The issue of whether to include children at weddings is increasingly up for debate.
TikTok is inundated with brides outlining their opinions on child-free weddings, with many opponents arguing that it’s ‘selfish.’
However, wedding costs in the UK reached an all-time high in 2022: labelled the year of the ‘Corona Comeback’, the average spend grew by 15%, increasing by £2,500 year-on-year to a whopping £19,184.
As such, cutting down the guest list with a ‘no kids allowed’ approach is becoming a popular choice – but not everyone agrees with it.
One anonymous bride has spoken out on the issue, taking to Reddit to ask whether she’s in the wrong for hosting her wedding at a child-free venue despite her family making it clear ‘they would not comply’.
‘I’m having my wedding at an adults-only resort’, the post read.
‘I did this to save myself the hassle of fighting with my family over exceptions to my “no children allowed” policy.’
The woman explained that she and her fiancée are not only paying for the ceremony themselves but paying for guests to attend the wedding as they didn’t want anyone ‘not to be able to come because of finances.’
‘I made the invitations very clear about whether kids were allowed or not,’ she continued.
As a result, she received an array of RSVPs from guests – including her sister – saying that, regretfully, they could not attend, something the bride both anticipated and understood.
However, she’s now in hot water because her sibling disagrees with the concept of a child-free wedding. And there’s a twist.
‘My sister found out that I’m paying for everyone to come and has lost it’, the post revealed.
‘She said that she only said no because she didn’t have anyone to watch her kids.’
But the plot thickens – the sister’s eldest child is sixteen and has ‘watched her siblings’ for the last month while her parents have been away on holiday. So clearly, childcare isn’t the issue here.
The bride-to-be wrote: ‘I said that everything was booked already but that if she made her own arrangements she would be welcome at the wedding with her husband.
‘She asked if we would be paying for whatever she arranged and I said no. I had already paid for everything I had budgeted for.
‘She said that I’m an a**hole for not wanting her at my wedding. I said that if I didn’t want her to attend I would not have invited her.’
The disagreement has spread through the family, as the woman’s parents say she ‘tricked’ her sister into not attending.
Adding further context, though, she said: ‘My sister isn’t poor. And the cost for her and her husband would have been $2,000.
‘She just wanted me to bend and allow her kids.’
So, what’s the verdict?
As one user writes, the bride’s sister ‘was invited’ and ‘she declined.’
‘Suddenly, when she found out she’d passed up a free vacation, she wants to change things’, they wrote.
‘You made it very clear you didn’t want kids at your wedding. The fact you paid for people to come is exceedingly generous’, another added.
Yet not everyone agrees.
One Redditor argued: ‘She’s your sister, she should have been informed by you that you intended to cover the costs. Instead, you let her believe she would have to pay everything herself.’
The bride ‘should have made it clear to everyone that she was paying for it, not shared that info later as a sort of “gotcha!” to weed out the poors’, another wrote.
A third added: ‘I’ve absolutely declined destination weddings because I can’t afford the travel costs, plus childcare overnight for multiple days and multiple kids.
‘Knowing the wedding costs were paid for would have meant I could afford to accept.’
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