Pre Wedding Reception Activities

Wedding planning has so many little details to worry about that some might be forgotten. One tiny detail that often gets overlooked is how to keep guests entertained before the wedding reception “officially” begins.

What do brides and grooms do before the reception? There are no requirements that brides and grooms entertain their guests at all. After all, they have already attended your wedding ceremony (which was surely engaging and entertaining, right?) and they will soon get music, food, and drink. What more could they want? It turns out, a lot. While the bride and groom are off having pictures taken, the guests are left to their own devices, chatting with other guests and wondering when the buffet will open.

In that light, it’s worth at least considering some pre-reception options for keeping wedding guests entertained until the reception begins. Here are a few options, some traditional, some not so, but still fun.

• Band playing
• Tour of the property if at a historic site
• Hors D’oeuvres

The possibilities are endless and really truly depend on your budget. One thing to consider is asking the DJ or entertainment company to provide some sort of add-on for one price. That way, some of the planning can be done by someone else.

First, you can do the traditional thing and provide guests with drinks and perhaps some light snacks. If the wedding is in the summertime, how about providing lemonade and iced tea? Or if it’s the winter, coffee and hot tea or even hot cocoa depending on the style of your wedding. Providing a light snack isn’t a bad idea, either, and that can be some appetizer-type food or just nuts, especially if the meal will be heavy.

Now, if you want to stray from tradition, there are many options. Some brides opt for entertaining the guests in the truest sense of the word. Clowns anyone? How about live music?

If you want to venture into the fun and funky, consult the party planning pages of a local children’s or parent’s magazine. Here, you can find people who will entertain your children at their birthday parties, but many of them will happily take on wedding jobs. You can hire a clown to make balloon animals for the kids (and adults) in attendance or to juggle a few things. Some clowns are true entertainers and will happily get the crowd involved by fetching items out of women’s purses and juggling them.

If there are many children at the wedding, it’s not too expensive to hire a children’s band to sing and entertain the children for a bit. Then if the kids are a bit bored at the reception, they’ll still have the memory of the earlier entertainment with them. In addition, while the children are being entertained, the adults can have a chance to chat and they will surely thank the bride for thinking of them in that way.

Other non-traditional options for entertaining your guests include hiring a band to play music beforehand. If you plan to have classical music at your wedding, you can have a band come and play covers of current pop songs, or you can simply have your hired band arrive a bit early to entertain guests waiting for the full reception to begin.

Some other options for entertaining your restless crowd before the festivities begin are to include them in the reception before it begins. This is a great time to ask people to sign the guest book and write something meaningful since they will have more time than they would usually have as they file into the reception hall.

If the reception and the wedding ceremony take place in the same location, but the bride and groom are off taking pictures, it may not seem as if there is not a dilemma of how to keep the guests entertained, but there is in fact.

In this case, you can have servers circulate with appetizer trays or you can do something more elaborate, such as some of the suggestions above. One popular option doesn’t involve entertaining the guests at all. Say the wedding is being held at a historic house or mansion. During the lull before the reception, guests can be given a tour of the property. If the wedding and reception are both being held at the couple’s new home, a tour of the property might be in order (assuming the guest list is fairly small).

As your instructor, I hope during our sessions that I can provide you with more ideas. Looking forward to hearing back from you soon!

Lights, Camera, Action: 7 Key Wedding Moments to Capture on Video

Some weddings have professional photographers, others don’t but here are 7 key moments to capture on video. Whatever you choose for your own wedding, however, you’ll want to have a keen eye on the ‘important’ wedding moments. A lot of wedding albums end up with a waterfall of pictures centering on the bride walking down the aisle.

While this is no doubt an important moment, there are lots of other moments going on throughout the day that should be captured as well. Remember that a wedding is a long process. There are elements that occur far in advance of the big day, and you may want to make sure that these are captured. Consider the following capture-worthy moments:

1. Dress shopping. Okay, okay, this doesn’t actually occur during the wedding. But, let’s face it: most women don’t have the chance to play around in gowns potentially worth thousands of dollars all that often. You can do this easily with a camcorder set up in the corner of the dressing room… and then you’ll forever breathe a sigh of relief when you didn’t go with the low-cut polyester number.
2. Bachelor/bachelorette party. Obviously, this one will depend on who your friends are and what you’re doing. If you’re going extremely drunk and extremely raunchy, well, film at your own risk. Parties that are slightly tamer in nature, though, may very well hold some magic moments.
3. The “reveal.” It’s highly recommended that brides and grooms do a reveal to each other before they walk down the aisle. Oftentimes the look on both partners’ faces is one not to be missed, and it allows the bride and groom to spend a private moment together before the wedding, which can help with jitters. Not to mention, if the bride and groom don’t see each other before the ceremony, the “first look” magic is often lost in the procession.
4. Interactions with the most important people of the wedding party. Notify the videographer of parents, siblings, and close friends. Keep a list of these MVP guests. You’re more likely to get impromptu pictures with your loved ones this way.
5. The first dance. Video is best for this. If you’re doing a choreographed dance, make sure that the videographer shoots your feet in the video as well, as that’s where most of the action is! Also make sure the DJ asks everyone to be seated so that everyone will be able to see your wonderful First Dance that you have created!
6. The first kiss. This is one of the wedding’s pinnacles; make sure that it’s captured. It’s a good idea if your photographer can scope out the area beforehand to get a good angle. It’s even better if you have multiple photographers.
7. Pictures from the honeymoon. Again, this is not part of the ceremony itself, but many people regret never capturing the honeymoon on film. There’s sure to be lots of interesting hijinks going on between the newlyweds.

Planning a wedding is a long process. Be sure to document as much as you can! As the years progress, you will be glad these moments were forever captured.