sweet child of mine
Can I request for a “No Children” wedding?
I get it, children can be rowdy, they run around, scream, and make a mess. Then you have parents screaming at their kids or running after them. And what about the babies that cry in the quietest moments?
I’ve attended a wedding where there were so many children walking, and running on the sides, and in the front during the ceremony, that I saw the veins of the photographer popping on his face. It was probably due to the amount of restraint he was doing to not pull the kids away from the camera. LOL. I bet that for most of the pictures, he had to edit or crop just to remove the kids.
Kids will be kids, right? But there are other reasons why you want to skip on inviting the kids. There’s the additional costs per head, and sometimes the venue just wouldn’t allow for so many people.
It’s a complicated decision. On one hand, you want an organized event with no interruptions, on the other hand, you don’t want some of your friends or family members to feel alienated because they have kids. If you are firm that you don’t want kids at your wedding, make sure you highlight it in your invitation, but put it in a nice way. There are a variety of reason you can use:
You want to keep the costs down, so only adults or children above a certain age are invited.
“We would love for your whole family to attend, but to keep the costs down, we will only invite adults. We hope you understand.”
Your venue only allows for a certain number of guests
“As much as we’d love for your whole family to be there, our venue has a guest limit so we will only invite the adults.”
You want a quiet and intimate wedding.
“We would like to keep our wedding intimate and simple, so pls understand that we will only invite adults to attend”.
You only want the kids at the reception.
“We would like keep our ceremony intimate so we are only inviting the adults, however, we’d love for your whole family to celebrate with us during the reception.”
Whichever you put on your invitation, make sure that it’s worded in a really good way so as not to offend or upset the parents. For relatives that you really want to attend, you can give them options or refer them to a babysitter that you know and fully trust. At least suggest something to them so that they have options to think about.
Be prepared for some guests to RSVP no and don’t be upset if they do. Some parents are not comfortable leaving their kids with other people, and some parents don’t know anybody else in the city (they flew in from a different city). Accept their decision the way they accepted your request.
