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(WR) kids vs. no kids-- the eternal debate
Isn't there a difference between a child wedding guest and a child who comes with a wedding guest?
To me, family all count as wedding guests, regardless of age. Kids of coworkers, friends, even long lost cousins maybe, whatever, are subjected to any age limits. I just can't imagine telling any of my beloved nieces or nephews they aren't invited to a family event. Especially when their siblings are... 
I've seen this twice recently. Once this weekend at my cousin's wedding. Sister of the groom didn't come (from GA to PA) b/c 1 of her 4 children wasn't invited b/c he's only 6. There were more issues, but that was a big part.
And my BIL's fiancee was going to have to tell her best friend that her son (who FSIL thinks of as a nephew) couldn't come (from FL to NY) b/c he wasn't a kid in the wedding. His sister is. Luckily, the boy is now ringbearer, so he made the cut. I chatted with FSIL about it as she vented about what to do, and she just didn't see the difference. She could only draw the hard line of : no kids unless they are in the wedding.
We won't mention that my brother brought his 2 yr old to the wedding. I didn't realize kids weren't invited until we were at the reception. But I adore my niece and would pretty much do anything to spend more time with her, so I was glad she was there.
Re: (WR) kids vs. no kids-- the eternal debate
We did not invite kids to our wedding, except for our ring bearer and flower girl who were our only niece and nephew at the time, so that worked out well.
If we had invited all of our cousin's kids it would have been an extra TWENTY THREE people. With it being an evening reception, we just didn't want to make it a "kids" event--with 25 kids, it would have been a total romper room. And we've never regretted it, we had an awesome wedding that was just what we wanted and we wouldn't change a thing :-)
I do think that only inviting some siblings is kind of crappy...it should be all or nothing.
we had a "no kids unless they were in the wedding party" rule at our wedding. most of the guests were happy to go out by themselves. Flower girl was 9 (her younger sibling was an exception at 3 b/c she was related to the FG and they drove 2 hrs to the wedding). Ring boy was 3 and his parents were more than happy to take him home (20mins away) after the ceremony and enjoy a night out alone! I didn't want all the wedding pix to be of cute kids dancing, it was my wedding and for once, I wanted to be the center of attention.
we were in the very fortunate situation that my youngest cousin was 11 when we got married so we were able to say "no kids under 10". we did have friends with little kids (including two of my bridesmaids) so we'd planned to hire/pay for an on-site babysitter. we didn't end up needing to because our friends made arrangements on their own. if my bff's daughter had been a little older, we'd have had her as flower girl. but i also know my friend didn't actually want to bring her not quite 2 year old from VA to RI for the weekend.
i was primarily concerned with what my bridesmaids wanted as they were/are my dearest friends and i love their children. in our case, we also felt that if people were spending time and money to attend then we were happy to make sure we could have their kids taken care of during the ceremony & reception.
This is one thing I would have done differently about our wedding. We tried to make the "no small children" distinction and it was a mess. By the time we made exceptions for the people that were truly inconvenienced, there were so many kids there that it didn't matter. Also, some folks (local people with plenty of babysitters available to them) still brought their small children which made us look even worse.
I would, however, totally go the "adults only" route. We had our reception on a golf course and two of my pre-teen cousins snuck out to the driving range where one accidentally whacked the other in the head and needed stitches. No kids at all is fine with me.
I also had the no kids except for in the wedding party rule. We have 2 goddaughters and I have a much younger cousin from an uncle's subsequent marriage, so the more immediate family was all able to be included in that classification.
We were also among the first to get married and the baby wave is just hitting our group of friends, so we'll see how people handle this in the future. As someone who is planning on having kids eventually and lives 3000 miles from every wedding we'll attend in the foreseeable future, 1000 miles away from the nearest family member, and no one I'd trust leaving a baby with in the area for an extended period (our friends are loving the Friday weddings in CA, so we leave Wednesday and return Sunday), it would likely be a significant inconvenience if we couldn't bring them at some point in the future.
Stand up for something you believe in.
Splitting up family members based on age sounds horrible.
We were welcome to having kids come to our wedding, and only one kid ended up coming (but it was only 80 people total anyway). We have no nieces or nephews or anything like that anyway, but the kid who came was absolutely adorable and perfect and stole the show in a GOOD way. I couldn't have imagined it without him, and he's not even close family.
On the other hand, good parenting goes a long way. At my BFF's wedding, the groom's niece was in EVERY possible photo opportunity. She helped cut the cake (!), she danced (alone) on the dance floor when my BFF had her dance with her dad and tugged on the groom's (her uncle's) tuxedo jacket when he was having his dance with his mom (her grandma). She was definitely old enough to know better (5 or 6) and her mom didn't do anything about it. She totally looked like the bride and groom's out-of-wedlock child to the casual observer...
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I think splitting siblings (inviting some and not others because of age) is odd. Either invite the whole family or just invite the parents.
We did not have kids in the wedding or at the wedding. Of course, none of our friends had kids at the point so it wasn't a big deal. Plus my husband's cousins are all adults so that helped. We wanted an adult environment.
I have been to weddings where kids are invited. Yes they are cute on the dance floor, but personally I find them distracting, especially during the ceremony.
We had kids...mostly my cousins and kids of one of my husband's friends. I guess we're lucky in that they know how to behave so they weren't crying/laughing/being loud in the ceremony. They did keep the dance floor hoppin' and one of my fondest memories is my 5 year old cousin doing the worm.
I wouldn't say I'm a "kid person" (even though I've spawned) but I do feel like I wanted my wedding to be a family event.
As a side note, my young cousins still talk about my wedding as if it was the most awesome thing in the world. By most knottie standards it was a pretty simple party, but I think they just felt so "grown up" and fancy at it.
our wedding and reception were no kids past infancy, except for the flower girl and ring bearer. we had a separate (but same location) kids party instead, which the flower girl and ring bearer joined after pictures. we hired childcare, ordered pizza and had a kids cake. we both made an appearance at the kids party. about 3/4 through the reception, we invited the kids to come sit with parents and dance on the dance floor with us.
it was a no-brainer for us. if we wanted to invite all of DH's immediate family and first cousins, we absolutely could not invite the kids too, for two reasons: 1) most of them were rambunctious and their parents would not see fit to properly control their behavior (or remove them if they were misbehaving), and 2) cost. kids were the same per-plate cost and we just couldn't afford it. so rather than pick and choose which cousins were invited, we decided to not invite the children and have a separate party for them instead.
we sent kids party invites with the wedding invites with a cute poem. we also sent information about the childcare we'd hired. a couple moms had additional questions about the kids party, but no one complained. at least not to me, or to DH or to our mothers.
sometimes i think if we had to do it again, we'd have invited the kids to the ceremony. but we'd still have the same behavior issues. sadly, the children (and parents) on my side would have behaved much better, but you can't invite one and not the rest.
i think that was a great compromise and i bet the kids loved having their own party. i know i'd have thought that was pretty cool as a little kid.
if anyone had complained (which, to my knowledge they didn't), we'd have said something about the cost/paying for the wedding ourselves, etc... we also did not allow guests under 21 to bring guests and i think one of my cousins may have complained but i didn't really care as i'd never met the girlfriend he was miffed about not being invited. then he ended up not coming, something he's still on my sh*tlist for :P
I think it's really weird to say to an OOT guest that one of their kids is invited, but another one of their kids is not. I mean, what was that one family going to do, bring three of their kids but leave the 6 year old home with an overnight babysitter?
In-town guests - it's still weird - but at least you're not asking a family to make a major out of town trip minus one kid... you're asking them to find a babysitter for a few hours for one kid.
I don't know - we didn't have this issue because the only kid invited was the flower girl. I had several relatives not come because kids weren't invited, fortunatly, it wasn't anyone I am really close with, so frankly I didn't miss them (or their kids).
As a parent of three kids I can say that for an in-town/local wedding, we do have to choose whether or not the event is "babysitter worthy" - that is - if it's a wedding we REALLY want to go to, we'll get a sitter. If it's an event we are not THAT interested in, we simply RSVP "no" to the event. I would never tell anyone that the reason I can't come is because my kids are not invited.
We had no kids at our wedding purely because of cost and numbers. We had to limit our guest list to 100, and if we had invited everyone's kids, there would've been an additional 30 people. We just couldn't do it. If it had been a more reasonable number, we would've invited kids.
I think it is weird to invite one sibling and not another.
We had a destination wedding and allowed kids to come but we knew that only 4 would be there. They had fun dancing and it was fine but I would have felt differently if there was a mob of them.
The resort did have a nanny service and one couple used it because there son was really young and they wanted to have fun.
That was my point. Though that's a tough thing to tell a bride, ya know? When they are trying so hard not to offend some people, they are actually doing worse damage to people closer to them. (Who's more likely to hold a grudge that matters-- a coworker who can't bring her toddler to a local wedding or a sibling who has to figure out what to do with one uninvited child.)
This is the same FSIL who didn't invite me and other SIL to her shower b/c she didn't want us to feel put out by traveling to NY to attend. Um, we would have said no if we couldn't go, ya know??
I think of it like a circle, where people try so hard on etiquette that it comes all the way back around and ends up as rude.
I do believe in having strict lines if you don't want kids there but splitting up families is ridiculous!
We had kids at ours, but also had a kids room for them to hang out in if they wanted to. And we had a lot of kids (7 in the wedding party alone) but they were all well behaved (thank goodness)! I do take issue with adults-only receptions when OOT guests are invited and no provisions are taken for child-care (as in even providing a name of someone available to baby-sit).
A big factor in our decision was that we knew a blanket "no kids" rule would really really ruffle feathers, so we thought limiting the ages would be a compromise. It probably offended less people, but it was still dumb. I'm not sure how anyone could have told me that politely beforehand, though. Especially since no one knew until after invites went out.
We only invited family kids, and our wedding party kids (ring bearer and flower girl). Lucky for us, that was only 4 kids total (one of my cousins had two kids at the time, and the wedding kids didn't have siblings at the time). My college friend brought her infant without specifically asking, but I'd rather have had here there than not. She traveled from TX and her husband stayed home with their young son (he was maybe 4 at the time, I don't remember). I knew she was courteous enough to leave the sanctuary or the reception hall if the baby fussed, but as far as I can remember, it wasn't a problem.
With the wedding party kids, if they'd had siblings, I probably would have invited them, rather than break up the family - that seems silly.
What made me mad was DH's former co-worker (who was local) who RSVP'd for 2, which we assumed was her and her husband (since that's who the invite was addressed to). I was walking down the aisle and I saw her, with her son. who was around 5. The husband couldn't come, and so she brought her kid instead. From a cost standpoint, it didn't matter, because we'd already paid the adult price thinking her husband was coming. And it's not like I could stop on my way down the aisle and kick them out. But I do think it made us look bad to other local friends with kids.
I've been married twice and through this twice. I wanted kid free receptions both times and didn't get them. The first time I paid for on-sight child care and personally called every guest with kids. People still brought them. I didn't differentiate between kids in the wedding or not in the wedding.
The second time my SIl brought the nephews.
I think it's weird to bring kids to an evening, adult event. Especially, as in the case of both of my receptions, when dinner doesn't start until way after most kids' bedtime (8 pm or later). Honestly, I think kids are happier not going. No child wants to sit through a long dinner and listen to speeches.