Congratulations! Owing to factors that may include being related to the bride or groom, insisting that $7.25 an hour is still a reasonable wage for a babysitter, and delusion, you are now taking your adorable young child to a wedding! They are sure to delight other attendees and turn what is normally a stressful and hectic day into a stressful and hectic day that may also feature an inopportune bowel movement during the exchanging of the rings. Here is a handy primer for getting through a wedding’s key moments with your baby in tow:
The Outfit
Choosing what your baby will wear is very important, partly for the enjoyment of the wedding guests but mainly to impress the online audience you’re counting on to make your baby’s Instagram account profitable enough to pay for college. Though your baby would likely prefer to wear their favorite pajamas or nothing at all, an outfit that is uncomfortable and complicated to put on will have a better chance at boosting likes (and they’re still too young to remember the harrowing process of you trying to get them in it, which will involve a lot of tears shed by all involved parties).
The Rehearsal
If your baby is attending the wedding, there is a decent chance they are in the ceremony, as a ring bearer or flower girl, meaning that they will be required to attend the rehearsal. These are normally pretty anodyne affairs, as the adults in a wedding already know how to read and walk, but babies don’t know how to do much of anything, making this your one chance to insure that they understand their responsibilities for the main event. Important lessons to teach them include how to not get distracted by Uncle Gary’s novelty Pokémon cuff links, how to not veer off in a random direction halfway down the aisle, and how to not start crying because literally anything at all happened. The chances of them retaining any of this information are very slim, but, hey, so were the chances of these two crazy kids finding each other in the first place, right?
Getting Ready
The most important thing to remember about getting ready for a wedding with a baby is that you are more than the worst thing you have ever done.
The Ceremony
Having a baby at a wedding ceremony is all about timing. If they mess up their role, cry, or get fussy for three seconds or less, it’s adorable. If they mess up their role, cry, or get fussy for longer than that, it will start to get less and less adorable with each passing second, which is why it’s important to have an exit strategy. Most people would recommend just looking for the nearest means of egress and leaving as quickly and discreetly as possible, but an even better option is to stand up, point at your baby, and loudly exclaim, “Well, looks like at least one person here objects to this union!” Everyone will find this joke hilarious, and the bride and groom will give you all of their wedding gifts (including the checks) as a token of appreciation.
The Photos
O.K., so your baby doesn’t want the bottle or the pacifier or Mom or Dad or Grandma or Grandpa or that one bridesmaid we don’t really know that well who quite frankly seems a little too eager to hold the baby, so why don’t we try tickling the baby’s toes, which made them laugh that one time about seven months ago, so maybe it will work again, and wait, where is the baby going now? Hey, get back here! Can someone besides that one bridesmaid grab that baby and make sure they’re not putting any pebbles in their mouth—oh, wait, we’re done with photos? Well, O.K., hopefully the baby was smiling in at least one of them.
The Reception
Yeah, don’t bring them to this.
The Day After
The only appropriate way to spend the day after a wedding with your baby is to rave to everyone you have ever met and several thousand strangers online about how perfect everything went while leaving your actual baby with their grandparents or in front of the TV or playing with a fun bunch of loose electrical wires or whatever. Honestly, if you can get away with it, it’s probably easiest to just skip all the earlier stuff and go right to this. ♦