5 Simple things your wedding guests won’t forget

Your heart and soul will be poured into your wedding, you will spend so much time planning it that you will want the special day to be remembered forever and for your guests to go away talking about it (in a good way of course). Here are 5 things you can do that your guests will appreciate and remember how you went the extra mile to help enhance their time at your wedding.

Make entertainment packs for children

If you have guests attending with young children they may be worried about keeping them entertained throughout the day and keeping them distracted so they don’t kick up a fuss. Creating entertainment packs for the children will go a long way with making the children feeling special and creating a bit of fun for them, this will also allow the parents to relax and be more involved in the antics of the day. The packs can be pre placed at their table for the wedding breakfast, you could name them to make the children feel more special.

I would recommend making personalised packs to suit the needs of each individual child, for example there might be a wide range in children’s ages so they wouldn’t all benefit from the same pack. Depending on the age of the children in the packs you could include things like colourings book, crayons, mini jigsaw puzzles and an I spy game where they get a disposable camera and have to get snaps of a list of things that you have made for them. For example a photo with the bride, of the wedding cake and of someone with a red dress.

Bonus Tip: If you have children yourself and you have a number of children attending the wedding it may be beneficial to look into hiring a childminder to come to the wedding and watch over the children during the day and early evening before. 

Include guest requests in the evening reception

Allow your guests to make a request for a song during the evening reception, this will make them feel more involved and it will encourage them to join the dance floor when their song comes on if they aren’t already dancing. Guests will appreciate this as it shows you are trying to include them and make sure they have a good time. There are a couple of ways to do this, you can either let your DJ know that you would like to accept guests requests on the evening or if you have your wedding DJ booked with us here at Jackstar Weddings you will have access to your own playlist before the wedding. There is a section on there which allows you to add guests requests, this way your DJ can make sure they have all the tracks ready for the evening reception.

Arrange transport for your guests

If you have guests staying at the same hotel, arrange a coach to bring them at the same time to the ceremony and take them back at the end of the night. This is sure to be appreciated by your guests as it will take the worry away from them from either having to find a local taxi company and maybe have to wait a while for it to arrive, or even having to not have a celebratory drink so they can drive. If your guests are not staying at the same hotel you could arrange for someone, maybe a member of staff from your venue to be available at the end of the night to call and arrange taxis for your guests. This will help to make sure this runs smoothly.

Consider your guests when planning your itinerary

It is easy to get carried away when planning your itinerary for the wedding day to make it jam packed with different things going on and trying to maximise the day, this is understandable however sometimes it is the simple things that your guests will remember. The truth is your guests will remember if they were hungry and had to wait around for hours before they sat down for the wedding breakfast. The drinks reception after the ceremony is often the longest time your guests have to wait around, as you have to ensure there is enough time for your official photographs.

One way to keep this time down is to speak to your photographer and try to keep this as short as possible but without jeopardising the quality of your photos. The most common time for a drinks reception is around 1 hour and 30 minutes, depending on your ceremony time this is where your guests can start to get hungry. If you have a 12pm or 1pm ceremony the chances are your guests won’t have had time for lunch before the ceremony, meaning if they then don’t start to eat the meal until 3:30pm their stomachs will be rumbling. A great way to deal with this is to have Canapes in this time to tide your guests over, it’s also a nice idea to have drinks available for your guests during this time too.

Include information on local hotels in your invitations

Many of your guests may not be local, they may be travelling a fair distance to come to your big day. Because of this they will require a hotel room, as they are not local they won’t know the best hotels to stay at in terms of location, price and standards. It will be a nice touch for your guests if you do some research into this and include this information on your invitations, depending on the number of your guests requiring a hotel it may be a good idea to include three hotels in price order.

Another tip on this would be if there is a particular hotel that is close to your venue and you believe would work well for your guests, you could contact the hotel yourself and see if they could give you a discounted group booking rate if you book a large group of rooms with them. If they are able to do this it will also work well for you in terms of arranging transport as discussed in my previous point about arranging coaches for your guests.

Small touches make a big difference

In conclusion there are a number of things you can plan and put in place that your guests will appreciate and not forget and they can be simple. These examples just show you that it really can be the simple things that mean a lot to your guests and will help to create only fond memories of your day.