How to Organize a Kid-Friendly Wedding Reception
Make Your Reception both Kid-Safe and Kid-Fun
Does anyone know a good babysitter?
Supervision is the most important factor in achieving a kid-friendly wedding. If you have more than a couple of kids attending, you cannot count on parents, who can be distracted by the festivities, to watch their children at all times. Therefore, a couple good local babysittersare the answer. Make sure to ask them the going rate per hour and hire enough to watch the number of kids attending.
If you don’t want the parents to just dump their kids with the sitter and forget about them, consider this option: hire babysitters to watch that the kids stay safe and out of trouble, but don’t tell the parents that they are there. This way, both the parents and the babysitters will keep an eye on the kids, and there’s not as much pressure on your helpers.
Tater tots and chicken fingers
Although your more grown-up guests will be pleased with your fancy cuisine, kids might not appreciate it as much. In addition to the regular menu, be sure to have kid-friendly food.
Easy foods such as tater tots and chicken fingers are usually a hit with young audiences. You can even cut the chicken fingers into wedding shapes with cookie cutters if you feel inclined to. However, keep the sweets to a minimum, especially if the reception is close to kids’ bedtimes. A chocolate-chip cookie per little one should suffice.
“I’m bored!”
These are the two dreaded words that neither you nor your babysitters want to hear during the reception.
The answer to not hearing them is providing entertainment—enough to last the whole reception. If this means buying stacks of coloring books from the dollar store, it will be worth it to protect your and your guests’ sanity.
Outdoor boredom relief
If your reception is outdoors (say, under a tent), designate a kid’s area. Cover a short table with long sheets of white paper, which can be found on antonline.com. Then, have crayons (not markers…too messy for a dressy occasion) for them to color on the table with. Or, they have special wedding pages you can print out at coloringbookfun.com and sites such as kidfriendlyweddings.com that carry activity bags.
Indoor boredom relief
While the outdoor options will also work for an indoor reception, in a building you have other options. For example, you can rent a room especially for the kids, preferably with a DVD player and some recent kid-friendly movies, such as Surf’s Up or Finding Nemo. Just make sure that they have the option of coming into the “real” reception for some dancing and socializing also.
The bottom line
Busy kids are happy kids. Bored ones start looking for trouble, and that’s something no one needs at a wedding reception! If you remember the three main components to a successful, kid-friendly reception, it should go much smoother.
If you still can't decide whether to invite kids or not, check out this article by Christy Matte.
