Charlie O'Brien blog: Kids at weddings? Is it a good idea to invite them to ours?

by Charlie O'Brien

When it comes to weddings there seems to be one thing that really divides

people - and that’s whether or not children should be invited.

For us it's a no brainer – we want children there. We have our own child and for us it would have been weird to exclude others apart from him. We would have also felt the same before we had children.

For me a wedding is a celebration of love with friends and family. And children

are a massive part of that package. I can’t wait to see lots of little people on our

big day in two weeks and I hope parts of it aren’t too boring for them!

A family affair - counting down to the wedding
A family affair - counting down to the wedding

I toyed with the idea of hiring a crèche service for a few hours so parents can relax and enjoy themselves for a bit – but our budget has been well and truly stretched so we’ve decided against it.

'It wouldn’t be the same without kids skidding on their knees during the disco in the evening'

Instead we have a space that children can go to and watch DVDs with blankets when they’re tired and have had enough of the celebrations.

I’ve also made party activity bags for all the children with colouring books, pencils, ink stamps, stickers, chocolate and all sorts of other little treats. I’m hoping that they will keep

them amused for at least half an hour!

A few of our friends have actually made the decision to not bring their children to the wedding despite them being invited. They want to be able to enjoy the day

until the end without having to worry about chicken nuggets and probable

meltdowns!

For us it's a no brainer – we want children at the wedding
For us it's a no brainer – we want children at the wedding

As much as I’ll miss seeing them I totally respect that decision and

hope our friends enjoy letting their hair down.

As with most things in life the decision about inviting children to weddings or not is a personal one. But for us, it wouldn’t be the same without kids skidding

on their knees during the disco in the evening. I’ll report back after the event to

let you know if there were any child related dramas!

Charlie X

You can read all about my wedding plans on my blog here

Kids at weddings: The Top 10 dos and dont's

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