Telling your guests that children aren't invited...
With this new "mom" status of mine (as of February 14th, Valentine's Day!), I thought it was perfectly fitting to talk about a topic that's often a source of confusion and contention with couples, families, and guests. Should you invite children and babies to the wedding? Dun, dun, dun. If your answer is yes, how can you set up your wedding to be as child/baby friendly as possible? We'll get to that next week. But, if the answer is a big ol' fat "NO!", how do you go about this in the most tactful way possible?
For this week, let's start with the "heck no"s, meaning you absolutely do not want children at your wedding. First, there are tons of valid reasons why you may not want to include children. For starters, there's the potential that they will cry or cause disruption during the ceremony, speeches, etc. It's also totally fine to just want an adult day, and to encourage your guests to use this as an opportunity for an adult date night, as well! First, consider inviting children to the reception only. While this may not be ideal for a few reasons, it's one way of appeasing guests if this is important to you. If you're sure that you don't want children there at all (again, totally valid), here are some tips:
1. Be clear! If you expect your guests to read between the lines, I'd expect there to be at least a few unexpected children to be there. By explicitly stating it, you ensure that guests are receiving your message. You can do this by saying "adult only reception" or "adult only affair" on your wedding invitations. Even better, I'd encourage using some light-hearted language by saying something like, "To allow all guests, including parents, to have a relaxing evening, we've chosen to make our wedding an adult only occasion." This way, the message doesn't feel so stuffy.
2. Individually name each invite. Address it only to the parents, using just their names. I'd still come back to #1, however, as I doubt many guests to pick up on this subtlety.
3. Put "reserved seats" on your wedding invitations. On the RSVP card, try indicating that you are holding "2" seats for a couple. This is helpful because if someone is reserved "1" seat, they know they aren't to bring a date. Alternatively, if you indicate that you've reserved "5" seats for them, they know they can bring each other and their 3 children! As for those with "2" seats reserved, this will be for the couple who is not to bring any children. This is personally my favorite way to go.
For my next blog post, I'll talk about some ways to make your wedding more kid-friendly for those of you who really do want to include the little ones. I'll also be featuring a kid-friendly idea that I helped set up from a wedding this past fall. As a former bride who included children, and as a new mom who will have to deal with this issue when it comes to future weddings, I can't tell you how nice it is to have these little kid-friendly ideas handy on the wedding day!
As for me, I'm off to tend to my own little one.. best of luck in all of your planning (and, admittedly, to me as I continue this wild ride that is being a new mama)!
