early to get home?

On our side we’ll just have our kids stay up late as they don’t tend to go to bed until about 9pm anyway.

Thanks.

Depends on the age of the kids, when mine were babies or toddlers I'd play it by ear and see how their mood is, generally I think that meant I'd stay until about 10pm. Once they're over about 5 I'd probably stay until midnight/until my kids are begging me to go to bed 😁

I wouldn't bring my children if I could help it, and I would stay overnight so we could both have a drink.

If I had children with me, and someone was driving home, I would be leaving earlier than usual.

Can you encourage quests to book accommodation, perhaps getting a discount deal for them? Also providing a nanny might be something you want to consider (depending on how many children you have coming)

We invited children to ours but actually most people didn't bring them (it was an overnight wedding for all non-local guests due to logistics)

We always stay in a hotel nearby for weddings so we keep our DD up, if she wants to sleep we tend to let her crash out on some chairs

We had kids at our wedding from babies to about 10 and they just stayed to pretty much the end. Our wedding finished at midnight and they were still there at 11pm(ish).

Same here

We’d be leaving about 9.30/10.

At the most child friendly wedding I went to last year people with kids left about 9.30-10.30; it was quite nice though as with the people left it felt a bit like an after party

We usually book a hotel nearby 👍🏻 DS naps as late as possible while DH and I finish getting ready. Much later nap usually means he’s fine until later in the evening 😊

I take his PJs and a small pram/buggy with us and when he looks like he’s had enough I’ll pop and get him into his PJs and settled in his pram 🤷🏻‍♀️ He’s usually fine in there for a few hours. Means it’s easier just to lift him straight into bed when we get back to the hotel if he’s already changed and crashed out 😊

If DS gets super cranky and unsettled then DH and I have always prearranged who will leave early with him depending on who’s friends/family are getting married 🤷🏻‍♀️ The other one stays and enjoys the rest of the party.

Children or not we would be leaving 9pm-ish

Thanks everyone! Glad to hear people would tend to at least stay till 9/10pm, I was worried about people leaving even earlier tbh. I can see wanting to go to bed at 10pm myself!

@AnyRandomName that's a good idea about accommodation, I'll look into it. I thought about a nanny or childcare but then read another thread where people were saying the children probably wouldn't sleep with a stranger looking after them, but I'll think about that too! We will have a quiet room available for kids to crash out on chairs, maybe could have a rota of family members to hang out in there!

@Lkydfju I like the idea of the post children after party vibe, i may tell my friends without kids that their special job is to stay up past 9pm drinking with me 😂

Round here (northern) it's normal to let kids stay up at parties. Unless someone has a particularly difficult child who will get overtired, in which case they wouldn't bring them and just get a babysitter.

I've been to 2 40th birthday parties recently where school aged dc aged 4-14 awake and around until 10pm or midnight.

We had childcare in a room on site and it was the best money we spent (don’t have children ourselves, but lots of family children who wouldn’t have had any childcare options because everyone was at the wedding). Some children partied, some dozed in front of a film, some fell asleep for the crèche staff and some fell asleep on parents who then transferred them to a pram/travel cot (provided by the crèche) where they were supervised by the staff.

I would do it if you can afford it - we had such positive feedback afterwards.