This past Sunday morning and afternoon I worked at Danada House in Wheaton, IL. The wedding was for friends of the family, Chris and Michelle Griffiths, and was attended by about 80 people. The ceremony was outside at 10:30am, followed by an hour for cocktails in the house, then lunch and dancing till 3pm in the pavillion. If you are doing the math, you’ll see that the total time from start to finish was 4 1/2 hours. This might sound like not enough time, but I believe it to be the perfect length for a daytime wedding. Why? Because people don’t usually drink or dance as much during the day, especially if there is a lot of natural light in the room.
Group Father Daughter Dance
If you have three hours set aside for dancing, and you have an evening reception, that’s normal and shouldn’t be a problem to keep the dancefloor filled. But for an afternoon wedding, 3 hours of dancing can be way too long, ending up with a painfully empty dancefloor. Not exactly the wedding of your dreams…..
When I met with Chris and Michelle to go over final details, we discussed strategies I would use to keep the reception fun. My advice was to go for a lot of interaction. It’s possible to interact continuously for an hour and a half, and that’s nearly what I did. For the Dad/Daughter dance, we began with Michelle and her Dad, then invited Chris and his daughter Jenna, then all the dads and daughters in the room. That works out for a lot of different reasons.
1) Most dads really aren’t comfortable going solo on the dancefloor, especially for a long song.
2) Your Photographer gets lots of pictures of Dads and Daughters dancing . These are pictures that people will actually order.
3) We keep your guests busy, participating instead of watching.
4) As a dad, it is one of lifes greatest pleasures to dance with your daughter. I encourage everyone to share their parent dances this way.
Other interactive things we did were - Pull the name out of the hat for Bride and Groom kissing, The dollar dance, Anniversary countdown dance, electric slide, battle of the soxes game, YMCA, Party Train, bouquet and garter. The dancefloor was busy for the entire time and the reception was a success. The caterer took my card and said that was one of the best daytime weddings he had ever seen. Mission accomplished…..
Ameritune DJs and Video (630) 372-TUNE (8863) for more insider tips, Chicago DJ Blog