Maryland Wedding - Do We Have To Invite Children

When planning your Maryland wedding you will have a seemingly endless number of decisions to make. Some of these decisions such as floral will make only a visual impact. Other decisions will impact the entire vibe of your Maryland Wedding. The decision on whether or not to invite children to your Maryland wedding is one of the latter.

As an award-winning Maryland Wedding DJ, our passion is helping couples have the best experience possible and to be a resource in all facets of wedding planning.  This article is one in a series of articles intended to help not only the Maryland wedding couples we serve; but to help anyone who is planning their dream wedding.

Do we have to invite children to our Maryland wedding?

Is your wedding going to be ‘family-friendly’ or ‘adults-only’?

While not an easy question for couples to answer, it is something you'll have to address. The thought of having infants, toddlers, or even older children in attendance at your wedding ceremony and reception can present a few challenges.

Here are a few tips about how to handle this scenario—without getting on anyone's bad side.

Make your decision early in the planning process

This is a matter that you’ll need to sort out well before you start sending out your wedding invitations. Unlike decisions about menus or music, those related to children should be handled quickly to avoid awkward questions from parents who need to make plans.

Sometimes you just don’t have enough room to invite all the kids too. It can be a hard pill to swallow but if there are a lot of kids on the guest lists, you may have to cut them and that’s okay.

Is it appropriate not to invite kids?

Yes—especially if the wedding is in the evening or is very formal.  It may be more of a challenge to restrict children during daytime or casual Maryland wedding without people feeling offended.

The no-kids rule works best when most of the families are local, which means that parents can leave their children with familiar babysitters for the entire day or drop them off between the ceremony and reception. If you're hosting a destination wedding, it's harder to not invite kids.

Be clear in your communication.

You will need to let your guests know what you’ve decided. You'll need to be 100% clear about the policy for kids at your wedding, but how you deliver this information is up to you. You may want to include it within your wedding invitations or create a separate page about children at your wedding on your wedding website.

Whether or not children are invited.

This is the most important piece of information you will need to share.

If you are not inviting any children, be honest but avoid over-explaining your reason. This is your wedding day and you have the final say.

Which specific children are invited?

If you’re making a compromise and only inviting specific children, you should tell your guests which ones can come. Be aware that some guests—i.e. the ones who cannot bring children—may not take the news well. Tread carefully. Explain that you have a guest limit.

Address your invitation envelopes explicitly.

Address your envelopes properly.

The traditional way to indicate whether a child is invited is to include his or her name on the invitation. If your card will have both an outer and inner envelope, the child's parents' names should appear on the outer envelope, but on the inner, the name should be written beneath the parents' names. If you're using just an outer envelope, of course, the child's name should also be on it.

If the child is over age 18, he or she should receive a separate invitation, even if he or she's still living at home. Be careful not to address an envelope to 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Family,'" since the wording can be vague. That phrasing is okay if you write the names of those invited on the inside envelope.

Call all guests with children.

After your invitation is sent, make a call to your friends and family who have children to explain that your Maryland wedding is or isn't child friendly.

This is an effective approach if you're worried about a stubborn friend bringing children against your wishes. If you're arranging for childcare services, a telephone call is a great way to let the parents know that their children will be well taken care of at the wedding.

What you expect from the parents who bring children.

You should also let parents know what you expect from them in terms of care. These duties should not fall on your shoulders! Let each of them know that they will need to take responsibility for their own family throughout the event.

Whether or not you allow children at your Maryland wedding is a huge decision, and it's not something that you should take lightly. Spend time discussing it with your significant other and determine together what works best for the two of you and your respective families. So long as you plan and make a unified decision early on, you should have no problem navigating this somewhat tricky area of wedding planning.