Children at weddings? Have you thought about your wedding being child free or do you want to incorporate them all into the day? Here are my top tips when including children or not into your wedding day.
Theres two schools of thought, child free or having the kids attend the wedding. On one side of the coin, the theme is very adult, less stressful and visually is a lot more elegant. On the flip side to this, some couples have every child they know invited. This is nice on some levels, but can actually make your wedding feel more like a large creche or school playground! The wedding breakfast is then filled with children on their knees, throwing things, crying and the parents are up and down like a yo-yo.
However, Kids can also be amusing, fun and look pretty adorable at times, especially with some of their famous dance floor moves. So what to do?
Child free weddings.
Firstly, a lot of couples are not aware that the current trend is actually having child free weddings! Or at the very least, only having the couples own children. It’s a big thing now and can make the day run much more smoothly. Guests can enjoy some time away from the kids and give the day a more adult feel.
Don’t feel bad for only inviting the adults. If they’re your friends, then they will understand. It’s not personal and your friends and family will have such a great time with a day/evening on their own.
Weddings without vast amount of children do seem to work better. As a photographer, I feel the images look a lot more elegant, relaxed and classy. Sometimes, trying to photograph a nice bridal shot with 3 children crying at her feet can be a little tough.
In my own humble opinion, my advise is to think about having either a child free wedding, or have a small amount of children that are important to you. Remember, all these tiny mouths and stomping feet cost money and can take away from more adult guests being invited.
Children at weddings.
If you’re having a fair few kids coming, that’s cool. It’s your big day after all. It can be fun for them and they enjoy themselves. They can certainly help create some awesome pictures!
Here are my top 6 tips if you are including children into your wedding day.
Tip one
My biggest tip, when planning your wedding – Do not have your ushers/best men and bridesmaids/maid of honour as children. The reason? The wedding party are an integral part of your day and are not there just for show. They help with the day in a fair few ways. I personally use a bridesmaid and usher to help with different photographic tasks and pulling in correct family members for pictures. They help with ushering people to the right locations throughout the day and are around if anything needs to be done last minute. They also help with bridal dresses and groom cravats, they help with introductions into the wedding breakfast or playing music from iPods during the day. Ultimately they take the pressure off you guys, the bride & groom. With children filling these integral positions, no-one is on hand to help if anything doesn’t go quite to plan last minute.
The children are still at the wedding and you can enjoy it with them, but have adults as your supporting cast, in case some supporting needs to be done.
Tip two
If you’re having children walking down the aisle, it might be worth having an adult in the congregation on hand to usher the little ones down the aisle. Oh so often two little children only get half way, or get side tracked near the front. Then two more children come down and suddenly there is a little jam and a bridesmaid has to come running down the aisle to get them in the right direction. Then the next bridesmaid arrives and they’re all trying to get the kids to sit in the right place, blocking the view from photographer to bride as she walks down the aisle. Thus not creating the atmosphere that was planned for. It’s all to easy to imagine the perfect entrances with children, but I don’t think they ever go to plan.
Tip three
Have grand parent(s) on hand to look after your own children during the ceremony. If they cry or become restless, keep the job to the grandparent(s) don’t intervene and pick up your little ones mid ceremony. Again, it changes the atmosphere, changes the look of your pictures (imagine the first kiss picture, with a toddlers head in the way screaming his eyes out) and raises the stress levels.
Tip four
Have a small play zone area dedicated for the children. Keep them busy and occupied. Have this area slightly away from your main area. This helps your day look visibly better. I mentioned a creche above as I have attended a wedding whereby lots (I lost count at 42) of children were running everywhere. Some crying, some pulling table decorations, some sitting on light up letters etc. Parents were running wild chasing them and the day felt very frantic. It almost felt like the day was built around them. My advise is to keep the day about yourselves.
Tip five
As much as you love your children, make sure most of your images with just the two of you are just that, the two of you. Carrying around your children again means hardly any images will work and you lose out on the cool, arty images you could get. Again, it’s easy to imagine the perfect wedding pictures with your children looking all beautiful with you. However, more than likely one will be eating his hand off, while picking his nose and the other child will be running around screaming. Not the wedding images you had planned for the album. So take yourselves away and try and keep most of wedding pictures to the adults. Then have one with the children near the end, hopefully with them all looking attentive.
Tip six
Don’t have children all seated together on one table during the wedding breakfast. This is the quickest way to create unruly kids causing disruption. This also then means an adult or two ends up migrating over to the table to deal with them, which is not overly enjoyable for them. Keep children with their parents.
I hope this post has been informative and of some help. These opinions are my own and are here to help you make an informed decision, that’s best for you and your own circumstances. Don’t be led by others, as parents can try an influence your decision. To them, a wedding isn’t a wedding without the hundreds of children running around the dance floor. So make your own, informed decision and enjoy the day.
Have a great wedding!
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