The wedding reception is a place where guests have dinner and then entertainment and drinks. There may be smoking or there may be a smoking restriction. There will be so many adults talking and having fun and helping you celebrate your day. Whether you have a fancy wedding or a causal wedding, you have to decide on whether or not you want children at the wedding reception.
Many couples want to have every one of their friends and family, but then they go over budget and prefer not to have children so they can invite more adults. So what do you do if you do not want children at the wedding reception?
Excluding Children from the Reception
This is a hard choice for couple to make. They do not want to offend anyone, but sometimes the couple prefers to have just adults at the wedding reception. There is a way to ask guests not to bring children without offending everyone. When you send out the invitations, you will address the invitation to the adults only. Do not include and family. Many guests will be able to figure out that you just want adults at the reception. Many people are not going to mind, but there will be some who do.
If you have out of town guests coming and they have small children, you are going to have to make a decision whether you want them to come or not. If you do not allow children, then it is possible that adults with children that live out of town will not be able to attend. The question of whether to have children at a reception or not is incredibly hard to answer or decide upon. You want to invite all of the adults, but some just cannot find childcare so they can attend.
Children and the Reception Dinner Only
Although many couples do not want to invite the kids to the dinner so they can invite more adults, they do not mind if they are at the wedding or the entertainment part of the reception. This is another problem. How do you tell people that the kids cannot eat, but they can come later? In most cases, couples just give up, invite everyone instead of trying to tactfully uninvited kids, and just have adults come. As you can see, there are so many problems when you do not want to have children at the wedding reception.
If you really do not want children at the wedding reception, you must be tactful when making this announcement. The invitation has to be worded just right and the hurt feelings if any will have to be dealt with later. When you are planning a wedding, you cannot please everyone. This is one of those instances. You have to decide if you want to exclude children and face the questions or just invite them and hope for the best. Talk to other family members and see what they think. Maybe they can be helpful and give you some ideas.
