Flower girls and ring bearers are adorable. There’s no denying it. Not only do they provide a cuteness factor to the wedding, they also create perfect photo opportunities.
Image via Lover.ly / Photo by John Schnack
Our reception will have a kids’ table. There was no way around it, and although I don’t think the children will actually stay at their table through dinner, I am having SO MUCH FUN planning it out. This has been my favorite project so far, but it is a hard one. How do I keep 10-20 children (kids were 20% of our guest list!) entertained for a few hours, or at least through an hour-long dinner?
Making anti-bored-boxes for the tiny ones is so easy: the girls like Disney princesses, the boys like Spiderman, etc. But what do I put in a box to occupy two twelve-year-old girls? Maybe they will just giggle over the cute waiters or something. I think that’s what I was doing when I was 12. Actually, I probably still do that now…
Here is what I have so far:
Pencil boxes from Michaels, in various hues.
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Mr. GB and I are that couple. That couple that your kids love to see because our house is filled to the brim with candy and has all the coolest toys. We buy kids whatever they want, spoil them rotten, and then send them home pouting and saying “but THEY let me do _____!! How come you’re not as cool as they are!?” Mr. GB claims he’s going to designate a wall in our house as the “art” wall, where he’ll let the kids draw all over it and send them home with the supplies to make art at their own house. Wrong wrong wrong!
However, we don’t want children of our own. It comes as a shock to most of our friends and family, and they’ve been hearing it for years, but still believe we’ll change our mind. We have our reasons - usually we like to lightheartedly say, “Can you imagine Mr. GB’s huge nose on my tiny featured face? We can’t have children knowing they’d have to go through life with a face like that!” Sometimes I say, “Because it hurts. A lot.” But honestly, we have many real reasons for our decision, many of which are easily dismissed with “just wait, you’ll come around.”
As we’ve been married longer and more people around us are having kids, most of our friends don’t bother; they figure it’ll happen eventually. But strangers/people we’re not as close to think there is actually something psychologically, emotionally wrong with me. I’m a soul-less monster and a disgrace as a woman for not wanting children. I should be handing in my vagina and resigning. They have even taken it as an attack on them that we don’t want children; they get defensive and angry.
I have been to some weddings which did not live up to the bride and groom’s expectations.
No, we’re not talking invitations or flowers or even cake here. I’m talking about one of those things that you spend hours and hours planning for but still sometimes can’t really control – the guest list.
Unfortunately, at these weddings, once the reception began, no one got the hilarious jokes during the wedding party’s speeches and no one hit the dance floor or did an impromptu locomotion routine around the room and there was no fun after-party.
Since the actual party is a big part of our wedding vision, I vowed our wedding guest list would be 90% made up of our friends who really know how to party.
Considering we sent out about 120 invitations I felt 63 yes-s (thus far) was pretty damn good. Or so I thought.
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We didn’t invite every kid in our life as a guest to the wedding, although it is starting to feel like we are planning a circus. But who doesn’t love a circus (without the clowns)?
These cases of fun are for the three eight/nine year old girls. I included some little goodies from Bath and Body Works (Bubble Gum lip gloss, Sweet Pea lotion, a plastic pocket mirror), a bouncy ball and a card game in a Paper Source suitcase. Our four year old attendant will receive a coloring book game, markers and other fun drawing supplies. Their ballet flats and a sweet little headband from twigs and honey will also be included before we hand them over.
Knowing that we were planning on having kids at our wedding, I decided to make little activity kits to keep them out of trouble. I bought these colorful lunch box looking plastic cases for $2 each at Michaels:
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Our hoped-for reception venue is tiny, so Mr. Tulip and I are finally getting serious about making an invitation list for The Big Day. And I have discovered that, on my side of the equation, there are roughly sixty adults with THIRTY children! (Mr. T’s side has ONE child!) Apparently, my friends and family are a fertile lot….
My cutie nephew, Gaige. (Sadly, he lives 1,700 miles away from me…)
This is the most personal thing I’ve ever shared in all my years of blogging. And I thought long and hard before deciding to share this with weddingbee readers, because it’s intensely personal (my mom will probably think I’m crazy). But if I can help some people and change some opinions, it’ll be worth it.
At the end of April this year, I found out that I was pregnant. Mr. Bee and I were overjoyed, and I immediately got to work launching Babybee, as it had been part of the master plan when weddingbee was but a twinkle in my eye. But shortly thereafter, I suffered a miscarriage.
It was a terrible couple of months emotionally and physically, as I continued to have very strong pregnancy symptoms even after my doctor told me I would soon miscarry. But the worst part of it all, was the relentless “When are you going to have kids?” and “When are you going to launch Babybee?” questions from friends, family members, acquaintences, and complete strangers. It was a constant reminder of what I felt like was my failure.
My name is Mrs. Pearl and I am a baby stalker.
That is my husband’s (eeeee, just getting used to saying that!) term of endearment for me regarding my absolute infatuation with babies. I love ’em. They smell great — like baby powder, milk, and sweetness. They’re soft. They’re adorable. I can pretty much find a baby in any crowd and make eyes with them the whole time.
Babystalker.
Don’t get me wrong — I know that babies aren’t always fun and games. I used to really not want to have children and if I did, not for years and years. Over the last year, Mr. Pearl and I have talked a bunch about having a baby. It was fun when it was what we would talk about — how our biracial baby would be super cute with the potential for green eyes, how our baby would be so smart, how it would be bilingual.
I don’t hate babies. I don’t hate children. But I am incredibly uncomfortable and nervous around them, I don’t really know what to do with them. Mr. Gummibear loves watching me when I’m forced to interact with children. My best friend from elementary school placed her 5 month old little girl on my lap… I just stared at her silently. Mr. GB says to interact, but I just freeze, afraid I’m going to break it. He’s fine, he loves well behaved children – and particularly my friend’s son and daughter.
He wanted to have children at the wedding, at least a ring bearer and flower girl, but we didn’t know any children. A few months after the above awkward event, he asked me if we could ask her about having her two children as part of the ceremony. I told him that her son is a good age, but her daughter is only 1 as of this year, but they are both very very well behaved and really wonderful, so I imagine that if it were possible, they’d be perfect.
Determined, Mr. GB came up with the idea of having her daughter ride in a flower decorated radio flyer being pulled by her brother.
I just don’t want a million of them coming to our wedding. But yesterday, Mr. Radish’s mother called and informed us that one of his cousins (and he has over 40 first cousins) asked her if he could bring his three kids to the reception. She told him yes… before she even checked with us! Most of Mr. Radish’s cousins are older than him and they are already married with kids, so if they all started bringing kids we’d be in real trouble.
We’ve also had two other guests that went ahead and wrote in the names of their kids on the reply card, even though I was very careful not to include the names of children on the inner envelopes. I thought that would be enough to give people the hint. Apparently not.
Now we are trying to decide what to do about this. We could call these people and tell them that their children are not invited, but is it worth possibly hurting anyone’s feelings or offending them over it? I looked over our guest list and it’s only about 10 kids that might end up tagging along. It only costs us $7 per kid, but we are kind of worried about space issues more than anything else. Also, our reception venue is an old historic mansion that has a lot of antiques in it. I don’t want any wild bands of kids running around and breaking anything.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to children at weddings:
1) Kids are great
and
2) Not so much
While I tend to lean toward the former, Mr. Corn and his family definitely lean more towards the latter.
My biggest concern when considering our children options for the wedding was that I wanted as many of our friends and family as possible to be able to attend our wedding. And since it is a semi-destination wedding, it only seemed fair that we allow people to also bring their kids. Also, many of my friends have children, and weddings seem to be the only time when we can all get together and see how much everyone has grown since the last wedding we saw them all at.
Mr. Corn was concerned that parents tend to not have a good time at weddings if they have to worry about Junior knocking over the cake, or, (a more likely scenario) getting back to the hotel before the kids zonk out on the dance floor.
If I were a kid, I’d be pretty peeved if my free wedding gift were a silver picture frame or bag of gourmet coffee. In fact, I’d probably throw it on the floor and pout. (I still do that, actually). Kid favors are one of those things that I never thought about until I came across these super cute Emotibles Earbud Charms from Fred Flare:
Lots of my coworkers have babies since I work at a relatively young company, so I have always enjoyed the occasional baby pictures and stories. But now the new girl in my department has a baby, so every time I walk by her desk I see her smiling baby face wallpaper, and every time we have an awkward silence it’s…”so what did your baby do that was cute last night?”
I may sound like I’m complaining of too much Baby in my life… but not for the reason you might think. The truth is, I loooove the baby pictures and stories, and go out of my way to ask the QA guy who I rarely lay eyes on to pleeease show me those new videos of his toddler! So the only reason this new infiltration of Baby is bad for me is because we were solidly in the “wait several years” camp (and Mr. Bluebell still is! Ha!) so this is just making my brain go “baaaabiiiiiiiies!!!!!” all the time and not actually think real thoughts. Yeeeah. So we’re still planning to wait a good couple years, but maaan baby-vibes, leave me alone!!
