How Will Your Wedding Be Experienced?

What kind of experience will you, your friends and family have?

A fun experience? A unique experience? A memorable experience? How ’bout: exciting, energetic and interactive, or: romantic, intimate and classy? Peter Merry’s book, The Best Wedding Reception…Ever! is all about how to create an unforgettably fun celebration. Here’s a quote from the book’s introduction: “Wedding receptions should be more than just occasions for fancy decorations, beautiful flowers, elegant formalwear, and delicious food. Entertainment is the primary component that will make your wedding reception everything you dreamed it would be. A wedding reception plan that fails to acknowledge the crucial role that the entertainment plays in keeping the guests involved, interested, and enjoying themselves can quickly result in a tedious and mundane experience.”

I feel this formula will yield a truly remarkable wedding experience:

Your Priorities + Your Personal Style = The Experience of Your Wedding!

Your Priorities

Peter Merry asks, “If you could only choose three words to describe your dream reception…WHAT 3 WORDS would you choose?” When you select these words, you will be accomplishing more to clarify your overall approach to planning your special day than anything else. These three adjectives will sum up your priorities, and once you’ve chosen them, all of your wedding plans will come more clearly into focus. From there, your decisions for everything, from the appearance of your wedding party and the decor of your reception site, to what your guests will actually do during the festivities, can be considered in the light of how these decisions will contribute to the realization of your priorities.

Here’s a list of adjectives. Naturally, you can add any others you want:
• Fun, • Interactive, • Entertaining, • Energetic, • Lively, • Exciting, • Humorous, • Memorable, • Unique, • Personal, • Intimate, • Romantic, • Emotional, • Sentimental, • Stress-free, • Carefree, • Well-organized, • Relaxed, • Comfortable, • Smooth-flowing, • Elegant, • Classy, • Formal, • Traditional.

How you will sum up your priorities will determine not only your wedding’s ambiance, but also what Special Activities you might choose to feature as part of your festivities. Again, these choices are in accordance with your personal style. See, it’s your personality and taste that influences not only what happens during your wedding, but also how, in what way, and when it is presented.

Your Personal Style

What can be done to make your wedding uniquely you? Here is where your personality and style enter into the picture. It’s your personal style that will define how and in what way each of your priorities will be experienced. Creatively incorporating what you think would be “fun” (or any of the other above-listed adjectives), into your festivities in accordance with your personal style, is what significantly contributes to the kind of experience you want your guests to have during your wedding celebration. “Think about what gets you excited, and find ways to bring that into your celebration, and your guests will love it just as much as you will.”

Different Kinds of FUN Yield an Array of Different Experiences

The list of adjectives presented is very broad, and many overlap. The first adjective listed is “fun.” Though they have different connotations, “fun” and “entertaining” are practically synonymous, both pertaining to “amusement” and “enjoyment.” “Fun” can easily be seen as an umbrella for the whole list. For example, “fun” can be “exciting,” and “fun” can be “romantic.” Both kinds of fun can be included during various parts of your reception, and each give rise to their own repertoire of special activities. Not that I’m suggesting this, but just as an example: a highly-entertaining, energetic, and well-executed dance routine performed by the groomsman to M.C. Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” would be an exciting form of fun. Imagine the delight of the wedding guests if the groom was to join them, entering the scene, center stage. Further imagine how an unexpected presentation by the groom of a rose to his new bride right before they commence their first dance would be experienced as a romantic form of fun. This experience could be enhanced even more if, during the dance’s introduction, there were surprise, prerecorded voice-overs, testimonies of love from the groom to his wife and from the bride to her husband, expressing their heartfelt joy. What a romantic memorable moment enjoyed by everyone who witnesses this sentimental gesture.

Significant Generalities

When it comes to your decor, it’s very possible I can help with a variety of creative ideas for lighting. But, when it comes to what happens during your celebration, and how much your friends and family participate and feel included, this is where planning and presenting everything from an entertainment standpoint is so necessary. Nothing will contribute more to how your reception will be remembered as much as your wedding entertainment. Remember, it’s your wedding’s entertainment that sets the tone of your reception, keeps your agenda flowing smoothly, and maintains the interest of your guests. It’s your wedding’s entertainment that assures whether or not your guests will have a wonderful time, enjoy themselves, and continue to party, or get bored, become restless, and leave early.

Your reception is a series of events that all happen in sequence. In order to assure everyone has a great time for the duration of your celebration, these events need to happen in a progression that will keep your guests entertained the whole time. “That, by nature, makes your reception an entertainment driven event.*” When this is recognized, you are compelled to look at every aspect of your reception from an entertainment point of view. Will what is happening during your reception detract from the entertainment value of your wedding celebration, or will it add to it. Every detail of your reception’s agenda needs to be addressed in this fashion. When the planning of your reception’s agenda is approached in this fashion, your wedding celebration can be like a fun-filled play, unfolding before the eyes and ears of family and friends—a celebration of love, marriage and life.

*Planning The Perfect Wedding Reception…the origin of TBWR..E! from July of 1999