kids - what should I do?

ok, a post on the 05 board sprunged this question I've been asking everyone, Here's the scenario.

I don't want to invite my cousins kids to my wedding. All of my nieces and nephews will be there, but we are close to all of them. And, they are in the wedding party.

I have one cousin who has a daughter whom I do not consider a 'kid' she's going to be 15 next year. I really want to invite just her. Only she has a brother who is only 8, and he's the same age as my other cousins kids. If I invite him, I have to invite all the other cousins kids.

We went thru this when my brother got married last year and my Aunt got upset that he invited one cousins kids and not the other. (same reason, plus we're closer to them then the others)

my questions is (sorry so long) do I invite only their daughter (who's 15) and not their son, and explain it's an adult wedding? (but, how do I justify that when my nephews and nieces will all be there!?) or, do I not invite the girl and call it a night. HELP

we have a similar problem with my cousins in ca- almost the same aged kids. we have a cutoff of 13 at our wedding- meaning noone below 13 is invited. we decided to make this one exception because nothing else seemed right.

one more thing-
FH doesn't have much family and we're inviting the kids on his side because it's only three of them (and, they are well behaved)

so, the cut off age thing might not help me here.

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Posted by M&LSept1606

one more thing-
FH doesn't have much family and we're inviting the kids on his side because it's only three of them (and, they are well behaved)

so, the cut off age thing might not help me here.

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we did the age cut off so that there could be no discussion of why some kids were invited and not others-

ETA: also IMO kids don't always understand adult reasoning- i would hate to hurt a kids' feelings if they knew other kids were invited and they were not.

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Posted by M&LSept1606

one more thing-
FH doesn't have much family and we're inviting the kids on his side because it's only three of them (and, they are well behaved)

so, the cut off age thing might not help me here.

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If people ask say you were each allowed to invite so many people and that's who his side of the family decided to invite. Your side was too many people so you made the 13 age rule.

I would invite the 15 y/o and not her bro or the others. You can justify the other kids bc they're your neices and nephews, you're a lot closer to them.

My FI also doesn't have much family so we're inviting the kids on his side, and then there are only a few on mine. My neice and nephew and 1 other who will be 12 so we'll have them too. I'm not having my parent's cousins kids other than the ones that I'm close with.

Hope I helped!!

We decided to do Non ...no one under 20 will be at the wedding ....

But I could see how a parent would get there feeling hurt if only one child is invited .....I think to not have anyone be up set you should just have the kids that are in the wedding party there .... 15 is still kinda of young -

I know its a hard thing to have to do ... or like you said invite the 15 yr. and explain that no one under 10 is invited only the little ones in the wedding ...

you know no matter what you do someone will be upset .....do what you think is right-

and make sure that you follow the same rule for his side of the family as well

Originally, I wasn't having any kids, but FH has a small family and they're all OOT so we decided to invite them. But then we couldn't say no kids, so we wanted to have an age restriction, but then there was the issue of inviting a family w/ 3 kids and only allowing 1 or 2 to attend.

I can't hurt the feelings of a kid, so we opened the entire thing to all the kids. We're just not having any in the ceremony and I don't want my photographer to focus on them. I don't care if there are a few shots of the kids attending, but some photographers go crazy with need to take 100 pictures of kids dancing with each other or just smiling or eating cake or whatever.

So do what's comfortable for you, but do take into consideration how this will impact the kids attending and not attending and their families. I've been to weddings were a whole family didn't come, b/c they didn't want to leave the kids home.

Good Luck!