An anonymous bride decided to have a child-free wedding last year: no kids, just adults and booze. One couple, though, apparently missed the memo — or flagrantly ignored it.
"To be clear, all of my invitations stated that there were to be no children at this wedding," the bride explained on Reddit, where she asked for advice in a subreddit dedicated to people asking others "Am I the a**hole?" in regard to certain awkward social situations.
Nevertheless, a long-time family friend and her husband brought their two kids: an infant and a toddler.
"At the actual wedding ceremony, I let it slide. I was preoccupied for obvious reasons," the bride said.
But when the kids were still present at the reception, she spoke to the parents to clarify the child-free rule. The reception was rowdy and full of alcohol, so not exactly an environment fit for young children. The couple eventually left — but not without an argument.
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The bride's Reddit post has since gone massively viral on every social media platform, with 65,000 likes on one Twitter mention alone.
Let's just say that people have a lot of feelings about child-free weddings.
When an anonymous bride decided to make her wedding child-free last month, she wrote it on all of her invitations to make sure every parent was aware.
The instructions were more than clear. Parents were welcome, but they had to leave the kiddos behind. At least, that was the idea.
Child-free weddings are becoming more popular, but they're still a controversial choice in some circles. Some people just don't understand or agree with the concept.
Perhaps that's why one couple at this bride's wedding chose to bring their kids along anyway. The guests brought both an infant and a toddler.
At first, the bride brushed it off. But by the time the reception rolled around, she noticed that the two kids were overstaying their welcome.
"The infant already had to be taken out once during the wedding ceremony because of fussiness and the toddler was, from what I could see, already appearing cranky," she explained.
The bride was busy — you know, getting married — so she told her event planner to go speak to the couple.
The bride was understandably upset.
"I mean, everyone was drinking and loud and rowdy and a crying child and another little one running around was not part of the plan," she explained.
But the parents, apparently, disagreed. They began arguing with the event planner, so the bride stepped in to try to clarify.
"I reiterated that the event was child-free and said that I had stated so clearly on my invitations," she wrote.
That only led to more arguing.
"Finally I snapped and said that they just needed to go, which, thankfully they did without much more noise. Still, the whole scene was incredibly embarrassing which is exactly what I wanted to avoid," the bride recalled. "I really hate that my wedding day had to be somewhat marred by this incident."
The bride told this story on a Reddit forum where people write in for advice on whether they were the jerks in a particular situation.
People overwhelmingly felt that, no, the bride was not in the wrong here. She clearly stated the rules of her wedding, and the couple didn't respect them. That's on them.
Many fellow parents commented to validate the bride's feelings.
"[M]y friend is allowing kids at her wedding and I double checked that she wasn't just being polite to me," one Reddit user wrote. "A wedding should be 100% whatever the couple getting married wants."
A lot of parents totally understand why a couple would want to avoid the hassle of children at a wedding. It's a very special day, and it's all about the bride and groom. Even the most well-behaved kids often can't help but be a distraction.
And some wrote that they would never dream of bringing their kids to a child-free wedding.
"I would NOT bring my kid to a kid-free wedding. She's just shy of two and loves to be loud and has picked up a bad habit of falling to the floor when she knows I need to pick her up to do something she doesn't want to do, followed by screaming and flailing. Aka, very disruptive," one parent wrote.
Another parent with a baby agreed. What these guests did was totally uncool and downright rude.
Other commenters conceded that, yes, child-free weddings might not be the most convenient option for parents. But that's not an excuse to just show up with kids anyway!
Of course, there's always a group of naysayers who go against the grain of popular opinion. A small minority of people disagreed with the bride. They slammed the idea of child-free weddings in general, calling them "rude."
The bride's story went massively viral on social media, and it's now on news sites worldwide. More and more people are chiming in with their opinions about whether or not the bride was in the wrong.
So much for avoiding any more arguments!
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
