Travelling to a BC Wedding With Kids? Booking a Babysitter as a Guest

Wedding childcare content is written for the couple. Understandably — they are the ones booking it.

But a large share of the people with a childcare problem at a wedding are guests: families who have travelled, are staying in a hotel or a rental, and have discovered that the invitation says adults only, or that the reception runs to midnight, or simply that a two-year-old and a five-hour sit-down dinner are incompatible.

Nobody writes for them. Here is that.

First: check whether the couple has already arranged it

Before booking anything, ask. Plenty of couples arrange event childcare for the whole guest list, and it is common enough that guests frequently book privately without realising there is already a room with nannies in it.

If they have, you are done. If they have not, this is yours to solve, and it is genuinely straightforward.

What you are booking

A babysitter at your accommodation — hotel room, rental, or wherever you are staying — rather than event childcare at the venue. It is an ordinary hourly childcare booking, not an event booking, and it is priced as one:

That last point matters more for guests than for anyone else — if you are travelling with siblings, or sharing with another family, one booking covers them.

Hotels and short-term rentals are fine

Puffin caregivers come to where you are staying. A hotel room or a short-term rental is an ordinary booking location, not an exception, and it does not need to be a permanent residence.

What to include when you book: the hotel name and room number, whether reception needs to be told to expect someone, and any building access detail — a fob for the elevator, which entrance, where to park. Five minutes of this removes the only real difference between a hotel and a house.

The timing question guests get wrong

24 hours' notice minimum, and no same-day booking. That is the hard limit, and it is the thing that catches travelling families out — you arrive on the Friday, realise on the Saturday morning that the reception runs past bedtime, and by then the booking window for Saturday evening has closed.

Book it when you book the flights. A wedding date is known months ahead. The childcare is the easiest part of the trip to arrange early and the most stressful to arrange late.

Also worth knowing: first-time in-home bookings need photo ID verification reviewed by an administrator. Quick, but do it before you travel rather than from a hotel lobby.

Working out the hours

Be realistic and then add an hour on each end.

A ceremony at 4:00 PM and a reception running to midnight is not a four-hour booking. Add the getting-ready time before and the getting-back time after, and it is closer to eight. Hours after 10:00 PM carry the overnight rate.

If the caregiver ends up staying longer than booked, that is billed through Puffin on the card already on file with an emailed record — never settled in cash at the door. Why Puffin doesn't take cash explains why that matters for the caregiver as much as for you.

Where this works

All 16 municipalities Puffin covers, at identical rates with no travel surcharge — including the destination-wedding areas guests most often travel to. If the wedding is in Harrison Hot Springs, Langley wine country or Fort Langley, event coverage there is described on the event nannies hub, and your own hotel booking works the same way anywhere in the coverage area.

Caregivers are Puffin employees, CRRP vulnerable-sector cleared and reference verified. You are not anybody's employer.