Babies and Weddings: A Match Made in Purgatory

Unless you have absolutely no relatives, friends or fee-charging babysitters within a couple of hundred miles of your home, there is absolutely no excuse for bringing a baby to a wedding as far as I’m concerned.

Having attended a number of weddings as both a guest and parent (though without the little darlings in tow, I hasten to add), I feel the same way about babies at weddings as those reformed smokers who wheeze and cough when anyone in eyesight so much as takes a packet of cigarettes out of their pocket.

So, having safely deposited our offspring with their aunt on Saturday, we psyched ourselves up for a whole blissful day and night of freedom. Two glasses of bubbly were slickly removed from a passing tray of drinks and we clinked our glasses with a self-satisfied sigh of relief. It was therefore a bit of a crash back down to earth when we took our seats a few glasses later, only to discover that we’d been placed on the ‘parents with young children table’.

I know the horror that is table planning so I have no bone to pick with the happy couple. It actually makes perfect sense to place people of the same age group or life stage together, as it’s a great way to break the ice and spark conversation. However, as most of them had opted to bring their little bundles of joy with them, conversation was way down the list of priorities.

We just about managed to get through the introductions before bottles, cloths, jugs of hot water, baby wipes, milk powder and cuddly toys materialised. Buggies were pulled between chairs so bona fide guests were squashed up like commuters in rush hour and the beautifully laid table was swiftly turned into something akin to a new mums’ coffee morning, as baby paraphernalia took over.

Luckily, the couple to our right didn’t have children with them either so we did manage some semblance of traditional wedding banter. The upside was that no one else on the table was drinking, so the four of us had free reign of the wine, alcohol providing some distraction from the frenzied baby feeding and burping that was taking place all around us.

Our brief conversation with the couple to the other side of us consisted of a précis of baby’s sleeping routine. This wasn’t exactly riveting but we smiled politely and were somewhat relieved to hear that junior would suck every last dribble of milk then settle down to sleep until the following morning.

This all seemed to be going according to plan and the couple finally poured themselves a thimble of wine and tucked into their starters – now looking decidedly cold and unappetising. However, before forks could reach mouths the buggy started rocking and the dulcet tones of baby cries rang out around the room. Dad made a swift exit and went off to do a tour of the grounds in an attempt to get him back off to sleep. He wasn’t the only one: a constant procession of haggard-looking parents could be seen passing by the entrance of the marquee, pushing buggies and looking longingly at the wine-swilling guests within.

They made the occasional diversions back inside but these tended to be brief and largely consisted of passing the buggy baton to the other partner. By the time coffee was served, most of them were packing the dozen or so barely started bottles back into oversized change bags. The husbands tried to down surreptitious glasses of wine while the wives were strapping the babies in the buggies and then, like so much dust, they were gone.

Errant baby wipes blew around the table legs like tumbleweeds in the desert and we sat at the near-empty table wondering just why anyone would bring a baby to a wedding.