Ninevah, in a nutshell it’s your wedding and you get to decide who is invited. If you want a child-free wedding (excluding kids in the wedding, if you have kids in your wedding party) then it’s your decision and no one else (except your SO, that is 
) gets to question it.
I have three Silverjuniors of my own. If I’m invited to a wedding where the kids are not invited, I either accept and plan for a babysitter or regretfully decline and send a gift. I don’t show up with my kids anyway and wonder when the hell the bride got so snot-nosed she didn’t want my kids at her wedding. :rolleyes:
It’s your big day. You get to plan it, you call the shots because this day will live in your memory forever - you want it to be as much to your liking as possible. 
Just some miscellaneous etiquette hell:
I was helping a good friend of mine prepare her wedding invitations. I was maid of honor and was being a dutiful MOH and friend by helping.
In any event, I personally thought she’d made a mistake on the kind of invites she ordered and off-handedly mentioned it as we were working on them.
There were little RSVP cards that were to be included in the invites. They were going to be in self-addressed little envelopes that guests could just mail back to indicate whether they were accepting or declining.
The invitations themselves were addressed specifically to each person being invited. For example, one invite might be addressed in the following manner: Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, daughter Janet Doe and John Doe Jr.
The RSVP cards listed each person on the invite:
"Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, Janet Doe and John Doe Jr:
__ will attend
__ must decline
If attending, ___ guests will attend.
Here is where I thought the big mistake was.
I know the reason that part was there; to account for maybe only a couple of invited guests from the same party being able to attend. For example, if Mr. and Mrs. John Doe planned to attend but their invited kids didn’t want to go, Mr. and Mrs. Doe could check off “will attend” and could specify that two people from the four on that invitation would attend.
Mistake, mistake, mistake. I knew what was going to happen but my dear friend pooh-poohed me about it. :rolleyes: People couldn’t possibly be that inconsiderate, boorish and crass, right? :rolleyes:
Okay, so a few weeks later and we’ve got a deadline to meet. She needs to have her numbers to the hotel catering manager. She’s got a budget to work with so she sized their invitation list accordingly. She’s got to pay by the head so she only invited as many people as her budget could handle.
She calls me in a panic and I come over. She’s opening RSVP cards as they come in and she’s jotting down the numbers. Well, there’s quite a few RSVP cards that are coming back with names of additional guests written in.
There are RSVP cards that have “will attend” checked off, but some people wrote in names of additional people that would be coming, and some people just wrote in a number of guests to attend that exceeded the number of guests listed on the invitation.
We get through a good portion of the RSVP cards (almost all of them had come back by that time) and there’s about thirty or so, if I recall, where invited guests penciled in additional guests who were not invited by the bride or groom. That’s a lot - thirty.
This one RSVP card had three people invited, and I remember they had penciled in some ridiculous number, like 8 or 9 guests would be attending.
Needless to say, the stress had gotten to her and she melted down. Her fiance came in around that time and was seriously pissed off. A good portion of the etiquette “offenders” were people he/his parents had put on the guest list and he was flipping angrily through the RSVP cards and swearing. :rolleyes:
I took the list, the cards and the master folder with all the wedding plans in it and told friend and fiance what I was going to do. My friend’s fiance was busy trying to soothe her so I traipsed off to the back bedroom of their apartment, plopped on the bed and starting making phone calls.
“Yes, hello, this is Silver and I’m Friend’s wedding consultant. Yes, it’s going to be a wonderful wedding, we’ve got a beautiful event planned. Yes …yes…yes, they’re looking forward to seeing you as well…well, I’m calling about the RSVP card you returned, and although the bride and groom certainly mean absolutely no inconvenience to anyone, unfortunately due to the location of the ceremony and reception we just aren’t able to accommodate additional guests other than those who were invited. I understand completely…your mother’s sister’s aunt’s godddaughter and her family staying with you that week…understand completely…unfortunately the wedding and reception site can only accommodate X number of people…I apologize for the inconvenience, but will you, Ms. No Etiquette and 2 kids be attending? Can’t make it after all…I completely understand…of course I’ll relay your sincerest congratulations to the bride and groom…thank you SO much, have a wonderful evening…”
Okay, so that’s not word-for-word, but I laid on the diplomacy really thick and used stuff like that.
Out of all the etiquette offenders I called, only one made even the slightest attempt to protest. “Well, I’m sure she** meant ** to invite my mother…”
“Oh, I’m sorry sir, was she on the invitation?”
“No, but my mother lived with us and she saw her often when she came over, blah blah gurble gurble blah blah…”
“I do sincerely apologize sir, it’s an unfortunate fact that the location of the ceremony and reception is limited as to how many persons can occupy…”
So I put down that this guy and the other invited guests on his invite would attend sans his mother, who was not invited and whom the bride did not even remember when I brought this up to her. :rolleyes:
:eek: :eek: :eek:
But it turned out to be a really nice wedding and I don’t recall that there were any snafus with too many people being there bumping the invited guests out of their places. It helped that there were place cards at all the tables.
Sorry for the hijack.
