My soon to be daughter-in-law sent me an email stating that other than family, they do not want any children present at their wedding or reception. I can appreciate that as I'm sure it is a cost-cutting measure, but does anyone know how they would phrase that on an invitation? The way she worded it on her email to me is, "There will be no children allowed other than family." I don't know if she is inviting separate people to wedding and reception or if it will be all inclusive, but I want to help her word this so it doesn't come across as offensive.
I've seen invitations that say something like "No childcare provided" or "No facilities available for children". I've never taken offense to something like that. Usually we just stay home though and send a gift with a mutual friend, just due to the expense of childcare. If she doesn't want to have kids, she does need to be prepared for some people to not come. 'Course, that does help with the cost cutting. :)
Yeah, that does sound a bit offensive. If someone brings a child, will they be turned away? That's what it sounds like. Maybe something like : "Please arrange for childcare as this will be an adults-only event" for a more formal invitation or "Leave the kiddies at home, so you can party hard!" for a more humorous approach. I think that's a less offensive way to indicate that kids are not welcome. There are less abrasive ways to put the point across, your DIL just needs to find the right words.
This doesn't answer your question specifically, but I wanted to tell you what we did for our wedding reception that worked really well.
We hired a couple girls from our church to be in charge of childcare in another room at the church (we had the reception at the church). We made some easy sheet cakes for the kids and had chips and pop for them. They watched movies and played games. When people arrived with kids we just had a sign and also someone to direct them to the childcare area where the kids could have their own little "reception". It worked great and everyone liked it. I don't know if your guests would feel comfortable dropping off the kids, but most of the people we were close with or knew from church.
If you go to theknot.com, you shuld be able to find wording for invitations that sounds nicer. Give that a try.
I've seen "adult reception following", and of course address the invites only to the adults. We invited about 300 people to our wedding, and only had one family RSVP for 5 when only 2 were invited! They ended up not bringing the kids after all. Word of mouth also helps. Just in talking about the wedding plans my mom and I got the point across to a lot of people that kids were not invited.
