A bride-to-be has asked for advice on whether she’s wrong to want a child-free wedding as her brother and dad are refusing to attend if she doesn’t allow her young nieces and nephews to be there
When organising a wedding many couples choose to keep it a child-free event, preferring to allow the adults to enjoy themselves. However, it can also cause issues for the parents who then need to arrange babysitters and deal with the expense. There are arguments to both sides but ultimately, it’s the couple who are getting married that should get the final say.
One woman has revealed that her brother is furious with her for opting to have a kid-free wedding, even though he did the same when he got married. Sharing the situation on social media, the 27-year-old wrote: “My brother Josh is refusing to come to the wedding and I think he is being unreasonable and childish. Our wedding is going to be child-free, with no kids under the age of 13ish.
“The youngest guests will be around 12-13 years old at the time of the wedding. My partner and I don’t hate children and we had multiple reasons for having our wedding this way. I personally think that weddings are mostly boring, unenjoyable experiences from the point of view of small children so it’s hardly surprising that they will act up.
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“Josh has two kids aged 5 (twins) and he has made many comments that we are selfish for having a child-free wedding and that if we aren’t inviting his kids, he is not going. I can understand his perspective but I think he’s not making any effort to understand ours. When Josh got married 7 years ago, he and his wife also had a child-free wedding.
“Last weekend we attended a family party (it was someone’s birthday) and some family members brought up the topic of my upcoming wedding. Josh scoffed the whole time and made a comment that he ‘wouldn’t know’ about it because he’s ‘excluded’. His comments caused short awkward silences but no one responded to them.
“Later when I was talking to Josh alone, I told him he’s still invited to the wedding and he and his wife can go or not, those are his options and his making snide comments aren’t going to change the plans. He said that I’m alienating his children and that they will be very sad about this when they’re older, and that they would love to be flower girls. I called him a hypocrite and told him to grow the hell up and that was the end of the conversation.”
After a tense conversation with Josh, the bride-to-be was stunned to discover that he had also been moaning about the situation to their parents, who had sided with him. She continued: “My dad told me that he and my stepmum will not be at the wedding if Josh isn’t. I’m not close with him for unrelated reasons and our relationship is rocky at best so I just told him that’s up to him.
“My mum is asking me to just make an exception for Josh’s kids. She said that I’m acting like a narcissist and that we all have to make compromises sometimes. Josh and I are two out of seven kids. At the time of Josh’s wedding, three of our siblings had young children/babies, and so did some of our stepsiblings.”
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People reading the Reddit post were firmly on the bride’s side and rushed to offer their support. One person replied: “Adults are allowed to have occasional events without children running around, and you don’t have to justify this choice to her brother or anyone else. If her brother has had a change of heart, he can have kids at his next wedding.”
And someone else added: “The kids are 5, they are not going to remember or care about your wedding years from now. Heck, they don’t care about your wedding now…because they’re 5! Your brother just doesn’t want to make plans or pay for child care.”
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