When the couple likes your child – Just not at their wedding

When Ja’Nay Ford Hill, 31, and Ryon Hill, 32, of Dallas got married in Colleyville, Texas, in 2022, their 200-person ceremony included four children: two flower girls and two ring bearers. After the ceremony, the children were relocated to the venue’s bridal suite, where they were supervised, fed and entertained for five hours by a babysitter Hill had found on Care.com.

“We knew that we wanted alcohol, and for our guests to have a good time at the reception,” Hill said, adding that she had been to weddings where children felt like a distraction. She didn’t want that. “Your wedding is a time where you can be selfish,” she said.

Hill is not alone. Of 4,000 couples with 2024 wedding dates, 79.5% are in favor of kid-free weddings, according to the Zola First Look Report, which will be published on Monday. But child-free weddings present invitees who are parents with a difficult choice: Find child care or decline the invitation.

The former means finding a sitter to stay home, possibly overnight, with the children, paying for a sitter to travel to the event with them or trying to find someone at the wedding location, “which can be challenging,” said Tiesha Sinouthasy, the founder of Peace of Mind Nannies, a child care agency in East Providence, Rhode Island.

But more brides and grooms are budgeting for babysitters for their guests’ children, hiring child care through online caregiving registries like Care.com or SitterCity.com and local agencies like Peace of Mind, which has seen a steady increase in requests over the last three years, or personal connections. (At Care.com, on-demand babysitting jobs for weddings doubled in 2023, compared with 2022.)

Paige Tatulli, 33, an automotive publicist in Weehawken, New Jersey, and her fiancé, Michael O’Hare, 37, feel confident in their decision to omit children from their August 2024 cocktail hour and wedding reception in Monroe Township, New Jersey. The couple are inviting 270 guests – about half of whom are parents – and “we see a wedding as an excuse for everyone to let loose,” she said. “We want to make sure they get a night out to enjoy themselves with their partner and their friends.”

Given the size of the wedding, the couple plans to cover the caregiving costs for their relatives’ 12 children, who range in age from 9 months to 12 years old, and will help connect friends with babysitters. Instead of formally hiring support, at least four friends of friends have volunteered to babysit in the hotel rooms. Tatulli is budgeting $300 to $500 worth of gift cards for each.

Other agencies also try to provide a good time for the children. Peace of Mind Nannies wedding sitters set up a space, serve dinner, and supply developmentally appropriate activities to children, such as finger paint, Play-Doh, limbo and ring toss. The average cost is $3,000 to $5,000 per wedding, with a four-hour minimum, depending on how many children are present and their ages.

Hotel wedding venues will often help brides and grooms find local child care. Wedding planners at the Resort at Pelican Hill, in Newport Beach, California, coordinate child care services with a licensed third-party for 15% of weddings on-site. The Four Seasons Anguilla makes referrals to KidzKare, a local team of child care providers who provide games and toys that charge $18 to $50 per hour to supervise one child.

There are some basics that brides and grooms and parents should consider when planning child care at a wedding.

Safety first

The couple getting married should be sure to use vetted babysitters or an agency that has vetted babysitters, meaning the caretakers have undergone background checks and provided professional references, Sinouthasy said. Shayla Jenkins, 31, a part-time nanny in Springfield, Missouri, also suggests couples share the sitter’s bio with parents to make them more comfortable.

Planning ahead

Peace of Mind Nannies collects information about children’s needs ahead of time “so that we’re able to best prepare and meet those needs accordingly,” Sinouthasy said. Similarly, Jenkins recommends parents note children’s allergies, pack items such as extra diapers, and include a to-do list, for babysitters.

It’s also essential for child care providers to know the specific arrival and departure times of the children (and their parents). Having awareness of the room’s layout in advance is helpful to those watching children, so they can establish safety measures (as well as come up with activities), Jenkins said.

Dress code considerations

If caretakers are part of the wedding for a significant amount of time, brides and grooms should let those details be known. During a wedding on Christmas last year, Jenkins was assigned to watch children in the same room as the 120-person reception. “Because I knew it was a babysitting gig, I didn’t dress up. I wore leggings, a loose sweater and tennis shoes,” she said. “Going into that setting, I would have dressed up a little bit more knowing I was going to be with everyone.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.