Weddingbee Blog

I’ve talked before about how we’re having children at our wedding. I like kids, and kids are cute as well as very prevalent in my family. One of my cousins alone has five under the age of 8.

For the most part, I’ve been quite happy with our decision. It gets further solidified when I see cute pictures like this:

source

I don’t even care if I don’t know them: I’d totally frame that picture and put it on my wall. Adorableness all around!

I fully understand why someone wouldn’t invite children, and I’ve thoroughly read all of the different viewpoints; however, no one’s reasoning for not inviting little ones compelled me to renege the invitation. Adult affair? Eh, our wedding’s not that fancy. Room at the venue? We’ve got plenty of room. The cost? Kids are cheaper. Screaming throughout the reception?

It’ll be OK.

And then something bad happened.

I was sitting in church, like a good Catholic, slowly zoning out intently listening to the homily. In the periphery, a child began to scream. No big deal. It’s a kid, they cry when they run out of stuff to color.

However, that child’s scream seemed to pique the interest of other children all around the church. Suddenly, one child’s whimpers for more Cheerios dominoed into a harmonized dissonant orchestra of tantrums and wails. An uprising of the progeny, if you will. Many adults disregarded the cries and continued to listen to the message of our priest.

I, however, could not let it go. Perhaps I was young enough that I could still clearly hear the high frequencies of their plight, or maybe my attention span was less than ideal that day, but the noised consumed my thoughts. It was a constant and tortuous drone that seemed to come at me at all sides. And it wouldn’t stop. I could feel myself slowly descending into madness.

The military should really look into this as a new form of torture, because after 3.5 minutes of the noise, I would have been more than willing to tell anyone anything just to make it stop.

Finally, the choir started playing hand bells and tambourines, which appeased the young masses, and their tenacious cries were calmed. Now that I could once again think, as my thoughts were not muddied with the sounds of discontent, I had a horrible realization. This very thing could happen during my wedding.

This is what people were talking about when they were describing loud children at their ceremony. The 30 or more offspring at my wedding could quickly start their own revolt to the long winded vows and readings and get into my head with their siren-like screams. And then I realized that the tambourines would not be present at the wedding to please the children. There would be no way to stop them. They could take over. They could win.

After church ended, I was hellbent on having an adult only ceremony. We would find a kindly elderly woman to successfully wrangle the children for an hour. Don’t worry, we’d make sure to arm her with plenty of Spongebob DVDs.

But then, as I was standing in line for my doughnut, I saw the noise pollution culprits. Instead of staring at them with a curled lip and the sheer disdain I believed they so deserved just 30 minutes prior, the direct line between my brain and uterus began working in overdrive, and all previous thoughts of a kids free ceremony went out the window.

Did anyone else have any regretful pre-wedding thoughts about inviting or not inviting children?