My sister is getting married and has asked me to be her maid of honor. My toddler will be almost 2 years old by the time the wedding rolls around. My sister has recently indicated she’s upset with me that my husband and daughter won’t be able to attend the reception (and possibly the ceremony too).

She’s having the wedding ceremony at 6pm and she is Catholic which means the ceremony will be at least an hour, so reception might start around 7:30pm at best. My sister and rest of my family live in a different time zone which will affect my toddler’s bedtime. At the moment, she’s had a 7pm bedtime since she was 4 months old, but once she’s closer to 2 years old, she might be able to stay up until 8pm (at the moment she turns into a gremlin if we try to keep her up even 30 minutes past 7pm). Given that we will be in an earlier time zone, it will mean my toddler’s bedtime will actually be 6pm (if we keep the same bedtime we have now). Thus this will mean the ceremony will start at my toddler’s bedtime.

Because we live out of town, any family member I could possibly ask to babysit will be at the wedding, so I’ve come to the conclusion that my husband will just have to stay home with our toddler so that I can go to the wedding. My sister became upset with me when she found this out and can’t seem to understand why I don’t “just hire a babysitter”. I’ve tried explaining to her that we live out of town (1000 miles away) and so there is no feasible way for me to meet someone and feel comfortable with them or try them out as a babysitter before the big night. I just don’t feel comfortable essentially hiring a complete stranger to be alone with my daughter for several hours. (And to clarify, my sister isn’t planning on having any children in her wedding party, so it’s not like she’s upset my daughter can’t be a flower girl or something).

I guess I’m just looking for validation or suggestions. I get so frustrated when my sister or other family members very flippantly throw out “oh just get a babysitter” like it’s not a major decision to find an adult I can entrust my child to or like it’s such an easy thing to find said adult especially when we live so far away. Thoughts?