Two years ago, my wedding day went south when a young child pulled the fire alarm a couple hours into the reception, forcing everyone to evacuate as we waited for the fire station to turn it off. It was raining. My dress was soaked, my hair was ruined, and for a minute I thought my wedding was coming to an unceremonious and abrupt close. But we laughed and chatted outside, tried on the firemen’s helmets, and eventually got back into the venue, dancing our soggy little hearts out for another hour. It was chaotic, only slightly worrying, and an amazing memory.

My experience at first seems to be exactly why couples are increasingly prohibiting their guests from bringing children to their wedding. In an “adults only” setting, they believe they will be more able to pull off their perfect day. Yet I believe this is the exact opposite of what we should do. In fact, I believe we should avoid child-free weddings at all costs.

Children are very rarely perfectly calm. They are noisy and temperamental. Most parents could tell you how the dramatic meltdowns of even the most well-behaved children in grocery aisles, crowded airplanes, and peaceful restaurants elicit eye rolls and open contempt from others. Even the actions of children who are not necessarily ill-behaved, but only a little bothersome, are treated as a disruption of normal life, not the most normal part of life there can possibly be.

But those who are so afraid of children at their wedding really just need to lighten up.

Is it really the end of the world if a little kid wanders onto the dance floor during your father-daughter dance? Many people actually think it’s cute and fun. The slightly embarrassed parents will just scoop the child up and the dance will continue.

Is it really a massive ordeal if one plate shatters? Unless you’re getting married in a palace, it’s probably not going to break the budget to have it replaced.

In reality, the only reason people are prone to uniquely resent the cacophony of children is because they believe they are entitled to a child-free world. Indeed, your drunk guests are likely to cause more mayhem than a toddler ever could, yet rarely are the weddings that ban children as fastidious about limiting alcohol consumption.

Admittedly, the rise of child-free weddings may be due to the parallel rise in an utter lack of good parenting. Let’s face it: a five-year-old gleefully sticking her fingers into the side of the tiered wedding cake as the parents ignore their child for the open bar is another issue entirely. Parents who bring their child to a wedding must also realize that at this event, as in all their life after becoming parents, they may need to sacrifice some of their own freedom and adult autonomy to guide their own children. A 2 a.m. afterparty is simply not feasible for a young child, and subjecting the other guests to the perils of an exhausted toddler so you can enjoy the event in the same way your childless friends do is rude and inconsiderate.

That aside, there are a few other reasons we should turn away from adult-only weddings.

For starters, adult-only weddings isolate young mothers. For many women who exclusively breastfeed during the first six months of a child’s life, “getting a babysitter” isn’t that simple. Most babies that age are on a three-hour feeding schedule, and most weddings last twice as long. Even if a mother feels comfortable leaving her child with a babysitter, and even if she has a good enough milk supply to leave a bottle for the babysitter to feed her child, she must use a breast pump every three hours in a venue bathroom. Not doing so could be painful or disrupt her milk supply.

In essence, for the first six to 12 months of a child’s life, the baby is essentially an extra body part of the mother’s and leaving him is no picnic. Most mothers would be forced to skip a friend’s child-free celebration, reinforcing feelings of loneliness that young mothers often experience.

Finally, a child-free wedding says something about the trajectory of the couple themselves. By disinviting children, the bride and groom are elevating their aesthetic goals for their wedding over the sheer joy that the presence of children brings. They are saying that their own comfort is more important than the ability for their friends and family who are raising children to celebrate with them. They are embarking on the journey of marriage with the sights and sounds of family – the culmination of matrimony itself – as far away as possible.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Pxhere