How to entertain wedding guests without hiring anyone
Bands, magicians and caricaturists are expensive. What actually keeps a room happy, and what you can do with a projector and a bit of planning.
Wedding entertainment budgets have a way of becoming the second-biggest line after catering. A band, a magician working the tables, a caricaturist, a photo booth with an attendant — it adds up fast, and none of it is load-bearing.
Here is what actually determines whether people enjoy themselves, roughly in order of how much it matters.
1. Whether they can hear each other
The single most common complaint about weddings is that the music during dinner was too loud to talk over. Your guests are mostly there to see each other. Background music at conversation volume is not a compromise, it is the correct setting.
2. Whether they know anyone at their table
One table of strangers is the fastest way to produce guests who leave early. Seat every group with at least one connection, and if you must have a mixed table, seat your most sociable friends there deliberately.
3. Whether they are fed and watered
Late food at ten o'clock costs a fraction of a band and is remembered far more fondly. So is water on the tables that somebody actually refills.
4. Whether there is something to do in the gaps
This is where the hired entertainment is supposed to help, and where it often does not: a magician can only be at one table at a time, and a photo booth develops a queue.
The alternative is something everyone can do at once, from their seat, on the phone already in their pocket. A projector and a shared activity costs a fraction of a performer and scales to any number of guests.
That is exactly what we built. Try it free with your own photo. Try it free →
5. Whether the dance floor starts well
The first three songs after your first dance decide the night. They should be songs your guests know, not songs you want to be the kind of person who likes. Save those for later, when nobody is deciding whether to sit down.
What you can skip
- Favours. They are left on the table. Every time
- A second photographer, unless the venue is genuinely large
- Elaborate centrepieces tall enough to block the people opposite
- A formal receiving line, which eats forty minutes and exhausts you
Nobody has ever gone home from a wedding disappointed by the favours. They go home remembering whether they had a good time at their table.