Children + Weddings: Yay or Nay?

Are kids in the picture for your wedding?
Via elanawalker.wordpress.com

Wedding receptions are the ultimate date night for couples, if you think about it. It ticks off all the boxes:

*Friday or Saturday night (aka Date Night) - check!
*Formal/Dressy attire - check!
*Cocktail hour for appetizers and drinks - check!
*Multi-course meal complete with table wine and an open bar just around the corner - check! check!
*Speeches celebrating love and reminding couples what a good thing they've got right next to them- check!
*Fancy-pants dessert - check! check! check!

Now imagine, would you be able to enjoy all of the above AND some of the following....

**Bonus - a space to dance the night away OR tables, patios, verandas, etc, where you can socialize with people you know or people you've just met but feel like you've known forever**

.... if you were bringing your kids as well?  Now, I'm not anti-child, not at all! I can tell you, I lovelovelove to see kids at weddings because, fashion!

Bow ties, suspenders AND Chucks? I'm IN!
Via popsugar.com

Small guests, big style
Via brides.com

There's always those mini-MJ or Bruno Mars kids whose moves are impossibly on-point and smooth...

These kids moves are a million times better than me, tbh
Via Pinterest 

#swag
Via bypetronella.com

a blossoming toddler romance complete with chasing, flirting and eventual handholding...

Budding Romeos and their Juliets (without the dark stuff!)
Via theamericanwedding.com

and my favourite - the 11PM sleepy wallflowers. You've seen them, the few under aged stragglers left whose parents are wedding warriors,  they're the little partiers who are passed out in makeshift beds....

Party-pooped!
Via jlaplante.com

But sometimes April and I will see parents, dressed to thrill, doing everything except actually enjoying the wedding, only to have to leave early under a pile of sleeping kids and feel kind of bad for them not being to to take full advantage of the night! This is the reason I'm a fan of the adult-only wedding.  All that effort (the fashion, the food and drink, the generous gift!) shouldn't be curtailed! Now, be honest parents - if you could willingly attend a wedding without your kids, would you? (I promise, I'm going somewhere with this!)  ok, now be honest again - if you were invited to a wedding that didn't include your kids, would you be willing to attend?  Well, one bride-to-be addressed the backlash that she's faced with her own adult-only wedding.

*~Me and you, just us two: a wedding without your offspring?~*

Parents: What side of the debate do you fall on? Brides and grooms-to-be: Does child-free tick off an important box for your wedding festivities?  Have you been to a wedding that was adults only and guiltily enjoy the heck out of it? Where do you stand?

Wishing you a day as limitless as you are~
Lisa and April