Ways to Engage Guests at Your Wedding

Brides are always looking for wedding ideas, especially brides on a budget. Today we’ve enlisted help from Ryan of Savoir Flair Weddings to give us some helpful hints on making your wedding fun and unique. She has also interviewed some of her favorite vendors to get their advice too!

As a wedding planner and designer, I am so concerned with the best places to put each penny into a wedding. You need to have great food, music, photography etc…however, you don’t necessarily NEED to have that one extra hors d’ ouvres, or the champagne toast (have guests toast with whatever they are drinking), or a useless trinket favor. But what you NEED to do is ENGAGE…ENGAGE….ENGAGE.  In my opinion, that is the best use of your money and the main thing that really sets your wedding aside and ensures your guests to walk away happy and saying GOOD things about your wedding.  There are lots of places to engage.

• Start by having a relevant, poignant , important ceremony.
• Next choose unexpected, delicious (not pretentious) food.  Then remember your guests are your GUESTS and let them know in no uncertain terms they are to loosen up, relax, have fun and…engage.

Some of my favorite vendors have been so kind as to share with us the best things they’ve seen that ENGAGE guests.

Advice from Laura Kleinhenz at Docuvitae:

A photo booth or professionally-run portrait station is quite engaging for guests.  It allows everyone to take a breather, step away from dining and dancing, and have a ball making fun pictures with their best friends and family.

From a bride or groom’s perspective, it’s also a great gift to give your guests. At my wedding, we had a film portrait station (which my ten-year-old nephew ran, and I changed the film) and I printed 5×5 prints of each couple and family and we slid them in with our thank you notes so that everyone was surprised to find a beautiful small print inside their thank you card.

Also, at weddings, when parents are there with their kids in tow, guests will often ask me to take a portrait of their family. If we have a portrait station set up, I’ll often recommend that they take advantage of the opportunity and have a portrait made together.  Plus, all the pictures are online, they can log on and order any size prints they’d like!  One couple at a recent wedding ordered a huge 30×40 wall print of their portrait and hung it in their living room (they clearly had a fun sense of humor). I must admit, when they called with the idea, I wasn’t sure this how this would look, but when I saw it printed, I realized it was a really inspired idea! And the print looked awesome at this size. It was like their own movie poster!

Advice from Patrick Belton at 123 DJ’s:

1.) One of the coolest perfomers I’ve seen are the Toots and the Maytals (reggae group) rocking a dance floor at a private estate in Jamaica.

2.) Another amazing sight was the USC Marching Band bringing couple in for their grand entrance.

3.) An In n’ Out burger truck coming in for Midnight snack will be sure to please guests

4.) Old fashioned photo booths are always a lot of fun at weddings.

5.) The Fry Girl is pretty rad. Everybody loves warm doughnuts.

6.) Fireworks shot from a barge offshore at a wedding in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

7.) Vince Vaughn (wasted) grabbing your mic and singing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” at the top of his lungs.

8.) Chinese Dragon and Acrobats performing during dinner.

9.) Brazilian Dancers with Capuioera and percussionists performing and then bringing couple and guests on to dance floor.

10.) 18 person Gospel Choir singing “Oh Happy Day” as my wife and I walked down for the recessional at our wedding. Awesome!