NBR Wedding Invitation Question

midge519 · February 2017

I know we're pretty dead in here but I have a question for you ladies. We are getting married this summer and are intending to have an adults-mostly wedding. We are only inviting children of people coming from out of state and our own children. We find it rude to ask people who aren't from the state to not only pay to come to our wedding but then leave their children with a stranger or leave them at home. While we would love it if only the adults come we are open to them bringing their children as most of our out of state friends are military and don't have family near them. With that said I'm trying to make the wording as obvious as possible on the invitations and response cards. These are our tentative ideas (we're waiting on making sure we have the time nailed down for hair and stuff prior and we are getting our pictures done this weekend). We don't have a reply by date yet so we just have a month for now. If you have a better idea please let me know! Thank you!

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OliveOyl2014 · February 2017

I'm not sure what the etiquette is surrounding these, but I would just send out the invites, and personally contact the out of town families, letting them know that it's ok to bring the kids even though the invite says adults only. For anyone else, I think the invite is pretty clear that it's adults only. Just be prepared that some people will still bring kids, or won't attend at all.

midge519 · February 2017

Thank you for that. We intend to put a note in every out of town guests invite that says something along the lines of "We appreciate you coming from out of town and extend your invitation to your children as well." We haven't figured out that wording yet but we will be telling them we're inviting their children. We are expecting people to not want to come because of their kids but we know we just can't have the kids. We don't have the room to add the additional kids. If we invited every child as well we would be adding about 50 children to our guest list.

OperaSingerMommy · March 2017

I didn't have kids at my wedding and we just listed the adults' names only on the invitations.

FWIW, we are military and far from home and I'm frequently invited to weddings out of town sans kids. I'm never offended- I just figure out the childcare and some couples have offered to help me find a local sitter. It's really nice of you to let out of towers bring kids but I don't think it's rude to ask them to hire a babysitter to hang out with the kids in their hotel room during the reception to keep your numbers down. Just my .02! Congrats on your upcoming wedding!

midge519 · March 2017

Thank you for your insight! To be quite honest even though we are allowing them to bring their kids I expect about 5 of the kids to come out of the 20ish. I know that three of them aren't coming already. We do plan on only listing the adults on the invitations to help ease some confusion. Sadly I expect two of my cousins to not come due to the kid restriction, even though one of them had an adults only wedding. Thank you again!

dAsch14 · March 2017

I would remove the "Adult reception" part from the RSVP/Invitation. It's considered rude to list whose NOT invited to the reception.

I would list the specific names of those invited to the wedding/reception on the envelope. This means finding out names of each child. Then putting "__4__ seats have been reserved in your honor" "___ decline. ____ accept" "Please put initials next to your dinner choice" Or something along those lines. Then you don't have to list "adults accepting".

If people RSVP for their kids who were not invited you'll need to call and explain who the invitation was for.
I'm all for a kid free wedding, but some parents are immature and think it's all about them, unfortunately.

Congrats on the wedding!!

OliveOyl2014 · March 2017

@dAsch14 most of the weddings I've been to were kid friendly and our kids names were not on the envelope. Even if people don't include them on their rsvp reply, they may bring them anyway. A 1 year old typically won't have his own seat at a reception so parents may not think to include them when rsvping.

midge519 · March 2017

@dAsch14 Thank you for your input. My only fear with that is if I don't write "adults" on the invitation and response cards my family members are the ones who are going to just add kids being that I'll only be listing the adults on the envelopes. I have never had an invitation come with my childrens names on the envelope even when they were invited and the only adult only wedding i've been to had this wording on the invitation. Im genuinely confused on what to do now :-/ I just want this to go as smoothly as possible without having to upset a bunch of people when I call back to explain their kids weren't invited.

OliveOyl2014 · March 2017

@midge519 I've gotten plenty of invitations that say adult reception or something to that effect. I doubt anyone would find that rude. Don't stress so much over it! My suggestion would be to leave the invite as adult only, then call each family from out of town and let them know they are welcome to bring the kids.

midge519 · March 2017

@OliveOyl2014 thank you. I sat with my fiancé last night and we talked it over. I gave him all the info I had about it possibly being taken as rude and everything we came to the decision that less people in our list will take it as rude than will think the kids are invited if we don't include it. So with that we're leaving it on the invitation and are also listing individual names on the envelopes. We're sending notes in the invitations to the out of town guests as well as contacting them prior to explain it.

thank you all for your help!!

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