We were blessed welcome two new babies into my family this year. They will both be about 6.5 months old on the wedding day. We made an obvious exception to our "no children" rule for the babies at the reception. I did not want to ask anybody to leave their new baby (one breastfed) with a sitter for an entire evening. I don't have kids, but I don't think I would want to do that myself.
The issue comes in with the ceremony. I originally planned to hire a sitter to stay at the hotel venue (1 mile from the church) to stay with the two infants for the ceremony. I've waited my whole life for my wedding day and the only part of the day that I'd really like to go as close to perfect as possible is our actual exchanging of vows. I really don't want to be trying to speak over a crying baby in our small church. After speaking with the parents that said it was an okay plan but I could tell by their tone that they weren't REALLY comfortable with the idea. I DO NOT want anybody to been even the slightest bit uncomfortable with the childcare situation. The result... I'm going to tell them to just bring the infants to the ceremony if they would like.
My question is: Is there a polite way to say to new parents that if the baby starts loudly fussing, could they please excuse themselves until little Johnny is settled? For me, this would be an obvious thing to do. I'd never sit through somebody's wedding with my baby screaming... but I've seen one of these mothers do this during a regular Sunday church service. Am I being a bitch or is there a nice way to ask this?