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Original poster

What was your real reason for a child free wedding?

143 replies

pookachook · 18/08/2023 14:12

If you had a child free wedding and were being 100% honest, what was your real reason for it? Weighing up pros and cons atm. Seems to be a bit emotionally charged.

OP posts:
Uncooperativefingers · 18/08/2023 14:20

We're having an almost child free wedding (2 under 2s are invited).

No more than that purely because of costs. Weddings are expensive and I'd rather see my whole friendship group than half of them with their kids (who I rarely see). Our venue said for kids over 6 we paid for adult meals.

I know it makes life difficult for parents and we understand that some people can't come as a result, but more people can come than if we had invited children so works for us.

Meadowfly · 18/08/2023 14:23

Couldn’t trust everyone to look after their children - didn’t want them making a noise / running around the church. When I say ‘couldn’t trust’ what I actually I mean that the parents in question think it is ‘cute’ when this happens and encourage it!!

Legomania · 18/08/2023 14:29

We had a family/wedding party children only wedding. To be honest very few of our friends had kids at that point though.

We wanted an adult-oriented occasion. I would stand by that now; I don't think that having kids there really adds to either the ceremony or the party elements of the day.

whathappenedtosummer23 · 18/08/2023 14:32

Siblings kids only. Because weddings aren’t for children and I have never been to a wedding where general guests bring their kids so didn’t occur to me and nobody asked

PuttingDownRoots · 18/08/2023 14:32

I used to work in wedding planning.

Usually itactually came down to money and numbers. With big families especially, 60 places for example soon filled.

Never met anyone who wanted to exclude tiny babies.

Niftyswiftie · 18/08/2023 14:34

We were limited on spaces in the venue so decided to not invite kids. Some of my friends have 4 kids, that's another 4 friends I could have had at my wedding.

Bethanbee · 18/08/2023 14:35

We didn't invite any children. It wasn't a blanket ban on kids or anything. It's just we had a certain number of people we could invite and we wanted our friends and family members there. None of our family had children yet. Some of our friends did have children but if we had invited their children we would not have been able to invite other friends. Basically we didn't know any children and we needed all the seats for people we did know.

GigiAnnna · 18/08/2023 14:36

I only had my own children at my wedding. Costs were the main issue. I couldn't afford to invite people who had a lot of kids as they were taking up the bulk of the guests. All my friends have at least 3 children. In the end I had to restrict it to very few guests anyway as it was in October 2020, so I had more reason to say no children as if they came I then couldn't invite other people.

SapphosRock · 18/08/2023 14:36

The wedding disco was in a gay bar with topless male waiters and pictures of naked men on the walls. Appreciate this reason doesn't apply to everyone.

UsingChangeofName · 18/08/2023 14:36

We'd never been to weddings as kids. It never really occurred to me that it was a 'thing' that people take dc to weddings.

It wasn't really an issue as there weren't really dc in the family, and of course I wouldn't have invited dc I didn't even know, so it just sort of happened that was how it was.
No angst.

cruffinsmuffin · 18/08/2023 14:38

We didn't want a day with the added issues that children bring. We had a small wedding, no children apart from babes in arms.

Honestly I wanted a church ceremony without children making noise / crying / being tended to, we were limited with numbers anyway because of COVID and there's no way I'd be swapping out numbers of adults who could attend and remember it for children who probably wouldn't.

I'd been to so many weddings where children caused issues by being noisy or messy and the parents either had to leave to deal with it or didn't deal with it - I didn't want that for ours!

punnetofcherries · 18/08/2023 14:39

Cost

We could only invite x amount of people due to room size. If we'd invited peoples children, we would then have had to not invite close friends.
We said no children (apart from bridal party, but there was only one baby in a car seat extra, brother of young bridesmaid)

No one queried it at all

Kaggi9 · 18/08/2023 14:40

We got married abroad and had a reception back at home. The venue had a limit on numbers, and if we had invited children, it would have halved the number of family and friends we could invite. We had one friend who was breast feeding and she brought the little one, but no-one else questioned it, and many said they loved having an evening without worrying about their kids!

punnetofcherries · 18/08/2023 14:40

I should also have added space to that!

So cost and space

SunRainStorm · 18/08/2023 14:48

We just invited children who were family members. We asked friends not to bring their children.

My reasons-

Some people assumed their children were invited before we even sent invitations and that annoyed me.

it would have been an additional 20+ people. If I wanted to pay for another 20 I would want 20 more friends or relatives there. Not children who I have met a handful of times and who I'm not close to and who would rather be home with paw patrol.

20 children is basically a nursery. I didn't want my wedding to resemble a nursery room. I didn't want to have to hire someone to look after/entertain them. It completely changes the tone of the event.

I wanted my friends to let lose and party into the night. Not come to me at 9pm and say 'Alannah's bedtime was two hours ago, we need to get going'

I didn't think the children in question would care. Why would my university friend's 5 year old son give a damn I was getting married? What's it to him? Nothing.

SparkyBlue · 18/08/2023 14:49

UsingChangeofName · 18/08/2023 14:36

We'd never been to weddings as kids. It never really occurred to me that it was a 'thing' that people take dc to weddings.

It wasn't really an issue as there weren't really dc in the family, and of course I wouldn't have invited dc I didn't even know, so it just sort of happened that was how it was.
No angst.

Same. It's never been a thing among my family or friends. I have a very large extended family and never went to a wedding as a child. It was always a fun adult day out. At the same time time obviously children would occasionally attend weddings if they were a very close family member of the bride or groom or part of the wedding party or if the family had travelled from abroad to attend. When I sent out my invitations it wouldn't even have entered my head that people would want to bring their DC but yet st the same time if someone had genuine childcare issues it probably wouldn't have bothered me if they asked to bring their DC. I also had three flower girls and two page boys so I did have children there. We are off to a family wedding in a months time and our children are not invited but I assume the nieces and nephews and the DC of the bride and groom will be there. It's only on MN where I've come across people being bothered over DC not being invited to weddings and I've never heard of blanket bans on children attending weddings.

onlylovecanhurtlikethis · 18/08/2023 14:49

If it was solely down to cost what would you have done if a guest offered to pay for their child?

PinkFootstool · 18/08/2023 14:50

Wanted a childfree wedding, but knew it would make it impossible for various siblings to attend so didn't bother. We can't have children and it was still incredibly raw for us at that time so being around kids was painful.

Most parents and kids were great though, so no screaming in church etc and all kids ended up being family kids.

None of my friends brought theirs, as they wanted to party 😂.

Cloudsandrainnotsunandsand · 18/08/2023 14:51

We just had our /my dc. Wanted less chance of giggling and them being distracted.. 1 friend totally disregarded the discussion and brought 2...

I fumed a good while...

Mariposista · 18/08/2023 14:51

We wanted a beautiful intimate church service without badly behaved children and our guests up and down like jack in the boxes taking them out.

RandomMess · 18/08/2023 14:53

One family had wild kids that the didn't supervise!

Other friends went child-free apart from family DC otherwise that would have been 70 more to the list. They hosted a children's party at a later stage because they love kids.

sunshineandshowers40 · 18/08/2023 14:53

Most of our friends didn't have children, I actually think only one did but her MIL was hands on and looked after them on the day. We had our nieces as bridesmaids/ flower girls.

I

Bumble84 · 18/08/2023 14:53

You haven’t met most of my cousins children and my friends all said they didn’t actually want to bring theirs as they’d rather have a day out. It’s also more likely expensive and adds to the numbers considerably and people would be guaranteed to leave early.

YakChewCrumbs · 18/08/2023 14:53

It was accidental. My DB was the youngest there at 14. No friends had children (though one was pregnant) and none of our families had young children (again one pregnant cousin).

Kimya · 18/08/2023 14:53

Very few of our family/friends had kids at that point (2 or 3 that I can think of
)

One of them, my husband's nephew, was what may euphemistically be termed a "handful" - in actual fact his sister was fine with leaving him with the other grandparents and having a night off!

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