Groom's nieces??

druinn

So I have an 8-year-old sister, who will be my flower girl.  Since my fiance has a niece of the same age, I thought it would be nice to have her as a flower girl too.  He also has two nephews, and they're going to be the ring bearers.  Now my dilemma is that his 8-year-old niece also has four older sisters (10, 12, 13, and 15), and I am not sure if I should include them as junior bridesmaids.  My only issue with including them is just that we will end up with a huge wedding party, and I don't know if their mom is going to want to purchase dresses for all five of them.  We certainly can't afford to buy them.  Would it be rude to inclue one and not the others? 

trix1223

IMO, speaking as a mom of 3~no it's not required to put all 5 girls into your WP.

We purposely didn't always make everything "equal" for our kids.  Because life doesn't always turn out equally, and there's no reason that kids can't start learning that during childhood.  Saves a lot of grief as they grow up.

I'd invite the older girls as guests and call if good.  I would NOT be making up silly "jobs" for them:  program passer outer, cake cutter, punch pourer, guest book attendant, gift table attendant,  banner carrier, or any of the other multitude of silly and lame jobs that people might suggest.

Be sure to have a great photo taken with all the girls at some point, and be sure to visit with them all.  IMO, that's enough.

Tiger_Tammer

Not at all. It's pretty common to choose the youngest siblings in a family to take on those roles.

banana468

It may lead to done hurt feelings but I also think part of life is understanding that everyone can't be included in the same way.

mbcdefg

Have you already asked the young niece and the two nephews to participate? If so, then I'd just leave the wedding party as-is and move on. Like PPs said, kids have to learn to deal with disappointment (and this is just assuming that they would've wanted to be flower girls ... who knows, maybe they wouldn't have wanted to do it anyway).

If you haven't asked them yet ... I don't think it's an awful thing to ask some kids and not their siblings. However, WHY do you want to ask them? Is it because you are very close to these kids and want to honor them? Or is it because you think their particular ages will make it cute? Your post says that YOU think it'd be cute to have the niece as a flower girl since she's your sister's age ... what does your FI think?

If you're mainly considering asking the niece because you think her age would make it cute, and if you're mainly asking the nephews just so you'd have ring bearers, I would only ask your sister and be done with it.

If you're genuinely close to these kids and you want them involved because you are so close to them, then ask who you want. The others will get over it.

AllAboutTheBenjamin

You can give the older girls something else to do.

My H has four nieces (10, 9, 7 and 6) and a nephew (2).  We had his two youngest nieces as flower girls and the nephew as the ring bearer and we could tell the older two girls wanted to be in the wedding.  We asked them to hand out programs and they were really excited to be included, even though they weren't "in" the wedding party.

Your older nieces could hand out programs, do punch at the reception, maybe light candles at the ceremony (if you're having that kind of wedding). 

stina93446

Please do yourself a favor and repeat this:

If everyone invited to the wedding is IN the wedding party, there will be no guests.

It's an honor to be a guest, and most likely, these older girls won't even care if they're in the wedding or not. You even said yourself that it'll make a monster BP and you can't afford it....so don't. Yeah, problem solved.....next issue.