In Dreams Epeefencer has the families of the champions come before the first event, not just the third.1 I asked about that in a review, and got back the response that he did this deliberately, that it did not make sense to him that for an event this big that the family would only be invited for the last task. This makes sense to me. I suspect Mrs. Rowling invited the families to the last task because of the risk of death in the last task, a risk that was tragically made real when Cedric was killed, ironically after the task should have ended.2 If you think about the first task, the was an equally real risk of death. No matter how alert and well intentioned the handlers, a blast of dragon fire could well be fatal before they could step in.
Epeefencer. Dreams Chapter 12 Updated 2017-06-24; Published 2014-08-24.↩︎
Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire better citation needed.↩︎