No kids wedding...except there were kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I know this is an old thread... but I really hate when people say no kids and then still invite kids.

If an event is truly 18+ or 21+ that is totally fine! Say that! But dont say "no kids" and then invite other peoples kids. Just invite the adults.

I had an 18+ wedding. No kids were invited, no kids attended.

It's their party and they can do what they want to.

It's improper etiquette and poor hosting.

But sure, they can also charge people a cover fee. It's their party. Doesnt not make it tacky and rude.

This is not strictly true -- there is no specific etiquette rule that says if you invite some children to a wedding, you must allow all guests to bring their kids.

We only invited the kids of our immediate family because, for space reasons, this allowed us to invite more friends and also to ensure anyone who wanted to bring a date could (not just people who were married or in longterm relationships). Would it have been more polite invite the kids of our friends who had them, but then not invite 15 more friends we really did want to be there? Or tell our unmarried friends they aren't allowed to bring a date? Sometimes you have to make choices.

Charging a cover or making people pay for their drinks is a totally different matter. That's bad hosting because if you invite someone to a wedding, you should be providing them with food and drink. But not inviting every single child of every single guest is not automatically rude unless you are weirdly targeted about it (which most people are not -- in OP's case, it was only the children of the wedding party who were invited, which makes sense because they have more wedding obligations and also those kids are more likely to be known to, and important to, the bride and groom).

Please re-read what I wrote, I never said if you invite some kids you have to invite all. I said it's improper to write "no kids" or "adults only" when there will, in fact, be kids attending. That's it! Invite who you want, just don't lie on your invitations.

Hmm, I wonder which option is easier if you're busy planning a wedding... (A) say no kids and then let the three friends whose kids can come know separately or (B) don't say anything about kids and field dozens of questions as to whether people can bring their kids (or worse, have them not ask and then just bring their kids!).

Proper hosting and invitations aren't something I consider difficult, but I do agree that many people are quite lazy these days and may opt for your method. I disagree that lying to your guests is the better method, and you'll still end up with people like OP who were upset.

If you call the bride and ask if your kids can come and she says no, she is not lying.

And the way people on DCUM act, they'll just show up with their kids, never mind that they were not listed on the invitation. So it makes more sense to say no kids.

[Anonymous]

My theory is that the complainers got married young, earlier than most friends. So when they had THEIR weddings, they didn't have friends with kids. They might not even have had siblings with kids. Or maybe there were a few but it was like 3 kids and that's not hard to accommodate.

So then they got married and as their friends got married after them, they just failed to understand that circumstances were evolving all the time. If you get married at 24 and you don't have to accommodate kids at the wedding because (1) your parents are paying for the whole thing anyway so they figured it out, and (2) no one you know has kids, you might not really understand what it looks like to pay for and plan your own wedding at 32. It's not the same.

So much of the judgment people have for the way other people live comes down to this -- the mistaken assumption that their own experience is universal, and an inability to understand that individual circumstances might dictate different actions by different people. It's childish but lots of people are childish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure I'm the OP of the thread from a while ago. It was a ton of very young kids. Like 4 ring bearers all under age 4 and 3 flower girls all under age 4. So it was 7 kids. All of us with kids that weren't allowed were all older, more well behaved.

All other no kids weddings had 0 kids. Except one where the nephew whose Dad was the groom's brother and murdered that year. So made total sense nephew was there in his Dad's place.

Do you not understand that these kids were IN THE WEDDING?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My theory is that the complainers got married young, earlier than most friends. So when they had THEIR weddings, they didn't have friends with kids. They might not even have had siblings with kids. Or maybe there were a few but it was like 3 kids and that's not hard to accommodate.

So then they got married and as their friends got married after them, they just failed to understand that circumstances were evolving all the time. If you get married at 24 and you don't have to accommodate kids at the wedding because (1) your parents are paying for the whole thing anyway so they figured it out, and (2) no one you know has kids, you might not really understand what it looks like to pay for and plan your own wedding at 32. It's not the same.

So much of the judgment people have for the way other people live comes down to this -- the mistaken assumption that their own experience is universal, and an inability to understand that individual circumstances might dictate different actions by different people. It's childish but lots of people are childish.

+1. All this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My theory is that the complainers got married young, earlier than most friends. So when they had THEIR weddings, they didn't have friends with kids. They might not even have had siblings with kids. Or maybe there were a few but it was like 3 kids and that's not hard to accommodate.

So then they got married and as their friends got married after them, they just failed to understand that circumstances were evolving all the time. If you get married at 24 and you don't have to accommodate kids at the wedding because (1) your parents are paying for the whole thing anyway so they figured it out, and (2) no one you know has kids, you might not really understand what it looks like to pay for and plan your own wedding at 32. It's not the same.

So much of the judgment people have for the way other people live comes down to this -- the mistaken assumption that their own experience is universal, and an inability to understand that individual circumstances might dictate different actions by different people. It's childish but lots of people are childish.

The last one in our group of friends drove this point home by stating that they unfortunately could not invite kids because it would take their 100 person wedding to a 150 person wedding (or whatever the numbers were). I specifically recall the friend who had been the first to get married commenting on that because she hadn't realized the extent of the number of kids in the extended group (because she had not dealt with it when she got married).

(for the record, I am not actually aware of anyone complaining about their kids to not be invited; I myself was thrilled to be able to have a night out with a sitter watching my kids.)