How to get guests to dance at your wedding

Fill Your Dancefloor

And make your DJ/band/photographer super happy

Psst! I have a secret to tell you about getting people to join you on your wedding dance floor - and stay for more than one song. I’ve seen so many dance floors empty immediately after the first dance, and not pick up again for an hour or two later, but it doesn’t have to be that way. So what’s the secret? What can you engineer, and what can you avoid?

It might go by quickly, but a wedding day is a long day

Your typical wedding timeline looks like this - wedding ceremony, confetti, a couple of hours of time to fill (photos, games, a few drinks and canapés happen here), speeches, food, maybe more photos, first dance. That’s a long, emotional day complete with a hearty meal washed down with some booze, so it can be tough to pep folks up enough to get them to step on the dance floor. The path to a full dance floor is beset with many obstacles, so let’s chat about those and how to gracefully sidestep/completely bulldoze through them.

Pick your first three songs super carefully

Go and eat a three course meal and then listen to these three songs - At Last, YMCA, and Mr Brightside. How do you feel? Do you want to dance? No? Me neither! Chances are most of your guests will feel the same way, so consider this when you’re choosing the first few songs - these are the ones that are going to bring your mates to the dance floor and convince them to stay.

Get a (really good) band

A good band hates playing to no one, and I’ve known lead singers go round the crowd and coaxing folks to dance. It sounds a bit much but actually, it worked really well. A band that grabs people’s attention (literally and figuratively) is the perfect way to get everyone up and dancing. It’s worth remembering that good bands play songs that everyone knows, so they should want to know a proper setlist rather than just trying to get your vibe and doing their own thing.

For weddings around the Midlands and North of England, I really recommend the following bands:

Fraudio | Soul Blaster

A ceilidh in full flow at Stock Farm in Altrincham

Ceilidh, anyone?

Chances are if you’re celebrating any Gaelic heritage on your wedding day then you’ve probably already considered having a Ceilidh. It’s a part of the evening when absolutely everyone gets up to dance, and if you’ve been to a wedding with a Ceilidh you might be thinking if you can get away with one at your wedding. Personally I’d err on the side of not appropriating a heritage that’s different to the one you grew up with, but I think there are some key elements you can borrow from and adapt. A live folk or brass band will always grab the attention of your guests by creating a fun and inviting atmosphere, and people will dance in a way they don’t normally. They will be silly, they’ll play up for the camera, they’ll have a genuinely good time.

Jess and Fleur’s first dance outdoors at North Sands in Devon

Make the space just right

So often a wedding dancefloor is a tiny square of tiles crammed into the bottom of a marquee between a DJ booth and tables. The ideal dancefloor space can hold a few dozen people, with space around the sides for a crowd to gather. You want people to feel like included, but that they can slip away to the bar and come back without having to shuffle loads of other people/chairs out of the way. If your space is too small you’ll limit the number of people who can go on it at once, and if it’s too big people will feel lost!

The Perfect Playlist

If your budget or space can’t accommodate a band or DJ, but you still want to get everyone up and dancing, there’s always good old Spotify. Mixtape aficionados will know there’s an art to making a playlist - especially one that might have to see you through 4ish hours. A great way to make sure everyone dances at some point is to tailor your playlist to your guests, so there’s something for everyone. This is exactly what my husband and I did for our wedding, and it was great! We’re very eclectic in our tastes, so we started off with quite bouncy songs that most people know, then we had a disco section followed by a punk section, before circling back to britpop and indie tunes that all of our guests could move to. The result was that we got to dance with most people at some stage of the evening, and there was always someone enjoying themselves on the dance floor.

Pizza always goes down well between dances

That evening food? Time it wisely

Here’s a scenario I see time after time at weddings: The couple have their first dance at 8pm. They’re joined on the dance floor for 10 minutes by most people. Then the evening food comes out. Buffets, pizza trucks, fish and chips, bacon sarnies, they all go down extremely well after a bit of a boogie. But they all mean people take a break from dancing. This is something you just have to be prepared for if you’re having food in the evening, so please try to hold off on the evening food until your band has finished playing their first set. Then you have a natural break for everyone to refuel and keep on going well into the night.A bit of a refuel early on can mean people last longer into the night.

I hope this has helped you plan the evening section of your wedding day. If you’re looking for a fun and easy-going photographer to capture whatever madcap schemes you’re cooking up, feel free to get in touch.