How to Make People Dance at Your Wedding

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can offer to a couple planning a wedding or any special event is to be proactive against distractions. The term distraction can mean many things, but when it comes down to it, I am talking about oallowing too may entertainment options at once and subsequently splitting your audience, and giving your guests excuses not to dance.

"Wouldn't it be cool if we had a DJ in one room, and a band or acoustic act in the other?"  This sounds like a neat idea.

"How about we run a photo booth all night, even while the band is playing so that people who dont like the band, or those who don't want to dance have something to do?"  This too sounds like a great idea, when you can afford it. But take heed, homeslice.

Offering multiple entertainment options taking place at the same time splits the audience. This makes people interact less, and leaves some guests out of the fun. It means less people dancing and less people seeing the acoustic band play a great number.

Distractions can also be inherent in the hall's layout. If there is a great smoker's lounge, or a separate bar with a ballgame playing down the hall, you can bet that a few of your non-dancey-pants guests may set up camp and miss your hoped-for main attraction.

"But I want to have a photo booth, or a band AND also have the DJ playing. What do I do?" 

Simple. Chop up the time and assign each attraction not to overlap the dancing. Have a the first cocktail hour, for example, only be for the live band, or only run the photo booth the first two and a half hours to leave the very end just for dancing.

Take heed, homeboy. If you do this, more people we default to dancing for entertainment with no distractions. Thn,  you will have the full dance floor that you are hoping for.

Wine Bottle Wedding Guest Book

Here is a super simple but fresh idea if you would like to change up the guestbook at your wedding. Why not have your guests sign wine bottles?

At a really fun wedding this weekend where I was the DJ at Altamont Manor (20 minutes from Albany, NY), the bride and groom purchased four different colored wine bottles instead of a blank guestbook. Their mindset was a book may never be cracked open again a number of times over years, but a number of wine bottles certainly would!

To start a project like this, they removed the orginal labels by soaking the wine bottles in hot water to loosen the adhesive. Then, the couple cleaned and scraped off the remnants of the labels with lighter fluid, or you can use WD-40 to act as your cleaning agent.

Finally, they reapplied custom wine labels made up with their names printed on them, and the numbers 1,5,10 and 20.

That is it.

If you want to do something similar, your final move is to display your creations with sivler pens on a small table by the entrance to your wedding reception. Add a nice photo frame explaining that the bottles are in place of the traditional wedding guestbook. Explain that the newlyweds will drink the wine on their first, fifth, tenth and twentieth anniversaries to remember all their friends best wishes once again, as scribed on the bottles.

What a fun idea! It is like morphing together the traditions of the wedding guest book and freezing that piece of wedding cake to eat a year later.

Wedding Buffet Planning Tip

If you are planning a buffet for your wedding with stations, there are two things to think about. One is double sided serving and the other is placement of servers if there are any.

1) DOUBLE SIDED SERVING TABLES - this is important to allow your guests to serve themselves from both sides of the table. If you have your venue do this, you will have half the wait. You will have two small lines rather than one large one and this will allow for your guests to eat more quickly and get to the fun stuff.

2) PLACING SERVERS - If you have you caterers serving guests at some of the stations and have multiple tables in different places, try keeping the servers all together on one table station. This will allow for only one table to be clogged up in a line , while the others have free access with less wait.

Try these out and you will love it!