The Anatomy of a Wedding Reception: “Making it Flo”.

The Troy Entertainment DJ’s philosophy on wedding flow and getting the party started!

It’s been said many times “ I want my wedding to have good flow”. This article will provide you with insight on some of the ideas and techniques we utilize to create not only good transitions between formalities but also how we achieve the wanted response from your guests, whether we are trying to move them into a mood, a seat, or onto the dance floor.

Each wedding reception we do can have several components or formalities. Most weddings will start with a bed of music during cocktail hour. For a moment think about the time your guests arrive. They enter the room slightly self-conscious and may go straight to the bar or they may try to locate a friend or group familiar to them. The DJ’s music should be uplifting but at a comfortable level. Music sometimes termed as “elevator music” may be too mundane and not inspiring enough to create what we call a “party mood” in the room. During cocktail hour sound level is extremely important, if kept just right guests will not have to strain to talk to one another.

Now it comes to the time to get your wedding guests into a seat.  For the DJ this is a process. Think about what people are doing at this point in the evening. They are in the middle of conversations and they have had a few cocktails.  You can hear that “buzz in the room”.  For this reason our DJ’s use what we call the “3 times a charm” method of DJ announcements. We repeat the information 3 times in the body of the same announcement. For example, if the DJ just opened up the microphone and said “We would like to have everyone find the seats” Most guests would probably miss the announcement entirely. Using the 3 times method and saying something like “Ladies and gentlemen, please find you tables and your seats, the introductions of the evening are next as soon as we get everyone comfortably seated, so once again let’s find our tables and our seats, thank you”. The first time they notice something is said, the second time they listen, and the third imbeds the information.

During dinner is a good time to play those smooth selections and keep it mellow to provide a comfortable backdrop so your guests can enjoy their meals and converse some more.

Let the dancing begin!  A novice DJ would think all you have to do is play the current hottest song and guests will come running to the floor. How often have you seen that a good song is played by the DJ yet nobody wants to “break the ice” and be first on the floor? This is common but there is an easy fix. First, let’s think about what we do know about the guests at wedding. In general  you have couples in attendance and we know men don’t dance much. They can however be made to feel obligated to dance. Our DJ’s can use several methods or tactics to start the night. We may use “peer pressure” to get them to commit to at least one dance and that’s how we will get are best chance to kick start the party.  Our DJ may say something like “Gentlemen, we want you to take your significant other, be it your wife, girlfriend, or date by the hand and look her in the eyes and ask her for this first slow dance of the evening”.  The minute some other guy does this you can bet most men will circum to the social pressure. Once the dance floor ice is broken you can bet all couples will follow.

Now Our DJ has a good opportunity to launch the party. He has all the couples on the floor. They are within crowd so they don’t feel like everyone is looking at them.  So what will we do next?  We then can pull out that popular song that has mass appeal and get the crowd moving.  We sometimes pass out “party enhancers” right before the transition from the slow song to the first dance hit just to keep the non-dancers engaged. Not everyone can bust a move, but they will waive a wand or shake a LED baton in the air with their friends!

We love talking to people about how we do what we do. If you have and comments or questions please feel free to ask. You are always welcome to see what our clients are saying at their event on our Youtube channel.