Things that make weddings great
Reflecting on a busy wedding season
Someone told me once that at a wedding, something should happen every 7 minutes to keep the guests engaged. A speech could start, or the course of a meal could come out, or the band could start playing. I love little rules of thumb like this, and I find the design of events really fascinating.
I've been to a lot of weddings recently and wanted to record some of the things that have made them great from my perspective.
Having a "wow" factor that guests who don’t know each other can talk about. When you bring together a group of people who don’t know each other, it is helpful to give them things to comment on. It brings people together and gives them something in common. The clearest example of this I can think of was a wedding where they had plates made of ice for one of the courses: it was remarkable and people had to comment on it, which led to strangers interacting more than they would have otherwise.
Making the dance floor small and enclosed. This matters much more than I realized. If you have a wedding of 50 people, and in one of them the dance floor is large and has no real boundaries, it will feel a bit awkward because everyone is too spaced out and people will be inhibited. If, however, you close in the dance floor (perhaps by putting it outside under a tent), it feels much more alive and energizing and people will dance more freely.
Speeches matter a lot. Speeches set the tone at a wedding and are among its most memorable parts. I think that having people give speeches who are excited about doing so shines through (and if I had it my way people would not read their speeches from a phone, but instead write it on paper. It looks better).
Couples sharing vows they wrote themselves is extremely meaningful. The chance to get to know more deeply the couple’s story in their own words has been memorable to me.
Having a large variety of food (and less of each) is better. People will comment on the food, and having lots of types of food gives people more things to talk about, and more things to do during lulls in activity.
Mixing guests at the welcome party is good. Having people sit at tables outside of their groups during a welcome party or rehearsal dinner the day before a wedding means they will know more people during the actual wedding day and can mingle more easily during the weekend.
Having written these out, from my perspective the things to optimize for when designing the guest experience for an event like this are
Make it easy for people to meet new people, and give them interesting things to talk about with each other
Give the guests a meaningful glimpse into your relationship through speeches or the ceremony.
But also… all of these weddings weren’t about me! They were about the people getting married. So that is really the most important thing to optimize for.
If you find this sort of thing interesting, I highly recommend the book The Art of Gathering (which I have already recommended, probably several times, to many of you). It goes into detail about the things that make gatherings succeed or fail.