RSVP adds kids when they were not invited

eggplantbride · June 2014

This subject has been discussed to death. My apologies in advance. Here's the question: we are getting RSVPs that are including children when the children were not invited. What should we do?

Here's some background: When making the guest list, my fiancé and I decided to only invite children in our family and those of the wedding party. Why? Well, NOT for many of the reasons thrown out by angry parents who feel shocked and dismayed by variations of a no-kid policy. We love kids. We understand the dilemma of getting a babysitter, especially when travel is involved (and it is for most of our guests). We understand that some kids love weddings and many kids are well behaved enough to attend them. Furthermore, budget is not the issue and we are choosing to have a huge wedding; 330 of our closest friends. Why are we limiting kids? Because when you get married at 32 and 36, all of your friends have done the procreating thing. With a guest list of 330 adults come 103 children attached. 103! Our wedding venue only fits 325. We love kids, but we did not want a wedding where almost a third of our guests were under the age of 10. Therefore, our policy of family children and wedding party kids puts us at a number of 25 kids… I think that is respectable.

In preparing the invitations, I followed the etiquette I learned from websites like the Knot and addressed the envelopes appropriately (only to the parents' names) and mentioned that all important information could be found on our website. On our website we included a "Kid Policy". With the invite out to 330 adults and 25 kids, my fiancé and I sat back and prayed that the RSVPS would come in under 300. They did. We expect about 270 people. Most parents understood and complied with our kid policy. A few did not. So here is my dilemma, we have the room for these "added" kids. There will be other kids there so they will not be out of place necessarily. BUT there will also be parents there that knew our policy and followed our policy and will know that these kids do not fall under those parameters. Do I ignore our own policy because I am no longer worried about capacity and the adult-to-kid ratio? Or do I point it out to these 2 sets of parents because of some sense of "fairness" to the other parents?

Advice please! Thanks!

RebeccaB88 · June 2014

You hold fast to your current policy and circle of invitations out of fairness to those who understood that their kids weren't invited. It's the only fair way to go.

JaxInBlue · June 2014

Agree with Rebecca. You or your FI (or another host) calls the people who RSVP'd for kids that fall outside of your circles and explain that the invitation was only for Adult A and Adult B. Some people may decide this means they can no longer come; in that case you need to either still hold your ground or decide if having the adults is important enough to warrant these kids (and the potential upset of other guests).

It definitely stinks that people do this. DH and I had 2 uninvited kids come; unfortunately, MIL okayed them before we got RSVPs and we felt a little stuck at that point. My sister had a couple people do this too but she held her ground, worked with the appropriate hosts to contact these guests and will not have uninvited kids at her wedding. I was so proud of her!

I would also say that you may want to remove the Kids Policy from your website. This may be giving people the means to read into the invite that their kids meet your criteria; my sister actually had someone tell her that since weddings are once-in-a-lifetime occasions and Kid Z is a once-in-a-lifetime kid, it made sense to him that Kid would be invited, even though Kid's name wasn't on the STD or the invite. (Plus, it's bad form to point out who is not invited to something.)

AddieCake · June 2014

Don't cave!

JellyBean52513 · June 2014

You're very lucky that you came in so far under your venue limit... inviting 355 people to a wedding at a venue that only holds 325 is incredibly risky.

As far as your no kids policy, do as PPs suggested and stay strong, don't cave. You can be as apologetic or unapologetic as you want, although you have nothing to apologize for as it's not necessary to invite kids.

APDSS22 · June 2014

I don't think it's fair to punish the parents who are following invitational etiquette and reward the ones who assume their precious spawn is the exception to the rule. Just call up the rude parents and tell them the invite was only for the two of them, not their offspring and you hope they can still make it, but you understand if they have to stay home with Snowflake.

LondonLisa · June 2014

JellyBean52513 said:

You're very lucky that you came in so far under your venue limit... inviting 355 people to a wedding at a venue that only holds 325 is incredibly risky.

As far as your no kids policy, do as PPs suggested and stay strong, don't cave. You can be as apologetic or unapologetic as you want, although you have nothing to apologize for as it's not necessary to invite kids.

Firstly, just make the phone call and say "I'm sorry there was a misunderstanding, the invite was for You and X only. I hope you can still make it". Allowing these extra kids to come will cause more drama than these small phone calls.

Seconly, for lurkers, ditto the bolded. That is a very stupid move! What happens when you get 340 rsvps?! Also, a lot of the venue maximums also include suppliers and are the absolute, uncomfortable, maximums, let alone fire code. There have been many brides on here who had 100% attendance. You don't want to be scrambling to find a new venue two weeks before your wedding or worse, people being turned away at the door.

eggplantbride · June 2014

Thanks for the comments… FYI, there was a spill over space so if we had 100% attendance people wouldn't be left in the cold; they would just be in a space that felt somewhat separate from other people. We knew from the grapevine that we would have at least 30 no's from family we had to invite. Yes, we were cutting it close, but we would not have been SOL if everyone had said yes. Anyway, thanks again for the comments regarding the kid question.

TheMoez · June 2014

I had this happen to me and we had to have the awkward phone conversation, but we would not make exceptions to the line we drew. The guest understood and all problems have been averted.

phira · June 2014

The reason to stick to your policy is that otherwise, you're rewarding the people who broke etiquette rules.

Let's pretend I'm invited to your wedding, and I can totally attend, but my children aren't invited.

I could decline the invitation because kids aren't invited. How would I feel if I found out later that I "should" have just RSVPed for my kids anyway? I missed your wedding when I didn't have to!

I could accept and attend without children, which would be wonderful, but then I'd notice there were some non-family, non-WP children in attendance. Why are they here and my children aren't?

I could RSVP for my kids anyway either as a subtle passive-aggressive attempt to get around your request, or because I'm oblivious. Either way, I'm being rude. Why reward me for that?

RSVP adds kids when they were not invited

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