Our family ghosted us for not inviting their kids to our wedding
I 27F and my fiancé 27FTM are getting married next month. We invited around 170 people. On our website, and through word-of-mouth, we said there are no plus ones (unless approved) and that it’s childfree. We’ve always envisioned our wedding to be childfree and we mostly said no plus ones because we have to pay $35/person over 100 people.
Everyone seemed fine with it until we got a text from my fiances family. Their step brother M38 and wife F35 have three kids: 5, 8, and 17. We sent an invite with an RSVP for the brother, his wife, and their oldest. After RSVPing “Yes” the wife texted my fiancé “I assume this includes [niece] and [nephew].” We wrote back saying we were sorry but we’re having a child-free wedding and if any kids got the exception, it’d be them but we don’t want to be unfair to the rest of the guests by having some kids allowed and not others. Without texting us back, she switched the RSVP to “decline.” Three hours later we sent another text checking in and we still haven’t heard back. It’s been about a week.
My fiancé messaged their dad to check-in and he said the whole family won’t be attending. We’re super shocked by this because they even rented a cabin on the property to stay on site for the wedding night. We feel awful and almost want to just give in and let them bring their younger kids but we also don’t want to be unfair to all of our other friends and family who are finding babysitters.
What do we do??
EDIT: After reading some of the comments I think it’s important to include that:
- The overnight accommodations were their choice. The wedding is less than an hour from their house. I’m pretty sure they just wanted to get drunk at the reception since they’re heavy drinkers/partiers
- We attended a wedding last year for a different family member that was child free and they went and didn’t bring their kids
- We totally understand people who can’t come because of the child-free decision. We’re just heart broken that we haven’t heard back from them - especially since my fiance has a small family and they’re the bulk of the family. We’re chill people and if we knew it would cause such a mess we would’ve just invited their kids to avoid the fall out. Just sad they ghosted us and have been telling the family not to come :/