Out of Town Guest with Child - Advice

I think as long as the website has no children and your wedding invites and STDs are all the same. i wouldnt call her about it. she can figure out her own arrangements. unles you often speak on the phone with her and can mention it. just dont start allowing some kids and not others. my friend did that at her weddiing and ive never seen so much drama in my life - i got a slice of cake to watch it HAHAHA but man my friend was upset!

We’re having a child free wedding. When we sent out the invites, we were very specific on who was invited. There was only one issue that arose, but it has since solved itself.

If you’re going child free, make sure you stick to your decision. The minute you waiver and allow one, that’s when people get upset. They will come if they can, or they won’t. Either way you’ll have an amazing day.

I would definitely call her. As long as people know with enough time to plan there is always a way. Having a 10 year old son I'm sure she has some backup plans already in place. He isn't a baby and leaving him in someone's care for a couple of days shouldn't be a problem.....

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Thanks Katelyn. FH thinks I should call ahead of time as well.

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Oh thank you Amanda! That is a most reassuring response. There is tons of family out here for her, and other cousins to hang out with as well. So it is possible idea.

So being a mom and having just been invited to a cousins wedding in Ontario where they are also not having children present, I can assure you it wasn’t that big of a deal. I knew early on that it was happening as their budget wouldn’t allow for all the cousins and their children. I am also lucky that all my family lives in Ontario and that my cousin, being on my father’s side, leaves me with babysitters on my mother’s side, or I also have some friends as an option. If the situation is the same for your cousin out here where she has a lot of family that she can leave her son with for the night that can be an option. Being a parent sometimes having an event without your children is nice. Do not get me wrong I LOVE my children deeply and wouldn’t change my life at all, but sometimes being able to have an adult conversation and not having to split your focus is a welcome relief. For me I see it as a win win, I get to spend time enjoying an evening out with my partner and family I don’t see often enough, and my kids enjoy a night with other family they don’t often see being spoiled all night with junk food and binge watching movies!

Kid friendly wedding and babysitter would be good for your cousin to keep under someone you know personally since she will not have time to know who to trust. Reach out to her to inform about the babysitter if their son comes and will be taken care of and met in person days before the wedding.

Sometimes its best we take care of things that are better to know the individual to take care of our kids so that family can have that trust in them when travelling.

I would call and speak to her personally. I'm sure that the little one could be left with a grandparent or close friend for 2 days. But you never know until you ask.

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I feel like more people will use it the week before just to make sure the details are all good lol!

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Ok thank you for the advice and experience. The wedding website was my passive aggressive way to avoid having to tell people directly. So noted that it might not the best thing to rely on!

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This is actually my biggest fear with this the no kid thing. Other family members declining because of one person I am so sorry that happened to you! Good for you for moving on. It seems frustrating. But I am trying to remember that I will just enjoy the day with whomever is there, most importantly my FH!

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Thanks for your experience/thoughts! Sounds like this is not a totally uncommon thing.

I also found that the no-kids deal wasn't as big of a deal as we thought it'd be - We only had a conversation who is getting divorced and in a custody battle but she is respectful of our no-kids policy and politely declined (she might still come to the ceremony).

I had a few cousins with kids who are in Ottawa (getting married in London) who declined since their kids are heavily involved in hockey/other sports and they are always busy during the school year with that.

I'd send the save the dates and let your cousin go from there. I'd also address the save the date to just her and her husband as another layer of heads-up. I find that not as many people look at the website that I thought would so keep that in mind.

We decided to have an 18+ wedding for not only the legal drinking age but so that we wouldn't have to invite another 50 people! Oh, and we don't want to worry about swearing or saying something raunchy in front of little kids.

When we put this in the invite what ended up happening was my FH's side was completely fine with it (although his Aunt was hoping her 3 girls under the aged 8, 4, and 2 would be an exception... they weren't...), on my Dad's side my Aunt/Godmother refuses to come because her 3 kids are also under age... This one hurt quite a bit especially because once she said she wasn't coming to the wedding everybody decided they weren't going either. There's no way to know for sure if it's connected but all I'm saying was that before they all physically received the invitations they were all pumped to make the trip 4.5 hours to the city...

Plus, I invited kids to the wedding shower - and low and behold my Aunt/Godmother is willing to drive the 4.5 hours for that with her 2 girls...

For you I wouldn't worry though - as much as it hurt to have like 20 people decline my wedding I still have over 200 people coming to support my marriage to my FH so I felt hurt, and then moved on!

I have a cousin in California with 2 young kids (under the age of 10). She'll get an invite but the kids won't. We're not close at all but I don't think we'd make an exception for her even if she were since it could open a can of worms with other parents of young kids.

There's a good chance she won't come at all unless her dad pays their way but if they do and there are questions, I'll stick with the age-old limited space explanation, which is part of the reason for being adults only - albeit a small one.

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Thank you for the advice and personal experience. A bit of a relief to know that this ended up being not as stressful as you thought. Fingers crossed it goes the same for me! LOL.

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Duly noted. Provide that information at multiple opportunities. Thank you!

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Thanks for the input from that perspective. I appreciate that it wouldn't be anything personal. I am ok if people are unable to make it to the wedding for whatever reasons suit them. It seems fair to expect that if we are having the wedding we want!

So, I'm a mom. I wouldn't expect a phone call but I also wouldn't travel for an out of province wedding that my kids weren't invited to. It wouldn't be anything personal, but it isn't practical for us. As long as you are ok with that possibility I think you are fine.

We also thought this was going to be a bigger issue that it turned out to be. We ended up having 1 single conversation about this. My friends asked if I could let her bring the kids, told her 'no' due to space and they declined the invite. It was pretty painless conversation and most people are a lot more understandable that we think hahaha.

As long as you give your guests enough notice, and let them know that it's kids-free, then you have every right to hold your grounds and give guests a hard 'no' if they ask.

I agree with Becky. Just send out your STD with the information on the website and leave it up to them.
We told everyone ahead of time that we were doing no children, even addressed the save the dates to the adults. As soon as the invites went out and it said “ Adults only” ( I had to spell it right out so people got it and didn’t show up with kids lol) I got quite a few comments! I literally just looked at my FH and said “ not our problem. We said no kids we are sticking to no kids”

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I stressed about this hard too- We said age of majority and my fh had cousins that were 13 and 14. He has total of 26 cousins. They never had an issue with the fact they couldn't be there. I stressed about the convo and it never came up!

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Ok good point, maybe I am stressing over a situation that may not even happen. Story of my life. Thank you!

I would send the save the dates as you have mentioned. This might not even be an issue to her- she could always drop her kid with her in laws for the weekend. If you talk more often then I would bring up other options, this wouldn't be something I would stress about- I know why you are and completely understand. I would face it when or if there is even an issue.