Wedding Forum - Guestlist issues...

Arghhhh I need too get this off my chest! I had agreed with my fiancé too 50-60 guests and NO children but as of last night H2B said its gonna look bad if we don't invite the kids but it's put our numbers up from 56 too 80! Where do you make the cuts? Because you have too at some point dont you? I'm completely at a loss and haven't slept with worrying! HELP GIRLS PLEASE?!

hiya, its a tough one isn't it, do you have children yourself ? i have a 2 year old and lots of our friends have children ranging from 1-12 and we cant invite them all for cost reasons and also because i didn't want the day to revolve around running after the kids for everyone , but didn't want my daughter to be only one e.t.c. a lot of caterers i found don't charge per head if under a certain age. We having age 5 and under can come , everyone is happy with that, and if im honest i know some of them who are please and now really looking forward to a weekend away without the kids to have some adult time.. but we both have a very small family, no cousins or aunts e.t.c so no children in the family, I think if the kids are part of your family its harder to make the decision, whether to invite kids or not.. good luck :)

I personally definitely wouldn't invite children of your friends x

I agree with Flossie and glitterfairy, you really don't need to invite your friends children at all, i only am doing under 5's so my daughter has some little ones to play with and because a couple are babies.. x

We are having no children other than our own plus our nieces & nephews, that's amounted to 13 children which is plenty lol.
We have invited 98 people, when we added cousin's/friends/etc kids that added another 30 to the list, the max seated capacity of our venue is 120.

I am worried about how our family's will take the news but then again we have been to weddings on both sides of our family & our children haven't been invited to most of them, out of 6 weddings the children have been invited to 2. The 2 that they were invited to didn't have space issues though & there were a lot less children in the family then :)

What we did early on in our planning was sit down with our parents & ask what they thought about not inviting extended families children, the only one with a slight issue was H2B's mum. She said children make a wedding & that it's a time for all of the family to get together, but once we explained the space issue she was fine.

The hardest part is knowing how to word it/tell people. As GF said, I would just tell them it's down to number restrictions rather than just saying you don't want children there! x

Thanks girls! It's so stressful! Deffo gonna have too discuss it with H2B tonight but I'm DEFFO voting for the no kids side purely for cost reasons and with them being bored/crying/screaming etc

We have a total of 5 children coming to the wedding but that includes a 13 and 11 year old, and the youngest will be 6. We have said from the off that no children will be invited, this includes my close friends children that I regularly see. I also have a teenage stepbrother and sister that I do not see or speak to and as such are not invited, I've found it quite easy to tell people 'no' - but maybe I'm a heartless b1tch, haha. I think it stems from having to be firm with my job so that helps - I just feel that weddings are more for adults (and I don't want to hear screaming/wailing babies on my video nor do I want grubby hands on my dress!) But it might be different if I had kids myself! x

The only children we are inviting is our nieces and nephews and of course our son lol I have a few friends with kids around my sons age but won't be inviting their kids and to be honest I think they will be glad as they will be glad of a child free day out! Maybe your guests would be too? Unless you have any BEST friends who's kids are like family to you then I'd probably invite them

It's so hard! We've agreed to not have children at our day apart from one niece and two nephews. It's caused serious issues with the best men and their wife's are no longer coming and one has told everyone we're anti children blah blah blah but for us it's a numbers issue.

In my opinion you have to choose one rule and stick to it. We have a few extra spaces opened up due to people not coming and OH suggested filling with children but how do you decide who's children you choose over the others?! Decided to stick to the no children apart from directly related family members to keep what peace we have.

Stick to your guns! Most people will understand, what ever it is you decide to do.

H2B's cousin text me last night asking if kids were invited, I said no due to space issue's, she wasn't happy as it's her son's birthday that day!
When H2B got in I said to him & he said "I don't see the big deal about the kids coming, just invite them" we have talked about this so many times & now he acts like its no problem.
His family is huge already without adding kids to that number, it will add 30 more to our guest list. The hall isn't big enough for all of the children, his solution was "Invite them but explain the kids won't have a seat/space at the table" which is absolutely ridiculous!!
In an ideal world I would love to have all of the children at the reception (not church) but I just don't see how it will work??

It is a hard decision to make,

We are only having our 2 page boys there during the day, everyone else is over 16, but that's just because of the age of our family's. We did however originally say (before we knew how many day guests we would be having) that we would allow mothers who were nursing their babies to bring them along as we would have preferred them to come with baby in toe than not at all.

However we have said that all children are welcome in the evening.

Yeah no under 12's sounds good, that way you will have some younger people there but not babies that may not settle or any kids that need constant attention. Over 12's can entertain themselves and would be much better behaved.

EmmaP2B that's what I thought! It's the best option I think!
Flossie if I do that friends may get offended? If I say no under 12s it's a fair cut off point I think?

Arghhhh why are weddings so stressful lol! Hate not knowing what too do for the best! I want everything too be perfect and nobody too be upset

Maybe you could invite close family members children no matter what age but then on the invites to your friends and not so close family write no under 12's, that way close family won't be put out that they can't bring their children and others should understand x

If it was solely up too me it'd be NO kids period! H2b agreed until the other night I still haven't found out what's so drastically changed his mind is it selfish too not want too compromise? My mom has even said she'd hate there too be kids there for behaviour reasons! I think I'll just show h2b this thread tonight after we've been too the gym and he can read all your ideas! Thanks so much girls your all keeping me sane lol

It is not selfish at all, it is what would make you happy! I hope you can come to some sort of compromise with your OH! x

your friends really wont be offended at all.. invite family children if have to but no one elses :) you have ages to work out your guest list so don't let it stress you out, its the beginning of your planning :)

We've got just nieces and nephews, who are all part of the wedding party, and our 2 boys under the age of 16, except for my youngest cousin. We have invited other guests children to the evening but said because of keeping numbers down, we have a 60 guest max for ceremony, we would rather just adults. Plus we marry on a Friday morning so kids be at school anyway. We have our 2 boys and then 3 flower girl dresses and one of our bridesmaids, so not too many children.

Your deffo not being selfish,weddings are expensive,surely people realise this xx

We're just inviting nieces and nephews too. Good luck!

I THINK we've come too the arrangement of NO under 12s! Thanks so much girls your all so amazing! Feeling a lot less stressed today feels like a weights been lifted

Next is the seating plan I wasn't gonna do one Cus I don't care where people sit to be honest lol but I'm gonna have too I think

I'm sure it'll be perfect for you it's whatever works best isn't it? It's just stressful the planning part!