How to word wedding invitations for tricky topics such as no children or no gifts!
Whether you’re wondering how to avoid unwanted gifts or children at your special day, we’ve got you covered! We’ll share our top tips and examples for politely wording your wedding invitations around tricky topics to ensure you get the responses you want!
Child-free wedding wording
One of the most common questions we get asked is how to inform your guests that you want a child-free wedding without causing any offence. Couples opt for adult-only celebrations for lots of reasons, to save on money, space and ceremony interruptions or simply in the hope that guests let their hair down without needing to be on parenting duty. Whatever your reason, we support you, it’s your day and most of the time if communicated well, your guests will too!
Around 10-20% of invited guests usually decline any invitation for scheduling or personal reasons, this jumps much higher when finding child-care is in the equation so we advise keeping invites simple, and being completely open and honest about your reasoning directly with specific guests you feel may take the news personally in advance of posting your invitations so it doesn’t catch anyone off guard. It’s also nice to include a personal note to close friends and family that you’re sorry not to be able to include their little ones.
We also advise being flexible to an extent for guests who may have new babies or not have family support to care for children making leaving them particularly tricky, especially if you're having a destination wedding as it is more difficult for parents to travel abroad without their children.
A different angle is to offer the option of a creche/professional babysitting service at the venue if possible meaning your guests can more easily come along and little ones are well cared for.
See below for some examples of ‘no-kids’ wedding wording you can tailor to suit your plans:
Unfortunately, we are unable to invite children to our special day. We hope that the advance notice means you are still able to attend.
Due to the nature of our venue, unfortunately we are unable to accommodate under-18s at our wedding.
Unfortunately, as much as we’d love to invite all of our friends’ children, we can only accommodate a few close family little ones. We hope that you will understand this decision and that you will still be able to join us on our special day.
In order to meet venue number restrictions, we are only able to extend our invitation to the children of close family and/or our wedding party.
Due to space constraints, unfortunately we are only able to invite the children of immediate family to our wedding.
We are so sorry but due to restrictions at our venue, we are unable to extend this invitation to children.
While we adore your children, our budget will only allow us to accommodate adult guests at our wedding.
Similarly, we advise avoiding wording that implies parents will have a better time if their children aren’t present as this isn’t for you to say and doesn’t usually go down well!
Be aware that just as you are perfectly justified to have a child-free wedding; your guests are perfectly justified to not attend if they don't want to be away from their children so don’t take it to heart if guests can’t make it.
No Gifts Invitation Wording
Whether you’ve got more home appliances to sink a ship, you’d rather have guests donate to charity or your honeymoon fund, we understand times have changed with regards to gift lists and it can be tricky to word your feelings in a way that doesn’t sound overly cheesy or presumptuous, so here are some ideas for gift-free wedding invitation wording that work well:
Your presence is present enough. More than anything, we hope that you can make it on the day, so please don't feel obliged in any way.
Your presence is present enough, but if you would like to buy us a gift, a contribution towards our honeymoon would be greatly appreciated.
If you would like to mark the occasion of our marriage with a gift, we would be grateful to receive a small contribution towards our honeymoon.
While having you at our wedding is all that we wish for, if you would like to give us a gift, a small contribution towards our future together would be greatly appreciated.
If you would like to buy us a gift, a donation to our favourite charity XXXX would mean a lot.
A gift of money towards our honeymoon, would really make our day or if you’d prefer to choose something special, then surprise us on the day.
We advise against not putting anything at all as guests generally prefer knowing what you would like in the way of gifts, so it avoids lots of messaging back and forth.
At Serendipity Events, we take great pride in advising our clients on all decisions and details around their special day, whether it’s difficult decisions around guest lists or which readings would work well for your style of ceremony we’re here to offer you impartial, expert advice with your best interest at heart.
From stationery design to florals we ensure your day flows seamlessly from start to finish.
Let us know how we can help ~ drop us an email to hello@serendipityevents.co.uk