There is no requirement that brides 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 event planning entertained until the reception begins. Here are a few options, some tradition, some not so, but still fun.
There are a number of elements that when incorporated into an event planners help to make it a winner from the point of publicity through that very late hour when the last guests are finally told they really have to leave. These elements are the same whether it's a casino night, clambake, or barnyard ho-down. These are the elements that will often make or break your event.
To a large extent, these elements are the same when planning for exhibitions when your success is dependent on making folks stop at your exhibit out of the scores of others competing for their attention. After all, we all know the feeling of manning a booth in which the only people in it are the spillover from the adjacent booth, don't we?
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 decoration ideas. 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.
magine walking into the site of your event and finding hay all over the floor... or sand... or discarded peanut shells. The setting you create is what allows you to take your guests to somewhere they'll find enchanting---simply because it's so different than the setting they left when coming into the room. Elements like coconut trees, hay lofts, and real live barbeque pits are all worth they're weight in gold when combined with food, activities, and entertainment that tie in with the theme!
Settings which provide for photo-opportunities... the seven-foot tiki, Paul Bunyan's stool, or a blackjack dealer's uniform and table are all elements that encourage your guests to pose for pictures within your event. This is your best advertising for future event-planning contracts and will delight your guests at the same time.
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