What makes a great wedding? It’s not all about the venue, the room décor or the food, and while the wedding entertainment is important it isn’t the only factor to consider when creating a fabulous atmosphere. The people who attend are what help to make a wedding great. Your guest list is no doubt a combination of family, couples and single friends all intent on giving you a day to remember; much the same as you want to give them a remarkable day they will treasure too.
Rather like mixing two different families, you both have different sets of friends (some being single and others being in couples) to combine. Normally, the bride and groom share some mutual friends, but there are family friends, childhood friends, university and work friends to take into account. With all these different types of people coming together, it can seem concerning trying to ensure everyone has a great time and finds someone to interact with. In this article, we’ll share our ideas for mingling your single friends on our wedding day.
One thing you can do is organise group transport from the ceremony to the wedding party venue if it is not in the same place, a decorated double decker bus is great fun so look into this as an option. Similarly, you can organise mini-buses to the wedding ceremony location from hotels for out of town guests, which will remove the pressure of travelling alone. Alternatively, consider asking your guests to carpool with one another. This option is environmentally-friendly and helps to break the ice between guests meeting one another for the first time.
For alternative reception entertainment your guests will love, we suggest a caricaturist. Caricaturists provide fun entertainment and fabulous talking points; it’s amazing how many crowds an artist gathers! When it comes to working out the reception table plan, it’s wise to put single friends who already know one another together, regardless of their relationship status! There may be a few people you need to separate or carefully seat so you can feel comfortable that they will have a wonderful time too.
It’s a good idea not to leave one person not knowing anyone on a table full of friends unless you feel absolutely confident that they are happy to be sat with new people and they can “hold their own”. Sometimes, these situations are unavoidable in which case; sit them with like-minded people or people you think they will definitely have things in common with. Why not add in a magician to your entertainment to travel from table to table? Especially if you have a table of single friends, it gives everyone on the table something to focus on and talk about, bringing the whole group together. Equally, with a fantastic band for a wedding encouraging everyone onto the dance floor to celebrate the nuptials, friends will gravitate together especially when the bride and groom are involved.
As a note, don’t be too concerned about keeping all the tables uniform in terms of numbers. It doesn’t matter if some tables are larger than others particularly if you want to keep certain single friends together, you can always have different table sizes and shapes.
You could set your single friends and friends in a couple a fun to do task on the day! We’ve seen many brides and grooms organise a treasure hunt complete with funny wedding-related clues and a prize for the winners. Friends are divided into 2 or 3 teams which encourages people to get to know each other in an informal way and the winners are announced after the speeches.
Here’s another lovely idea we were told about, particularly if you do have an eclectic mix of single friends that don’t know each other. Soon to be newlyweds put together a small pamphlet with a snippet of interesting information about each of their single friends to act as conversation starters. This was especially to encourage people to speak to everyone. It really did work, by the end of the wedding; there was a phenomenal atmosphere amongst those who had previously been strangers to each other.
Another suggestion is to get your single friends to upload images of your wedding during the proceedings. So, email your single friends a few days before your nuptials and let them know you have created an account with a wedding pictures app and get them to snap away as they see fit. Everyone will be able to view the images instantly, which makes it another easy conversation starter.
Finally, we see weddings where tables are moved away when the wedding band arrives and the dancing starts. Many event organisers merge tables together, another superb way of ensuring single friends meet others and mingle. We’ve even been lucky enough to witness some budding romances during the evening!
Do remember, that once the wedding entertainment and dancing starts and people start to gravitate to the dance floor, the atmosphere moves to another level! Inhibitions are lost, people start to automatically mingle with each other and the most unlikely friends tend to come together. If you thought you might have to lend a hand in mingling your single friends, you could well be proved wrong when they are enjoying themselves so much. Even the most reserved of guests tends to loosen up after a couple of glasses of champagne and the sounds of Let Me Entertain You bellowing from the speakers!
This article was written by a representative of Warble Entertainment.
