I read a blog post over at Broke-Ass Bride earlier called, The Kids are Alright. Or Not. about whether to invite kids to your wedding or not, how to go about it on invites, and bringing up costs and if they’d get in the way of festivities. I realized I had a surprisingly lot to say about it, so I thought I’d turn it into a blog post.
I am not the most kid-crazy person ever, partly because until fairly recently I’d never really been around many. Well, we totally decided to invite kids to our wedding, and you know what, I am so glad we did. I am probably a bigger fan of kids because of the experiences we had the wedding weekend even.
Here’s why:
Ours was a big ol’ laidback affair, so a dozen or less kids running amok didn’t really distract at all and just added to the cheer.
We had friends (and family) coming from all over, and they wouldn’t been able to have come as easily without their family. Asking them to leave some of their family members at home and travel to see us, didn’t feel right.
We were having my husband’s niece and nephew in the wedding party, so the more the merrier, and more fun for them!
It barely added anything to the catering tab because most of them were small and their meals were inexpensive.
I bought like $10 or less of crayons and coloring books and they were thrilled.
I didn’t provide a sitter, but you know what? It was OK (even with sparklers and a river)!
My brother-in-law’s kids and one of my college pal’s kids are now brand new friends. When they realized they would in fact see each other again after the wedding because they lived in the same neighborhood in another city, they were so excited. How cool! Seeing their parents comment on Facebook–now buddies because of us–makes me feel happy, and like we didn’t just have a wedding, we built a community!
The same gal pal’s daughter was floored to go to her first wedding. She talked about it beforehand for weeks, and now six months later, still has some of our wedding decor in her bedroom and threw a play wedding recently with it! She dressed in our colors and was adorable. She even helped all the gals make bouquets the morning of the wedding and was so happy when I gave her some of the roses with broken stems.
Those memories, I’ll cherish.
Seeing my young second cousins chicken dance (yes, I had the chicken dance!) with my aunt, like I did as a small girl at the big Czech weddings I grew up going to, was PRICELESS.
Something about wearing that big wedding dress makes you the coolest person ever. I can’t tell you how many times a kid ran up and threw his or her arms around my waist, grinning.
Kids who were at the wedding will be around the longest with memories of the wedding day.
And as one aunt told me, I’d ruined the kids’ expectations for life with having such an offbeat, fun wedding! That made me grin.
-Shanna
