Not only is it lame to have a kid-free wedding, kids should especially be at weddings.

A couple can get married without throwing a wedding. They can go to a church or courthouse and sign the legal paperwork. The point of having a wedding—of gathering many people together—is the joining of two families and two communities. Children are part of those families/communities. It is ridiculous to supposedly celebrate a new family while deliberately excluding members of the family. If a wedding isn’t about that—if it’s really just a big party and an opportunity for the bride to be the center of attention— guests shouldn’t go out of their way to participate.

Children are people, not nuisances

Kid-free weddings often seem to stem from a view of children not as people, but as nuisances. I could go off on this topic alone, but the short version is: that perspective is wrong. Children are people. Children should be part of your community. And children are not annoyances.

I can be understanding of a genuinely budget-conscious couple who would have 50+ additional guests if everyone’s children were invited. But I feel disgust when couples disinvite children with some tone of “Parents, enjoy the night off! You can actually have fun now!”

Weddings aren’t just about the bride and groom

Contrary to an increasingly common belief, weddings are not just about the bride and groom.

The point of having a wedding isn’t to cater to the couple’s (and often just the bride’s) every whim. If you host a wedding, the basic rules of hospitality still apply. It should be a high priority for the couple to make sure the guests are having an enjoyable time, too. If you have absolutely no interest in being a good host, I recommend getting married in front of only the legally required witnesses and calling it a day.

Weddings are also family reunions

Especially when people are busy and more geographically scattered, weddings are a rare opportunity to get everyone together. When I got married, the best part of the entire day was having so many people I loved in one place. 

So yes, I think it’s offensive to exclude members of your family from what is, among other things, a family gathering. Not inviting kids to a family wedding is like not inviting kids to Thanksgiving — you’re missing the point.

“Get a babysitter” isn’t a small ask

It is not negligible to ask parents to find and pay someone to watch their children for seven hours.

It’s considerably more burdensome when the wedding is out of town. Now the parents either need to find a stranger in an unfamiliar city, bring someone with them, or leave their children for multiple days. And if it’s a family wedding, the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other people who might normally babysit are presumably attending too.

If you choose to have a child-free wedding, you can’t be offended when parents decline the invitation for purely logistical reasons.

And if you maintain the child-free rule even after learning that it means certain parents can’t attend, you’re communicating that having those parents there matters less to you than keeping their children away. You would rather the parents miss the wedding than have their whole family attend.

Also: kids love weddings

I’ve been a wedding photographer for 10 years, so I’ve seen far more weddings than the average person, and I want to address the bizarre idea that kids don’t care about them.

Sure, babies don’t know what’s going on, and teenage boys may not enjoy themselves. But little kids? Little kids love weddings. They often have more fun on the dance floor than the adults. They love getting dressed up. Little girls view the bride as a real-life princess.

After attending my cousin’s wedding, my toddler daughters talked about it for months. They asked for dolls of the bride. They draped white pillowcases over themselves and called it their “big white dress.”

Weddings are magical to children in a way that they simply aren’t to adults. And frankly, a wedding without any children is usually a more boring party.

Kids aren’t uniquely disruptive, either

Another argument is that children might cry, misbehave, or otherwise disrupt the event.

If a kid cries and their parent quickly removes him from being disruptive, it truly is not that big of a deal. Meanwhile, adults are perfectly capable of disrupting weddings, too—especially once alcohol is involved. 

In my decade of photographing weddings, I’ve seen plenty of grown adults behave badly. I’ve never seen a child ruin a wedding. And an unruly four-year-old is considerably easier to remove than a belligerent grown-up.

Ultimately, inviting human beings to an event introduces unpredictability. The only reliable way to have a wedding with no unpredictable guests is to invite no people.

And yes, you can party around children

The last common argument is that adults supposedly can’t properly party when children are present.

Of course they can. You can drink with children around. You can dance with children around. People have managed this at gatherings for centuries.

Sure, adults probably shouldn’t strip, do drugs, or twerk in front of children. But maybe they shouldn’t be doing that in front of Grandma either. Or, you know, at all.