What is is with adult only weddings? Especially adult only weddings at 4:30 in the afternoon at a not particularly hoity-toity location? I thought the wording on the invitation was particularly odd too - “Please respect this is an Adult Only event”. Does that sound like it was translated from a foreign language to you too? It isn’t that I think children should be welcome absolutely everywhere, but a wedding seems like it should be a celebration with friends and family to mark the beginning of a new family. And if you don’t invite people’s families, what exactly are you doing?
Oh well, they have every right to come up with whatever conditions they want for their party, and we have every right not to go. 
I am glad really, as it saves us a trip down to southern California over the New Year’s weekend…
Emily on 22 Nov 2006 at 8:50 am #
You’re right, that is a bizarre way to express it. On the other hand, at least they told you up front. Lots of wedding invitations these days don’t follow the traditional method of inviting or dis-inviting the children (i.e. if their name is listed on the inside card, it is ok to bring them, if not, don’t) and I’m left wondering if I need to find a babysitter or not. This past weekend I attended a wedding of a friend and brought Jonathan. It was at my church, so I knew he’d handle it well (familiar situation and all) and Gabe just HAD to do homework and couldn’t come with us or watch Jonathan.
Jonathan was the ONLY child there. He was a beautifully behaved child (in fact he slept through the entire service!) but I was left wondering if I’d committed some massive faux pas.
If only we still had real (and clear) etiquette rules!
Jennifer F. on 22 Nov 2006 at 2:01 pm #
I reluctantly admit that we did something similar with our own wedding. At the time I was not religious *at all* and I didn’t see any sort of connection between marriage and children, so it didn’t even occur to me to include them (also, we didn’t know very many people with kids). I went ahead and let it be known that it was an adults only event after I went to two beautiful weddings in a row where children screamed through the whole ceremony and their parents didn’t take them out. You couldn’t hear the vows or anything, only the yelling and screaming of a young toddler. As bad as that was, it was really wrong of me not to include kids and I really, really regret that. Maybe they will too after they have kids of their own.
Dy on 23 Nov 2006 at 10:49 pm #
Mmm, yeah. We got an invite like that this summer. Travel all the way to Seattle, from AL, and attend a wedding w/o the kids. Shall we store them in the basement while we’re gone? Or will we be relying on total strangers to watch them in a large city? *snort* Um, no. Thanks, though! Our invite had decent grammar, though, so that was handy.
At least we knew they meant it, right? And we bore no hard feelings. We just weren’t going to spend the equivalent of the den addition on a trip to an event we couldn’t bring our children to.
I think Jennifer F. hit on a really interesting point - perspective. What’s the wedding about? What’s the ceremony and the marriage about? I’m not saying every wedding should look like a Mexican block party (ours did, but, well, we party like Mexicans!) but the Adults Only weddings might be an interesting indicator of the season and perspective of the couple getting married. Maybe the next generation will swing back the other way?
Dy