How do i reduce the amount of children at my wedding???

To set the record entirely straight I am not a mother of 3....I am a mother of 6,  3 are adults  18,20 and 22  and then the 3 younger children.  the establishment we have found is the least expensive place that is available. there is no further cutting to be done.  I personally do not have a large extended family,  my family has set the precidence since the dawn of time that children are welcome to the church but not at the reception,    Our reception will be a 8pm-1am event,  this time is NOT a time that is child friendly.  I have had exactly no contact with his mother regarding her offer to pay for her side of the family.....the issue adds on that to avoid a potential set of hard feelings...If i am going to invite 11 extended sets of children from my fiance's family...I must be fair and equivalent to my side of the family whether or not they wish to bring their children...it would be quite rude to invite his side and NOT mine would it not???

I mentioned this issue to my fiance' who had no answer....You may have not seen wedding dresses ruined, but i have....I have attended other weddings who had guests that failed to read adult reception upon the invitation and arrived with their little darlings...and had my silk brocade gown used as a napkin!!! I was unable to have it removed and a beautiful dress that I sewed myself was thoroughly ruined...further more the parents of the precious child didnt even offer to have it cleaned!

I more than anyone know the gift of children, however as a mother of 6 and grandmother of 2,  I quite frankly do not wish to be subjected to other people's children, as important as it is to my fiance that these little people attend.....he is unable to tell me their names, nor their ages...In my opinion if they were so important to him he would know their names and ages.....not so that when i asked, he had to ask his mother how old they were.....so the importance to HIM I am not convinced.....the majority of the children that we are speaking from his side are the children of his cousins...not his siblings.  we are speaking 6 are from distant relatives and 5 from imediate family.

I have had the priledge of interacting with the 5 that are closer...and of the 5 2 can behave like ladies and gentlemen, but there are 6 i have not met and they are 2-7...the other 3 children that are imediate relatives children are far from well behave, which means that i can look forward to squealing and complaining (not one of the children routinely attend church other than mine, and I recently invited them to my daughters first communion and i was aghast at the behavior and rather than removing the chidren that were causing a  disturbance, the parents were even louder).  It was then that i decided that I did not wish to subject myself to their shinanigans on our wedding day.  My daughter was embarrassed, I was embarrassed, and more than angry at the cluelessness of the parents.  I feel badly for the two children that were well behaved, but I feel it would be far worse to the family infrastructure to say that suzy and jimmy can come but saran anne and mikey cannot.  and as far as inviting the 6 that i have no clue as to their behavior who are. the children of distant cousins who are both distant in relationship and in location is just more than i am willing to take.

As i said I have 22 years of parenting experience,  I do not bow to the alter of the children, which unfortunately alot of older parents do.  I do hope not to offend those who waited until they were in their 40's to have children, but I have found that those who are older and have younger children in my fiance's family  do NOT keep after their children.   I would think that they would want an evening off and be an adult.  I suggested arranging a party for the children earlier in the day at y home...so that they would be tired out near sleepy time by the time we would be going to the reception, and provide several babysitters.

OronD,

you did not anger me in any way...I just wanted to give a clear picture of what We are truly dealing with. 

I tell you perhaps f i were a mother of only 2-3  and that was all the mothering i had ever done i may have a different attitude.  Our personal experiences color what it is we feel.   and had i not been privy to the KAOS that the 3 other neices and nephews can cause before hand i may have been optomistic about the nuber of children....as far as inviting the children of cousins....who live more that 12 hours away  all 6 of them live in another state  according to emily post we are also responsible for their travel and lodging.

We are having an engagement party, I said that that would be the test for the wedding...as only the close family on his side....and the close friends that take the place of a non existing close family on my side...basically we are splitting the costs 50/50 and the guest list that way as well.  For the most part, the majority of the guests that I will be inviting are friends that have taken the place of my family. 

In alot of ways i am hoping that the neices and nephews that comet ot the engagement party totally misbehave as i expect them to....I also have set up the seating chart so as to put all those with children together and away from  ME.  My children will be sitting with their second set of families...each of my children have been sort of adopted by another family due to the medical issues i have faced over the past 4 years.   I am a breast cancer survivor x2,  I was involved in a severe car accident last spring and sustained a head injury which is the equivalent of a mild stroke, which makes the stress that I am experiencing too much for me to deal with at times.

When it came time to choose the attendants, my fiance' tried to add 3 extra brides maides for me...I accepted his sister...after all she is his sister...but unfortunately the other 2 women he tried to have me have are his brothers wives...again leaving noone to keep an eye on the precious kids...

I had to inform him that since we were not having a 300 person wedding a 9 woman bridal party is far too large.  he thought it would be his sister and his sister inlaws and that was it....I informed him that he does the guys and i do the girls.....or we could trade.....I could choose the guys and he could choose the girls.  After all I am a mother of 4 sons. and 2 daughters.  I am not putting my daughter in the position of having to travel from out of state and purchase bridesmaide appropriae clothing, I have done nearly anything i could do to make things affordable for everyone.   I chose a color in general,  asked my 3 close girlfriends that i have been frieds with since jr high and elementary school,  I said the color is pink for the bridesmaides  they can either agree to get one color or each have different colors, they do not have to have matching dresses.  my maide of honor has the choice of wearing pink or green  of her choice...and the dress of her choice.

The reason we are having aan engagement party rather than just a wedding and saving the money for the wedding....is becasue my fiance' had been engaged for along time to someone else  we are both on the small size, and I would be heart broken to show up to the wedding and have someone say oh i didnt know  sue changed the color of her hair.   also i thought it was important for him to meet my friends....we traveled in separate circles....and i have repeatedly asked him to join any things that i was doing with my friends but there was always some reason or another that he couldnt come along to get to know the people that are also important to me.   those that helped me go through chemo and helped me get through my head injury.   he has heard of them...but has never met them.  The vast majority of my close friends are men.  I have only 3 close girl friends.