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Who else out there is planning a Kid-FRIENDLY wedding? I've seen lots of posts about people not inviting kids, but I'm having a hard time find many about people having kids.
I know I can't be the only one here who is SUPER excited about having tons of kids/teenagers at my wedding. I'm having 4 kids in the bridal party - 2 Jr. Bridesmaids (who will be 8 and 9) one flower girl (who will be 4) and a ring bearer (who will be 7). In addition I fully plan on inviting all of my students from my self-contained special education class and having them sit in my family section. The boy is the youth pastor at my church, so there will be 60+ teenagers running around as well. There's a good chance there will be just as many kids as there are grown ups that day!
And here are some of the cuties that will be in attendance that day :)
youth_sunday.jpg (79.3 KB, 37 downloads) 1 year old the_girls.jpg (76.2 KB, 40 downloads) 1 year old Ring_Bearer.jpg (54.9 KB, 40 downloads) 1 year old 
We invited kids! My husband has several young cousins and I have a TON of cousins/second cousins as well. The kids made the reception tons of fun and danced the whole night!
The kids in our life are VERY important to us, and so naturally we'll have them at our wedding and reception. Also adding to the decision, we are older and so many of our friends have children and are traveling 8 hours to be at our wedding. We certainly wouldn't ask them to just leave their kiddos in the hotel room :)
I wish the venue were outdoors so we could have more kid friendly things there, but the reception is in a very large room, so we are setting up an area for the kiddos with dress up toys, coloring books, princess crap (all the kids are girls under the age of 7), and probably a laptop with movies. We're also paying a friend or a friend to man the kids' area. And, we specifically chose our DJ because he's FANTASTIC with kids...lots of limbo and chicken dancing to keep them entertained (our adult guests aren't big dancers, so the DJ can focus his energies on the youngsters.
Wow, that's a lot of young people. You must REALLY like kids!
The youngest person at our wedding was 21. :)
We invited kids. And I have to admit it was nice that they were there. Was I over the moon that we invited them? No. But I was equally not upset that we had. I do, however, have issues with the way that some people treat their kids at weddings. I was once at one where one of their kids had fallen asleep and the other one was crying because he wanted to go home. The parents just kept on drinking wine and shoving their little boy away - it was really upsetting.
@littlemissmoo: That's awful that parents were doing that. We're planning on having an early afternoon wedding/reception - so hopefully everybody will be home for bedtimes haha
To be honest, I picked other because neither option fit me. I was originally against having kids at my wedding. We are having an evening, full-bar event at a historic hotel, so I felt like having a tons of kids was a little inappropriate to the occasion. I ended up allowing it because a) I didn't want to deal with the drama from the parents b) there are not that many small kids in our families anyway (only 3 that are not teenagers) c) those 3 little ones are all well-behaved. I was not jumping for joy at the idea, but I am not upset or put-out that it turned out that way.
The way I see it is this. Don't get me wrong. I love kids. I have worked as a nanny, a resident camp counselor, a VBS teacher. I've tutored elementary school kids, I've taught violin lessons to young kids. I have 1 semester left for a degree in secondary education. Despite all my dealings with children, or maybe because of, I am totally intolerant of badly-behaved, ill-mannered, screaming heathen children. I absolutely abhor people that do not discipline their children or teacher them basic manners or how to behave. There are far too many people nowadays that are of the "Oh, little Johnny is an angel, he can do no wrong. How dare you suggest I reprimand him!" school of parenting. This, unfortunately, leaves us with rude, squalling brats to deal with. I am a disciplinarian by upbringing, both my parents were old-fashioned and raised us to have manners and to behave ourselves in public. The same can not be said for a large portion of kids now and the thought of some rude person letting their kids throw a tantrum through my wedding ceremony makes flames want to shoot out of my mouth. I do not want to generalize all kids. I have dealt with many, many lovely children that were a joy to be around; I've just also been around a lot who made me want to sterilize their parents.
I will have several small babies and younger children at the wedding, so I am planning on hiring a couple of people to babysit the children at the ceremony/reception venue. If the babies get fussy during the ceremony, the parents wouldn't have to walk out and miss the wedding. Plus some of my wedding party have multiple children and having an extra hand to take care of the kids while they are busy would be a blessing for them.
Our wedding is on New Year's Eve and goes til late, so we don't think a ton of children are that appropriate. We've invited a few children of family members that have to travel far but generally making it known that the way little ones should be staying home. I love kids and if our wedding was taking place at a different time I'd feel very different about it.
I agree; the more the merrier! Our wedding is automatically kid friendly because of our wedding date, a Sunday afternoon/evening. Most of my fiance's friends are married with kids, and I have about thirty cousins, most of whom are younger than me. It didn't occur to me not to invite kids.
Interestingly, my fiance said that at one point in his life (read: early-mid twenties), he would have refused to have kids at his wedding, but he now realizes that a crying baby isn't a big deal, and family is much more important. Sweet guy. :)
We are having quite a few kids. We have 2 flower girls and 2 ring bearers (all under the age of 4), so to me I didn't think we could have only those kids there. Lots of our friends have small children so it would have been super rude to say only those children could come, in my opinion. We also have a 10 year old jr bridesmaid (FI's brother's step-daughter).
We are making buckets of kid-type activities for them at the reception. Crayons and coloring books, matchbook cars, paper dolls, etc. It probably will keep them occupied for 5 minutes but it's worth a shot! After that they'll probably hit the dance floor, and that's always entertaining. 3 years boogie-ing is hilarious :)
We are limiting the amount of children that we are inviting to the wedding. We have a fairly small guest list (well, we consider 120 small!) and so we've limited our children just to FI's nieces and nephews (6 kids ranging in ages from 2 to 17) and my cousin's 2 children (like niece and nephew to me, ages 3 and 7). Other guests with children shouldn't be offended. FI and I have cut plenty of friends and family that we'd like to have there vs. our guest's random kids.
kids are most welcome at our wedding and their names are on the invitations. should all of our invited guests bring their children, we will have 67 of the little monkeys coming (not including the 14 infants.) We are having a day wedding: 11am church, 1pm reception and ending at about 5.30pm. We are both older (39 and 41) and so the majority of our friends have children. We made a conscious decision that our wedding will be a family affair for our guests.
i'm a teacher, so it doesn't seem too much of a drama. our venue is extremely child-friendly, the reception is outside, and we are making sure that they will be entertained in their own area with their own menu of party food (PUT THAT BLOODY OYSTER DOWN! GET BACK TO YOUR HOTDOG!) We also have engaged the services of 2 bad-arse young teachers to assist in keeping them all occupied.
but, if we were to have held our reception in the evening, we would probably not have invited children apart from young immediate family members who would be of an age to enjoy the evening, and independent enough to allow their parents to enjoy the evening.
I have mixed feelings on this but we are having children (since future sister in law has two). Hopefully the little girls age up a bit in maturity before then (which I'm assuming they will). They're kind of bratty right now :/
My future hubby has a 12 year old who is going to be the best man, and my two nephews, who i adore, are going to be the ringbearers, and my cousin is going to be the flower girl....my best friend has 3 kids that i want there because i've known them their who life. I could not even imagine having a wedding without inviting the kids that are special to me.
I picked "other" as well. There will be kids there, but its basically against my will. We very strongly did NOT want that to happen but for various reasons we had to invite a few families. Basically the way I'm handling it is to be ambiguous on the invites/rsvps (they will say Joe and Jane Smith and not mention the kids or "family") and let people make their own decisions about if they add their kids to the RSVP, and I've also spread the word that we don't want kids (as has my mom and my bridesmaid). There are a few families with kids I REALLY don't want there (because they are younger, like under 10) and if they RSVP for them I'll probably just call them and see if I can hire them a babysitter.
We are having lots of kids. FH has 6 nieces and nephews and I am very close to my younger cousins. Our family is close knit and kids are almost always involved in functions (the only time when they aren't involved is when the adults are in a club atmosphere or very late night activities).
I'm allowing it, but I hope mom and dad find a sitter and would like a day to themselves. I know I've brought my daughter to two kid family weddings and I will never do it again. I didn't enjoy myself. I was chasing her the whole night or spending time in the bathroom rocking her to sleep, or feeding her from the plates. I didn't get to eat dinner until it was cold. I missed some speeches, ect.
I also can't stand parents who DON'T do anything and just let kids run around. So while I'm not going to exclude them, I'm hoping mom and dad can leave them with someone for a few hours.
I'm not having special food for children either. It's going to be an afternoon reception with butlered finger foods.
My first wedding was definitely kid-friendly. Most people were coming in from out of town. At the time, several of my cousins had small children, and there was no way I was excluding them.
At my second wedding, we only had a dozen people at the ceremony, and none of them had children under 21. Thus, the issue didn't really come up there.
The at-home reception was at an adult club, in the evening, with an open bar. We didn't really try to bar children, but few of our friends have them. Since everyone was local, the few that had them left their kids at home. We did end up with one dog present, but no children. ;-)
I am so on the fence about having kids. My reception will end at 11:30, well past bedtime, but there are a lot of kids in my family.
I had 7 kids invited, but will only have 1, our flower girl, at the wedding. That is fine with me.
No kids except my soon to be niece who will be 1 1/2 years old.
Absolutely. Neither of us could imagine the wedding without kids invited since weddings for our families are events open to all ages, and we love kids so it's a given. If we had any restrictions at all on children, our families would bar us from future events.
Our wedding is kid-friendly in that I would not NOT invite them, or discourage people from bringing kids. One of my bridesmaids has a little baby who may come along, and if that's the case I'll let her decide whether she comes along or finds a sitter. But I seriously doubt many people will bring them, because it's an evening ceremony and cocktail reception. We don't have a ton of kids in our life, so it's not as much of an issue for us.
Our kids' are extremely important to us and honestly I couldn't imagine our wedding without them there. We will be inviting kids and I think it will be fun. There is a park adjacent to the venue and we will have a bubble machine for them and a bunch of bubbles for them to have a blast with.
I'm really enthused about having kids at our wedding - I am planning on having a crafting table set up for them, special kid favors and, hopefully, a pinata :)
I'm not having kids there except Papa Bear's son who'll be 12 at the time. I think you inviting your class is SO sweet!
I think your kid situation will be totally different than normal, which is such a blessing. All of the kids are ones you interact with a LOT, so they won't be wild cards on behavior. I wish the kids in my family were well behaved, then I wouldn't have a problem inviting them. I just dont want to spend my wedding day fussing and getting on to kids, while their parents watch.
We invited kids, but only because my mom promised me that my aunt would never speak to me again if her eight year old daughter wasn't invited. Once we were strong armed into inviting one, we kind of had to invite the other 27. Not ideal for us (kids were 1/4th of our guest list, and we aren't really kid people), but whatever, it was just one night, and we didn't have to interact with them.
We didn't do anything special for them, but I have seen a lot of weddings where the bride makes little activity books (you can download free coloring pages, create word searches or cross words, etc. all online for free if you have time to find it all), or given little goody bags to kids - silly bandz seem to be the popular (and age inclusive) choice right now. :)
We had several kids at our wedding - our flower girl is 5, ring bearer is 3.5 and then we had 3 one year olds, a 2 year old ,a 10 year old, an 8 year old and an 11 year old
I loved having the kids there. We didnt do a kids table but we did a kids meal. The kids were having a blast - dancing all night even when no one else was on the dance floor! I didnt feel like having kids there took away from anything I Think it just added to the fun!
I picked "other" because we are only including my cousins who are involved in our wedding (2 ushers and the ring bearer) and FI's cousins who are coming from OOT. In total there will be 8 kids there.
Since I have 4 half-siblings that are 13 and under, I kind of have to have kids and let others bring theirs. However, there will be no kids in the wedding (flower girl, etc). I am not expecting a lot of my friends with kids to bring them along though, as most of them are already talking about finding sitters (even my MOH). If kids do come, I am making them activity bags and having a seating area for them up at the front of the ceremony.
@Serya: I haven been joking about having a pinata FOREVER! That is awesome :) Whenever somebody asks me about my reception I keep telling everybody we're going to have a bounce house and a slip n slide just to get a reaction out of them... but the more I say it, the more I think it might actually be feasible haha
no kids, although there will have a 4 year old and a 14 year old in the bridal party, and their little sister, a 4 week old as the exception. they are my nieces and traveling across state, so i gladly am having them but no other children.
my extremely rude aunt went as far as telling her kids she would "just have to sneak [them] in" as i turned my back...my mother handled that right away!
I don't know yet. I *want* to be able to invite the kids (all of whom are under age 3). But the wedding is going to be at my mom's house, and it's already going to be a super tight squeeze if it rains and we have to be indoors. So believe it or not I don't know if I have the physical space to invite them. (Also, her house is about the opposite of child-proofed - lots of breakables!) I guess I will offer to hire a babysitter at the hotel where most people are staying, but that's really not an ideal solution...
I had kids at my wedding and they were up dancing right along with us until the reception ended at 11pm. They had so much fun and it was hysterical to watch them dance. The singer of the band even gave one of the little girls his tie while singing. It was great! I can't imagine not having them there. A friend of mine requested no kids at her wedding and in the end didn't really a few kids had to come because of this reason or that...and she was glad they were there. I guess it all depends on the wedding. Mine was laid back, and more of party than a wedding.
We're having a small wedding and having kids but the two I can think will be there will be a month old and eight months old. And possibly a little girl that's about four years old but she's super well behaved. I don't picture any of them being a problem. The eight month old is my future nephew and I couldn't imagine seeing our wedding pictures and not having some of him in them. There was at least one kid (my fiance's cousin's daughter) that I was dreading coming when we were considering a bigger wedding because she randomly screams if she's not the center of attention but since it's smaller (immediate/close family and close friends) she won't be there.
We will definitely be inviting kids with their parents, even though we aren't planning to have any little ones in our bridal party - we come from a small church where everyone is family, so it wouldn't feel right to us to just have our friends there but not their children! I am slightly wary of how certain kids might behave during the ceremony (based on their day-to-day behaviour), but we've just decided not to worry about it and enjoy ourselves either way. Hopefully, the parents with "difficult" kids will use the opportunity to leave their children with a sitter for an afternoon away.
I think I might be having a little too much fun thinking up fun activities for the kids to do during the reception... (read: they're all things I want to do, myself!)
@MissMeg: You should do it! I'm really enthused about having the pinata - I think the kids will get a kick out of it and it'll make for fun pictures!
We're having a kid friendly wedding. It almost wasn't even an option to do anything else since lots of our friends have small children. We're having a kids table with games, activity books and toys so hopefully they'll have as much or more fun than the adults!
The only children invited to ours were my 7 year old niece (flower girl), 8 year old nephew (ring bearer) and their 3 year old little brother (too wild to be ring bearer) ;0)
They are my sister's children and they are my LOVES!
DH doesn't have any children in his family.
My best friend/bridesmaid had her baby at the ceremony and she would have been welcome at the reception too but my friend had her husband's cousin as a babysitter. Her sister had her baby at the ceremony too - I wouldn't have told anyone that they couldn't bring their children but most of the other 'children' in my family are big kids (teenagers/20-somethings) and when you start adding them in (I have lots of cousins, they all have children) it would have nearly doubled the guest list so it's pretty much an understanding that cousin's kids don't get invited.
I went to lots of weddings when I was growing up because I was the youngest of my cousins by a long shot so when they were all getting married we were invited even though we were pretty young. I LOVED going to weddings. I've never been to one with actual child-focused activities - all my babies did at our wedding was dance and fool around and that's all I remember doing at weddings when I was little! (not in a disruptive way, just didn't need coloring books etc...)
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