After many years of hosting successful wedding receptions in Essex, Suffolk and all over the UK, I’ve listed below some useful tips and observations to ensure that your wedding disco is totally memorable!
Your Wedding Venue
It’s incredible that some couples overlook the ‘party worthiness’ of their wedding venue, in favour of architectural beauty and daytime photo opportunities. Many glamorous country houses and historic mansions are not laid out in a sympathetic way conducive to a great party atmosphere. Separate bar areas that are a short hike from the room where the DJ is situated are quite common, and makes it really difficult to get everyone together for the important moments like The First Dance or the big finale. Naturally, the bar area is where people meet, greet and chat and if this is not within earshot of the DJ and the dance floor, your party may end up a little flat.
The size of your wedding reception function suite is also very important. Take advice from the venue’s wedding planner on guest numbers as they definitely know best, however be aware that they may also have an agenda to fill the date with any sized party. Purely from a wedding DJ’s perspective, smaller rooms are more intimate and it obviously takes less people to look busy on the dance floor, which in turn attracts more to join in. The opposite can be said of big, cavernous rooms, such as barns and great halls if you only have a small number of guests. It’s quite daunting for small groups of guests to strut their stuff in such a big area! They can feel very exposed! Some venues can cleverly reduce their big function suites with room dividers to suit your number of guests. Ask them if this can be done…it will certainly help create a more intimate atmosphere.
Turn Off The Lights!
Since about 2010, there has been an upsurge in the usage of American-style room decor for wedding discos. The main feature in question are the large illuminated letters adjacent to the dance floor, often spelling out ‘L-O-V-E’ or the happy couple’s names. They are often over 1m high and sometimes up to 5m wide! As good as this looks for the First Dance, it can be quite detrimental for the rest of the evening if they are not dimmed or turned off. It’s quite well established that more folk will dance the darker the room gets.
Say NO to Balloons
This is not a regular thing that I see (it’s far more likely at a kids party or a birthday celebration), but occasionally when we set up, I find the entire floor filled with loose balloons. It can look very pretty….until the kids arrive! The venue turns from a glamorous and romantic setting into a children’s ballpit! And it’s often quite difficult to clear the area (of balloons and kids!) for the First Dance.
Timing is Everything!
One aspect of the wedding reception that is always asked by my clients is, “What time is best for the First Dance?” Depending upon many elements (the wedding breakfast, sunset photoshoots, evening guests arriving) the vast majority of my wedding reception discos hold the First Dance at 8pm. It’s the perfect time to suit almost everyone on the day….the majority of evening guests will be there, the venue staff would’ve rearranged the function suite for the party, and most importantly the guests will be ready to dance too! I’ve been asked many times to host the First Dance earlier, but instead of being the official start to proceedings on the floor, most find it too early to let their hair down.
Another little tip is not to be tempted by a music finish later than midnight. As a DJ, I love playing into the small hours in a heaving nightclub, all the revellers with their arms aloft and singing at the top of their voices….but this is a wedding reception, where some of the guests have been upright since 6.00am and they’re truly flagging as midnight approaches. It’s best to go out on a high than to fizzle and die!
The Bride Piper
This is a phrase I coined some years ago, and it’s still relevant now. The one sure way to attract more people to the dance floor at a wedding party is to get the bride involved! There must be some kind of unwritten code that states no bride shall enter into a dance routine or shimmy without at least six friends joining her! So if you have a quite conservative group of guests and your wedding DJ is doing his best without much reaction, it’s time to unleash the bride upon the floor and the rest will follow!
Live Music
Please, please, please book a wedding DJ alongside your live act (even if it’s not me, you will need one)! Many couples opt for live music and, due to the expense of the band, cannot stretch to a DJ as well. Often the band are able to play a Spotify list in the intervals but that’s where all the party energy is completely lost. I’ve been a guest at weddings where the band finish their set and walk offstage for a break leaving us to listen to low-level background music. Not only helping to keep the energy going, having a DJ is also a fabulous failsafe should anything happen to the band on the night. It’s rare, but I’ve been witness to missing drummers (and drum kits), singers with tonsillitis and on one occasion, a band so self-indulgent that the Best Man threw them offstage after 20 minutes!
And Finally… For best results, book a wedding DJ you can totally trust and leave them to command the dance floor in the best way they know how. Don’t send them swathes of track lists with strict demands on what to play and when…that simply serves to inhibit their talents and their experience of filling dance floors. As I have stated many times in my blog history, no-one can pre-judge a wedding reception’s musical journey, simply due to the diverse demographic of its guests.
I really hope that my honest observations above, taken from over 35 years as an Essex wedding DJ, help you in some way plan your ultimate wedding party!
