Favor/escort card and kids

althea1016 · July 2010

The post I read about favors and kids was very helpful. But the problem I'm having is because our favors (black and white cookies) are the escort cards (each guest's name is printed on a label on the bag) and we're having a separate room for the kids. There's a few infants and I'm wondering if I need to give them a favor as well. I think yes so that parents don't get confused and think that the babies are allowed with the adults. What do you think?

mysticl · July 2010

Will your guests know in advance that you are expecting that their children will be separated from them and placed in another room? If the invitation comes to the family and says the the kids are invited alot of people are going to assume that their kids are invited to the entire event. This could cause some problems at the escort card table. Some parents may not be willing to be separated from their infant. I assume if you are having a kids room you have some adults in there watching them, many parents are not ok with a stranger watching their children and if they had known about the situation in advance would either have opted not to attend your wedding or arranged for their own sitter and not brought the child.

I know I didn't answer your question but you are dealling with a much bigger issue here.

trix1223 · July 2010

Wait. Let me be sure that I understand this. You are not allowing children at all at the reception and are shuttling them off to a different room? Will they not eat with their parents? Do the parents know this ahead of time?

Who will be watching the kids? What will the adult/child ratio be? Is there a cut-off age for children who can and cannot be part of the reception?

There are many parents who will not, under any circumstances, leave their children with a stranger. There are many children who will not stay with a random stranger. (I'm a preschool teacher: I live with that on the first days of a school year!)

I agree with pp. If you are expecting children to remain in a different room from their parents, you need to make that abundantly clear ahead of time. If you don't you'll have much, much bigger issues than cookies.

althea1016 · July 2010

All the parents know that the kids are in a separate room. We couldn't have been more clear and have explained our plan for the last 12 months. The room is directly adjacent to the reception hall...the bathroom is farther away. Its just that we've had so many "Are you sure that my kids can't sit at the table?" Had I known it was going to be such a nightmare we would've just not invited the kids period. The sitters are Penn State seniors majoring in Child Development or Education. They've all passed background checks and I've contacted their references and they have 7+ years experience watching kids. We have 3 sitters for 20 kids ages 1 to 10.

We totally understand why parents wouldn't want to leave their kids with people they don't know. But like I said, our guests have known for the past year. They could've found their own sitters or, like several of our guests, declined. I thought this was an easy solution to not having kids at the wedding and reception but still allowing the parents to enjoy themselves.

mysticl · July 2010

Ok, the way you worded the original statement made it sound like parents wouldn't find out that they had to leave their kids until they got to the escort card table.

I have a lot of opinions on what you are doing but that's not what you are asking for so I'm swallowing them. I have to guess that the reason people are asking you about their kids sitting at the table is that they figure since you are inviting the kids and have a room for them you aren't going to be that strict about them not being in the reception. After all if you really didn't want them there you wouldn't have invited them. Just speculating on what might be going through some people's minds there. I don't think I'd go with an escort card/favor for the infants. Maybe have someone posted at the escort card table to direct parents with their children to the kids room to get them settled, give the parents a chance to meet the sitters, etc.

You may want to have a plan for what you are going to do if a child does enter the reception area either with their parents or part way throught because they don't want to be in the kids' room anymore.

althea1016 · July 2010

Just an update...the babysitting room went FANTASTICALLY!!! I couldn't have been happier. Even though I told the parents repeatedly that the room was right next to the reception room, once they saw that it was right next to the reception they loosened up and had a blast. We ended up having the sitters stay and extra hour because the kids were having a lot of fun. There were 2 infants at the table and at the ceremony, but in the end we were so busy I didn't even care. Once we got to dancing about half the kids stayed in the room and the rest were on the dance floor. Several parents thanked us profusely since they were able to enjoy (at least a little bit) the open bar. Going into my wedding I wasn't sure how this was going to work based on what my guests and Knotties had said. In the end, it was a perfect solution!

Favor/escort card and kids

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