Dance Floor Tip #1. Get on the dance floor. The bride and groom on the dance floor is the single best way to energize the dance floor. You are the center of the party, and everything revolves around you. That doesn’t mean that you need to be dancing all night, but the more you dance, the more energized the floor will be. The same goes for your wedding party as well. If the bride, groom, and wedding party all shy away from the dance floor, you can count on the dancing never gaining a critical mass. Regarding your bridal party, if you are choosing fun people, who are genuinely excited for your big day, getting them to dance should not be a problem.
Dance Floor Tip #2. Cut the cake before the dancing begins. It’s okay to stop the dancing once for the bouquet/garter toss, but don’t kill the mood yet again for the cake cutting. A major trend in wedding planning now is to cut the cake before the dancing begins. This is a fantastic idea because trying to start and stop the dancing too many times will kill the party. Serve the cake, then after some digestion has occurred (perhaps the first dances will be a good time for guests to digest dinner/cake) then let the dancing begin.
Dance Floor Tip #3. Don’t necessarily shy away from “cliche” dance songs such as the Cha Cha Slide, The Wobble, or the YMCA. Many of the brides and grooms we talk to hate these songs. And if I’m honest, I would never listen to these songs in my car or at home. But, nobody can deny that they are fun to dance to and guests love them.This is not a request to play songs you hate at your wedding. But, if playing one or two “played out” wedding songs won’t kill you, consider playing The Casper Slide, Wobble, or even the YMCA. These will fill your dance floor, and they are great for guests who don’t know how to dance, as the song’s themselves instruct the participants in how to dance. We at Kaleidoscope never play these songs without the bride and groom requesting them, but it’s not a bad idea to include one or two at your wedding.
Dance Floor Tip #4. Don’t just request songs that you want to dance to. Give your DJ a handful of songs that each set of parents are guaranteed to dance to. Too many couples think only of their own musical preferences when selecting Wedding Song Requests. But, if your goal is to give all of your guests a great time, consider asking each of your parents for songs that they want to hear. You can filter through the song names that they give you, but if you get 10 songs that your parents and their friends will specifically dance to, you are in great shape!
Dance Floor Tip #5. Use a creative way to get all of your guests on the floor, such as the Snowball Dance, or invite all guests to join the bridal party during the “Bridal Party Dance.” The Snowball Dance is a very creative option to pack your dance floor at the beginning of the night. The way that it works is a small group of dancers (i.e. the bridal party) dance to a song, then the DJ stops the music, and when he/she does that, all of the dancers yell, “snowball.” At that point, each of the dancers grabs one guest (doubling the amount of dancers on the floor) and continue the dance. 20 or 25 seconds later, the DJ again pauses the music, at which point all of the guests yell “Snowball” and each grab another guest. This continues until literally everybody is on the dance floor. We did this last weekend at the MillCreek Barn and literally had around 200 people on the dance floor.
Another method is to simply invite everybody onto the dance floor halfway through the Bridal Party dance or the Mother/Son dance. This will typically be to a slow song, so a large number of people will make their way onto the dance floor.
What is crucial in both of these methods is the next song. The next song MUST be a floor-filler. It must be a well known “can’t miss” song. Any of these songs will work. Both of these methods will loosen up the guests and energize the dance floor from the very beginning of the night.
Dance Floor Tip #6. Make sure your dinner music builds up in energy toward the end of dinner, so guests are wired and ready to dance. This is important! Don’t let your dinner music be slow and melancholy all night. At first, music can be slow and sentimental, but by the end of the dinner music, the songs need to be fast and energetic. Not so fast that guests think the dancing has already begun. But instead, a song like Marry Me by Jason Derulo, or Drops of Jupiter by Train.
If guests are amped up from the dinner music, they are much more likely to get on the floor to dance during the reception.
For more music tips, check out our entire Rustic Wedding Music Playlist.
Happy Planning!