Destination weddings in Lapland are, by nature, a family affair. Couples who travel this far tend to bring the people who matter most, and increasingly that includes young nieces, nephews, and children of their own. A wedding that runs from a late-afternoon ceremony into a candlelit reception is a long day for a six-year-old, however beautiful the setting. The couples we work with rarely want a garish “kids’ zone” dropped into an otherwise refined room. What they want, and what we design, is a quiet corner that feels like part of the same story: warm, considered, and dressed in the same palette as everything around it.
Why a Children’s Corner Belongs in the Design, Not Bolted On
The instinct at many weddings is to solve “the kids problem” with a folding table, a box of crayons, and whatever plastic toys are on hand. It works, technically, but it also breaks the atmosphere the rest of the room worked so hard to build. At a Lapland wedding, where firelight, birch, and linen do so much of the emotional work, a bright plastic corner reads as a visible seam.
We treat the children’s corner as a small styling brief within the wider wedding styling plan, chosen at the same time as the rest of the floor plan, not added afterward. It gets a low table or a cluster of floor cushions in the same tones as the reception, soft lighting rather than overhead glare, and materials that belong in the same room as your centerpieces. The result is a space children actually want to sit in, and one your photographs won’t need to crop out.
Choosing the Right Spot
Placement matters more here than at a wedding in a hotel ballroom. In a remote venue, the children’s corner needs to sit close enough to the main room that parents can glance over without leaving the table, but far enough from the speakers and the dance floor that a tired child can actually rest. A window nook, an alcove near the fireplace, or a quiet end of a long timber-framed hall usually works better than a separate side room, which tends to isolate children from the celebration entirely.
Heat is the other deciding factor. Many of our venues, including the lakeside setting at Silver Birch Resort, have a natural gathering point near a stove or fireplace that becomes the obvious home for this corner in autumn and winter. In summer, under the midnight sun, the priority shifts to a spot with enough shade and stillness for a child to wind down even when the sky outside never fully dims.
Materials and Palette That Match Your Wedding
The corner should look like it was styled by the same hand as your tablescape, because it was. We work with sheepskin throws, felted wool cushions, and low wooden furniture in the same birch and linen tones used elsewhere in the room. Toys and activities follow the same rule: wooden building blocks, simple puzzles, and linen-bound sketchbooks read as intentional in a way that primary-colour plastic never quite does.
This isn’t about restricting what children can play with. It’s about choosing versions of the same activities that sit comfortably inside a Nordic, adult celebration, so the space feels like a considered extension of your styling rather than a compromise to it.
Keeping Young Guests Warm Through an Arctic Evening
Cold changes the practical brief considerably. Children lose body heat faster than adults and tire of standing around outdoors far sooner. If part of your day includes an outdoor ceremony or a walk to a fire pit for photographs, we plan a warm-up point nearby, extra sheepskins, a flask of something warm and child-friendly, and a clear path back indoors that doesn’t require crossing the whole venue. For winter weddings, we also brief parents in advance on footwear and layering, since a well-styled corner indoors does little good if a child has already spent an hour standing in the snow underdressed.
Quiet Activities That Hold a Child’s Attention
The best children’s corners we’ve built are calm rather than entertaining in the traditional sense. Screens have no place here, both for atmosphere and because a glowing tablet in the middle of a candlelit room is difficult to photograph around. Instead, we lean on activities with a slower rhythm: drawing, simple threading or building sets, a small selection of picture books chosen for the season, and, where the venue allows, a supervised walk outside to see snow or the aurora forecast for older children who need to move.
A Note on Timing and Supervision
For larger guest lists or longer evenings, we often recommend a dedicated caregiver for the hours around dinner and speeches, so parents are free to be guests rather than supervisors for at least part of the night. This is a detail worth raising early in planning, since staffing in more remote venues needs to be arranged well ahead of the date, alongside the rest of your styling and vendor schedule.
A children’s corner is a small part of the overall design, but it tells guests something true about how the rest of the day was planned: with attention to the people in the room, not just the backdrop behind them. If you’re picturing children at your Lapland wedding and want the space designed around them properly rather than improvised on the day, get in touch and tell us about your guest list. We reply within one business day with thoughts specific to your venue and season.
