Kids? or no Kids at the reception?

View quoted message For sure. one of my FH's buddies is bringing his wife & daughter and one of my colleagues is bringing her son. i also have no objection to guest leaving early b/c of their kids needing to
go to bed early etc

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That's fair!

We're having children. We have a lot of out of town guests who don't know anyone, so we didn't want them to have to leave their children with a stranger.

I also love children and couldn't imagine excluding them from my wedding celebration!

Most of the children are our nieces and nephews and they are excited for the wedding so it would've been hard to tell them no once they realized we're getting married!

Not that I ever wanted to say no kids, but my two youngest siblings are 7 & 8 so I’m kind of obligated to have them =P But I love kids so we’re allowing kids and a lot of my family is flying over from England so not allowing kids would be a bad idea as it would limit who would come.

No kids. Only the ring bearer will be coming for the introduction and dinner and will get picked up by one of the groomsmans parents.

We will be a having our little cousins, and nieces at our reception. I love children so I don't see any cons. We are not having an open bar.

I love having kids around- provided they're well behaved

Some really good points for both sides of this conversation hahaha

We have lots of thinking to do still i feel

We decided to invite kids... Mostly because we have a lot of friends with newborns and a todler who are from out of town and wouldnt be able to make it without bringing their kids.
It was more important to us to include all of our friends than to have a kid-free day. all in all i think we will only have 12 kids or so.. So not too bad

We had basically no kids at our wedding. The only kids there were our niece and nephews because there was no one to care for them at home and our 2 eldest nephews were ring bearers. Most of our friends with kids were not offended and found it nice to have an "adult" weekend. We didn't want people to be worried about taking care of their kids all day/night and not have fun. We also didn't want all the pandemonium of lots of kids (a lot of our friends have young children).

We had a kid friendly wedding and included children part of the celebrations. As a guest being invited to a wedding seeing no kids welcome, i would decline to go by all means.

My deal breaker was, of the kids who would come, who are their parents? Because generally parents with smaller kids need to leave waaaay earlier, and if the mom's and dad's were part of the bridal party, or close friends/family that I wanted to have there all night, then I'd want them to have a night off from the kids. (Not worrying about minding the kids, drinking, or when they have to leave)

We went no kids (under 18), because it cut 30-35 heads from the guest list, and we are going for an evening, formal theme wedding.

If your wedding is in a bigger venue, or has out door space, where you can offer a kids table, or games, etc... it can definitely work. It also depends on how many kids there are/would be, their relation to you (are the must haves for you at the wedding? nieces, nephews, young cousins...) Because when you say no kids, you can't make exceptions for the one niece you like... it shows favouritism and can definitely rub people the wrong way.

Also, check if your venue provides a discount price, or free meals for guests of certain ages. (Some venues will do something like half price under 10 years, and free under 3, for example)... but if I was paying full pop for kids, it would deter me for sure.

We're allowing kids! One of my bridesmaids has a kid and her parents are coming too, as well my fiance has a godson and on both sides of the family there's a lot of young ones I just couldn't say no to them!

I plan on having a kiddy corner and having an area for them to hang out together as kids and have some toys and activities to keep them entertained! I also plan to pay one of my older cousins (14 years) to be a kinda baby sitter and watch over them during the reception! She looks over the kiddies a lot at holidays and family events so I hope she'll be alright with it!

We are having an adults only (with the exception of FH niece and nephew who will have a part in the wedding)

Other than his sisters kids there aren't any others in our immediate families - which I realize is definitely not the norm. If we invited our first cousins kids plus guests children we would have around 25 extra little guests and since 120 in our venue is already tight, that would be 25 adults we would really like to be there that would have to come off the guest list to accommodate the children (our venue considers over 10 an adult at full price which most of these kids would be).

And the fact that we were looking at paying $2000 for the kids to eat an adult portion made it an easier decision to decide on kid free- it has actually allowed us to afford an open bar.

We decided to send out save-the-dates before the invites so that we can include a little Adults only note and give everyone a little more notice. I put handwritten notes on fancy paper to include with the save the dates saying that "as much as we love your children (with names) we are planning an adults only celebration - please make it a date night!" So far all of the people with children that we've let know it's adult only are actually excited about having a date night!

I know a no kid wedding definitely doesn't work for everyone but we are looking forward to having a super fun wedding with all those grown ups we love.

Initially I wanted to include kids because I remember being sad when my parents were invited to a wedding without us, and I really love kids too. But after we drew up the list of people we wanted to invite and the number of kids that would mean, we decided against it since the list was already much longer than I had wanted, and inviting kids meant adding 25 more people.

So we'll just have our 3 nephews and niece, and 3 teens with whom we have actual relationships.

We asked his sister what she thought about inviting kids (hers were invited in any case) and she told us that she was actually happy when she was invited to weddings without kids because that was like a little vacation for the parents. We did evaluate whether or not everyone had access to childcare before making our final decision though.

However, if someone asks, we might make exceptions. And breastfed babies are very welcome.

One thing, if you're making activity bags to keep the kids occupied during the reception, you'd better avoid balloons, unless you want them to end up on other people's tables.

I wanted to have an adults only wedding, but my dad really wanted to have the whole family there. Soo all the kids are invited. I know my friends are not going to bring their kids, but so far all of my out of town family with kids have said they are coming.

We're not doing kids because we want adults to be present at our wedding. We feel kids won't remember attending weddings anyway and rather those we invited to enjoy their time getting to know our families and friends. Also staying later for those who want to.

We're technically doing no kids but that's because none of our friends have kids yet. The only ones we know are coming will be FH's niece and nephew who will be 4 (turning 5) and 6 (a week shy of 7). If any of our guests who have children wanted to bring theirs (our cousins all have small children) we wouldn't say no (but they've all expressed they're leaving their kids at home).

We are a very family oriented family. So all children are welcome.

I’ve never been a fan of the idea of telling people they can’t bring their kids. We’ve had lots of people who said they’re leaving the kids with a sitter so I think there’s a lot of parents out there who prefer not to bring them and we’ve had lots of family who said their kids are coming too. Kids always liven up the dance floor anyways lol but it’s totally your call.

View quoted message I was a bit worried about people getting offended but now realize that no one cares lol we are still considering allowing like teens..my brother will be 3 days shy of his 19th birthday, and my fiance's cousin will be 16 so they are already on the guest list but his mom's cousins kids are already in their teens and I've been considering inviting them took they are at all family events so I feel kind of bad excluding them from the wedding, even though we don't really know each other very well.

View quoted message I don’t get offended with no kid weddings. Haha. Most of our friends with kids are the same, they want to drink and enjoy the night. But I hope they bring their kids! Then we can hire entertainment for them, or have some things set up for them to do.. plus our youngest will be 8, so at least she can have other kids to play with

View quoted message I don't even blame you! I'd be the exact same way.. kid free night?!? I'll have an extra (few) glass(es) of wine please 😂
Luckily for us it's only like 2 if our close friends with young kids so it's not even an issue. We just feel bad for then if they have to leave early especially since it's further away so we decided no kids. Actually one of my friends begged me no kids lol

We are having kids. So many of our families have kids. I don't want to say "don't bring your kids"

We're doing no kids (with the exception of the kids of our bridal party which is going to be a total of like four).

Majority of our guests are coming in from out of province (flying in). We weighted those who couldn't come for finding child care versus them having to pay for all the extra airfare. It was about par me and my FH decided given that the average would be 2-3 extra tickets. That is something to ask as well when thinking kids vs. no kids - how many people are travelling from far enough out of town that the extra bodies travelling could shift a no vs. yes.

I agree with Holly that the location is going to play a big roll too as well as how alternatives on how entertained they can be. A friend of mine did 'kid kits' for each one coming - colouring books, stickers, puzzles - all from the dollar store, but it kept them entertained in a venue that generally would have had them very bored. It kept them happy and in their seats, definite pro, but can be a little extra planning, which could be a con if you are busy coordinating every other moment of the day already.

Our venues are at two different locations, so we are considering yes for the ceremony and no for the reception... however we have people coming in from out of town so our concern is mostly those individuals who wouldn't necessarily be able to find accommodations for them.

View quoted message You should have seen me at a wedding we went to last year, haha. Definitely took advantage of not having kids... oh and it was an open bar 😂

View quoted message That's my only thing... no kids means possible drunk parents lol not all parents get a day off so they may take advantage of our open bar 😂

We are allowing kids of any age. Most people won’t bring their kids to a wedding (I never do) but I want all my guests to feel like they can if they want. A child crying at my wedding isn’t going to ruin it, a drunk family member might though. Lol. We are excited to have kids there. They think weddings are magical and amazing ha ha. I went to a lot of weddings as a kid and I loved them!

A few things to consider before make this decision. If your ceremony and reception in the same location. Will it take too much time for guest to drop their children off at home before the reception.

Our venue is the same for both but it is about an hour away from all our guest. We originally decided no kids after 8 then realized most people wouldn't come back, then we decided maybe no kids at reception at all, same issue..not fair for parents to drive so far just to drop their kids off. So we finally decided on no kids at all, not for the ceremony or anything.

So consider your location and what is easiest for your guests.