Weddingbee boards

My fiance and I have decided to not allow children under the age of 5 at our wedding ceremony. We like kids, but my biggest fear is that our ceremony will be interupted or unable to be heard because a parent will not be responsible enough to take their young child outside if he/she makes noise. We will be having a full catholic mass (about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes long - no kid wants to sit still and quiet through that!). This only effects a few of our family members and one close friend. Everyone elses children are over the age of 5. We do not have any children in our wedding party. The people with kids under 5 are close relatives that would have attended no matter what (like my brother and sister, my best friend, his cousin, etc.). The problem is that we didn't mention it on the invitation or anything. All children are invited to the reception, regardless of age. But just for that 1 hour ceremony we plan to hire a babysitter to provide childcare for the under 5's. Since it was only one hour and we are paying for and providing a babysitter and the kiddos are still welcome at the reception, neither of us thought to include this information on the invitation or our wedding website. r Oops, I know. Our bad. So now, we need to go back and inform those few people with young kids that their child will not be able to attend the ceremony.

Well, my fiance's parents seem to think this is a terrible idea and that we will horribly offend everyone and that if we do this people will never talk to us again. Now, I'm all for hearing advice and opinions, but this advice was unsolicited. I feel like now that they've said this we can't say no-under 5's because if I do, I will be the b*tch of the family. I feel like once someone has told you that if you do something that it will ruin eveything, that the decision has already been made for you because you don't want to cause problems or hurt anyone. I'm just really upset that someone would say something like that, therefore leaving me no choice really unless I want to cause deep family rifts apparently. I thought this was supposed to be our decision. But now I feel like I HAVE to allow kids under 5 or everyone will hate me. I wouldn't dream of telling someone else what to do or not to do on their wedding day. I'm just frustrated. Any advice? I can be flexible and compromise on a LOT of wedding things, but this is probably the one thing I am not willing to give on because I think the ceremony is so sacred and special that if it is interupted during the vows or something by a babbling child with a parent who refuses to take him/her outside I would be deeply disappointed to miss such a special moment. Any advice on how to handle this? We want to do the right thing, but this is really important to us.

I have no advice but I look forward to hearing the suggestions from other bees. I went to a wedding recently and a family in front of me had two small children (both under 3) and the kids were fussy and babbling the whole time. Loud enough for the Mother of the groom to turn around during the vows to watch the cute kids! Don't know if she was really like "Aww how sweet!" or (fake smile) "Get up and take you kids out of here!" I personally think if you offer a sitter for the Mass then people would be rude to decline and bring their kids in anyway.