Beyond the Kids' Table

The child-friendly reception.

• By Ilana Diamond
• Published Winter 2006

If you've decided to make your wedding reception an all-inclusive, all-ages affair, consider providing activities that will keep the kids entertained (and out of your wedding cake). For a summery lawn reception, simple games like bocce and horseshoes are fun, and add to the ambiance, or hire an instructor-cum-impromptu sitter from the New York Croquet Club, who can lead a gaggle of young players through a game (from $800; 212-473-2066; proceeds go to the Central Park Conservancy). Renting ponies for the kids or chartering a horse-drawn hayride is a great idea for an open-meadow reception (from Bronx Equestrian Center, $150 per hour and $850 per three hours, respectively; 718-885-0551), as is creating a treasure hunt with retro toys, like handcrafted labyrinths, bubbles and colorful pinwheels from Kid O (212-366-5436; kidonyc.com). For a quieter scene, hire an origami expert to sit at the kids' table and teach them the refined Japanese art of folding paper-according to tradition, a thousand paper cranes symbolize good luck. The New York-based OrigamiUSA center (212-769-5635; origami-usa.org) can recommend instructors like origami-book author Gay Merrill Gross, who engages children through story-based techniques.

If you would rather have all the folding done in advance, call on Bernard Maisner, the foremost calligrapher for New York's artistically inclined and fashionable (adult) crowd, to make personalized fortune-tellers, or what you might remember from your playground days as "cootie catchers" ($350 for design, plus $2 per teller; 212-477-6776; bernardmaisner.com).

And if the plan is to hire a baby-sitter, to allow parents total freedom on the dance floor and at the open bar, call on the Wedding Sitters. Their certified crew will entertain the little ones with arts and crafts and tea parties (from $95 per child; four-child minimum; 866-523-0902).