The question of whether or not to invite kids at your wedding has always been a loaded one, but it has new weight when hosting a wedding in 2021. That’s because, as of this writing, kids under 12 are not yet eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
So, what’s a couple to do? Here’s my advice as a professional wedding planner.
First, who are these kids in relation to your wedding?
It’s useful to consider who these children are in relation to your wedding. I know that sounds cold and calculating but there’s a difference between your own child attending your wedding and the children of your second cousin twice removed.
Another way to frame this question: Who needs to be at your wedding in-person for it to feel like your wedding? If the answer is “My niece” that’s important information to have because it will tell us what priority your niece is over, say, your parents who won’t get vaccinated.
If you and your partner have identified that there are children under 12 who must be at your wedding to feel like it’s your wedding, skip ahead to the second question.
If you and your partner have identified that there are NOT children under 12 who must be at your wedding to feel like it’s your wedding, it will be easiest if you don’t invite kids to the wedding. As with all things, there are cons to this choice.
The first downside is that this choice is no guarantee that the adult guardians of those children will still come to your wedding. Depending on the ground rules of your wedding, those adult guardians may be afraid of attending in-person and then bringing COVID home to their kids. We’ll explore this more later but for now, please don’t assume that just because you’re not inviting kids means all the adults will now attend.
The second downside is the same downside that there has always been with the “no kids” invite: By setting this rule, you are putting the burden on any parents or guardians to arrange childcare for those children. This involves a financial and time commitment that we shouldn’t discount. A nice way to avoid it is to offer on-site childcare if many of your guests have children but, again, that may not be possible during COVID (and also may not fit your personal budget).
As such, if you and your partner opt to not invite kids to your wedding, please realize that may make it prohibitively expensive for certain adults to attend. If having a certain adult not attend in-person would actively detract from the joy of your wedding, talk to that adult BEFORE you decide what you want to do about kids. Ask that person what they need in order to attend your wedding in-person and prioritize those needs as you and your partner make your decision.
Second, who is a risk to these kids?
If you and your partner have identified that there are children under 12 who must be at your wedding to feel like it’s your wedding, now we ask ourselves: Who is a risk to these kids?
I am not a scientist so my knowledge of how COVID spreads is the same as yours (i.e. I read the CDC a lot). I share this context because here’s how my (admittedly imperfect) thinking goes:
Fully vaccinated adults are less of a threat to unvaccinated kids because fully vaccinated adults don’t spread COVID as easily to other people.
Unvaccinated adults are a much greater threat to unvaccinated kids because both groups of people are unvaccinated and thus they can more easily give each other COVID.
Perhaps you and your partner are only inviting fully vaccinated adults to your wedding. Following the logic above, this means that there would be less risk to any unvaccinated children who are there, too. Less risk does not mean no risk but it does mean less.
Perhaps you and your partner are inviting fully vaccinated adults AND unvaccinated adults to your wedding. If you’re also inviting children, what other measures would you two be willing to put in place to reduce the risk of transmission between the unvaccinated adults and the kids? Ideas include: Asking the unvaccinated adults to test and quarantine before the wedding and/or asking the unvaccinated adults to wear a mask and distance at the wedding and/or asking the kids to wear masks, too.
Perhaps you and your partner have no idea what the vaccination statuses are of the adults at your wedding. If you’re also inviting children, this likely means you two need to consider safety measures that apply to to the entire group — not just those who may be unvaccinated. Ideas include asking everyone regardless of vaccination status to wear masks and distance at the wedding. (I previously also recommended asking this group to test and quarantine but have since read that asking the vaccinated to test isn’t probably the soundest scientific idea.)
Ultimately, your job is not to decide for your guests. It’s to tell your guests what to expect.
This is extremely important to remember, particularly as we move into this next phase where more people are vaccinated. Your job as the couple hosting a wedding in 2021 is not to make your wedding work for everyone who’s there. Your job is to establish your boundaries as a couple, communicate those boundaries, and then let your guests decide what works for them.
This is particularly true when it comes to the “do we invite kids to a 2021 wedding?” conversation because, in my experience, parents and guardians have already been thinking about this topic A LOT because of childcare and school. By proactively offering information to those parents and guardians, you as the couple are making their lives much, much easier as they decide whether or not attending a wedding in-person is the best choice for their family right now.
The easiest way I know how to clarify your boundaries as a couple right now is for you two to create a COVID safety policy for your wedding. Make it and then have it readily available before you send any kind of guest-facing communication like a save-the-date or an invite.
Many couples have told me that they way they’re doing this is to make the policy and then on the invite, they put a link to their wedding website. Sometimes they add the following to the invite: “For details about health and safety for our wedding, please visit [insert wedding website URL].”
On the actual website, the couple then creates a tab; usually it says “Health and Safety.” That tab leads to a page where they post their COVID safety policy. They note that it’s a living document so subject to change but that’s OK because our goal here is just to give your guests SOME IDEA of what they’re getting into if they agree to attend your wedding in-person. Can you think of any greater gift we can give people as we live through this time of transition? I can’t.
If you don’t have or want a wedding website, all good. This model works just as well as a BCC’d email, Facebook group, text thread, etc. You could even print the policy out and put in with any physical invite though, of course, that makes it much harder to update everyone if/when things change.
Here are templates to help talk to your guests on these topics.
What about vendors?
I would argue that whatever you decide on the above should apply to any adult who is attending your wedding in-person — and that includes vendors. This may sound scary but, in my experience, vendors are much more amenable to health and safety conversations than guests because, um, we’ve been living this pandemic wedding life for a year.
We vendors are also deeply, deeply grateful when a couple is upfront about how they are prioritizing health and safety at their wedding. This has NOT been the norm in the past year and it helps us feel seen and appreciated because you’re telling us that we matter, too.
Here are templates to help talk to your vendors on these topics.
Wow. This is a lot.
Yep, I know. Also, depending on where you live, you no longer (or never had) the pressure of the law forcing you to make these choices for your wedding. In my book, this makes you really special because it means that you’re a person who is willing to do a hard thing even when you legally don’t have to do a hard thing. Thank you for that. I promise it will be worth it.
Why am I so confident it will be? Because if I’ve learned anything after 15 months of pandemic wedding planning, it’s that the happiest couples are the ones who make the hardest choices. They’re the ones who work together to decide what they want out of their wedding day.
Then, they share that information with the people they care about most in the world so that those people are informed and, importantly, feel valued by the couple. Valued people are happier people and happier people are the people we want at your wedding, right?
For more pandemic wedding planning resources including what to do if people say “no” to getting vaccinated before attending your wedding in-person, go here.