How to Tell Your Guests You’re Having an Adult-Only Wedding

Congratulations! You're engaged! You've probably signed up on a wedding website, put together a planning binder, and googled "where to start wedding planning".  That is a WHOLE lot of planning!  Well, we are here with some advice and tips about how to stay on track with family photos on your wedding day, to help with this new, exciting, and at times, the overwhelming chapter of your life.

—

Recently, a client messaged and asked how to word invitations when you want to keep your wedding childfree and adults-only.

This is becoming increasingly common in varying degrees I think.  Some couples are choosing to have no children at all, or only their close family (nieces and nephews). Any way you do it, it can be an emotional issue and an awkward conversation.

Whether you are looking to save on budget, don’t know where to start when entertaining those littles, your venue doesn’t allow under eighteens, or you just don’t want children there, it is becoming more common.

Telling your guests the wedding is adult-only goes beyond the wedding invitation. In a previous post, I spoke about what to include on your invitation, and how even more information should go on your wedding website.  Because your invitations are not sent out until about 3 or 4 months before the wedding, you will want to tell guests with kids before your invitations go out. You may need to make a few phone calls, or send an email or text in addition to putting it on your website.

Giving guests with children plenty of notice is key, so they can arrange for a babysitter. This may become complicated if guests with children are travelling for the wedding. To go the extra mile and show how important their attendance is, you can look at childcare options for them if you want.

The Kids Zone or The Babysitter

If your venue has an extra room, see if you can make it a kids zone and have some child care attendants come in.  You can have crafts, games, some movies playing and maybe a face-painter or photo booth to keep them entertained.  I will say though, downside to this option, children are still at the event, and parents are likely to leave early to get kids to bed.

Or, you can find some babysitters that will come to the hotel to look after the kids in their hotel rooms. That way, they can get the kids to bed and mom and dad get back when they get back.

Two years ago, I shot a wedding where it was adults-only, a lot of guests were coming from out of province, and some were able to leave their older kids at home with grandparents or family, and others were able to find babysitters to come to the hotel. 

As a mom, and as a photographer, I can see it from both sides, and I totally support having a child-free wedding.  Although finding childcare can be stressful, a night out makes it all better. I attended a friend’s wedding this summer when Goldie was just over three months old, and I was able to get her to sleep a bit in my arms while I was there so I could stay a bit longer, but I still had to leave by 9:30 pm (her bedtime is 7 pm.) Unfortunately, as a nursing mama, it was difficult for me to leave her with friends or family for a few hours because I would still have to worry about pumping.

That being said, you may have to have some flexibility and understanding if some moms are breastfeeding and they have to bring their baby, or they can’t come at all.

Also, I think honesty is the best policy, and being upfront with your guests about why you are having an adult-only wedding may be appreciated. Maybe you are worried about noise during the ceremony or speeches, or you really just want your guests to enjoy a night out. Most people will happily accept your request and appreciate that it is YOUR wedding day.

The Invitations

Now for the invitation part… If you really can’t face having the chat, there is always the option to only address the invitation to the parents, and not name the children, as well as filling out specific number of seats on the RSVP card.  (I talk about wedding invitations in another post.) But you still run the risk that the guests will assume their children are also invited. So, my advice, I’d make it extra clear from the start and have the conversation and add a line or two on the invitation.

To keep your planning stress-free, here are a number of ways to let guests know that your wedding will be child-free, will only allow children to attend parts of the day or will only have close family member’s children in attendance.

The following invitation wording is from an article on youandyourwedding.co.uk

1.     Your venue doesn’t allow children

We are very sorry, but due to restrictions at our venue, we cannot accommodate children.

Due to safety reasons/limited space, we are unable to extend this invitation to children.

2.    You are keeping costs down

As much as we would like to invite all the children of our friends, it is only possible to accommodate the children of close family.

We regret that due to cost restrictions, we can only accommodate close family children.

3.    You are allowing close family children

Unfortunately, as much as we’d love to invite all of our friends’ children, we can only accommodate a few close family children. We hope that you will understand this decision and we very much hope you will still be able to join us on our special day.

In order to keep numbers to a minimum, we can only invite a small number of children. We also thought you might like a day off!
((I don’t like this one as much))

4.    Simple wording

We are sorry we are unable to accommodate children.

Regrettably, children are unable to attend.

With respect, we would like our special day to be an adult-only occasion

Alternatively… With respect, our wedding day is an adult-only occasion. Sometimes people ready “we would like” to be “it would be nice” or “it doesn’t have to be but we would prefer”

5.    Formal wording

In order to allow all guests, including parents, an evening of relaxation we have chosen for our wedding day to be an adult-only occasion. We hope this advance notice means you are still able to share our big day and will enjoy having the evening off!

We would love to give all our guests the opportunity to let their hair down and have a good time without having to worry about little eyes and ears so we politely request no children.

6.    Fun wording

Although we do love all of your little cherubs we would request that our wedding remain adults only. So book a sitter and dust off those dancing shoes!

7.    Children allowed for ceremony but not reception

Children are welcome at the ceremony, however the reception is an adults-only affair.

8.    Children allowed for reception but not ceremony

Children outside the bridal party are unfortunately not invited for the ceremony, but are welcome for the reception.

We would like our special day to be an adult only occasion, however we would like to open the invite up to your children at the evening reception.

I hope this helps if you are thinking or planning for an adult-only wedding! If you have any questions or comments for future posts, send me a message here or at info@katlynjane.com

Here is the link to the video for my IGTV.

And the link to YouTube.