Bride and Groom refuse to dance at reception
chinchilla_queen
My daughter is having a very small wedding (32 guests) on Nov. 1st. We're holding it in the charming party room of a restaurant here in Austin. To save money, the music will come from the bride's ipod through the venue's speakers. It's a seated dinner. My daughter just informed me that her fiance absolutely refuses to dance, and that's fine with her because she thinks those first dances are corny and that dancing with ones father is yukky. My question is what happens after dinner? There's no DJ or master of ceremonies to move things along. Won't people expect dancing? It just seems so awkward with neither the bride nor groom participating. Maybe this is a situation that will simply take care of itself when the time comes....
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Your last sentence answers your question.
I really don't think anyone will "expect" dancing (not that it matters even if they do) at a reception for 32 at a restaurant anyway. I wouldn't. Is there even a dance floor? With only 32, you could have wonderful toasts and family stories. I think that would be even nicer than dancing.
There's an area that could be used for dancing, but what you wrote is extremely sensible. Thank you!
When the reception is small and held at a restaurant, dancing rarely occurs. After dinner they will cut their cake and you can have toasts and allow guests to visit with one another, as Gellchom mentioned. You may want to ask someone to serve as an MC (maybe the best man) to direct people's attention to the cake cutting and to facilitate the toasts. He wouldn't be expected to say much, but he can guide things. Anyone who has a good voice (I assume there will be no microphone) and who doesn't mind speaking in public can serve as MC.
As a wedding planner, I find that restaurants don't expect groups to stay as long as you might if you were having the dinner at a hotel or event center, so a shorter reception works well at a place like that. If you were to have dancing and stay for several hours, the restaurant might not be too happy.
It sounds like a relaxed family time - my kind of wedding.
If the bride's parents are the hosts of the wedding, it is nice to hear from one of them to thank everyone for coming to share their special day. Then say something about the lovely couple, either a special memory, or what the future promises, or some family story.
I remember the story my DH planned to share -- when we knew this was a serious romance. DD came home from San Francisco for Thanksgiving to tell us about this young man she had met in September. She told the story of her group bar hopping in the city one night and meeting up with other friends. She discovered that everyone else had had their dinner, but she had not. She was worried how to get some food as the bar did not serve food, so our now son-in-law suggested they go down the street and get her a pizza. But she was worried that everyone else would hop on to the next bar, and he assured her that they would still be there when they got back. So there they sat at the pizza parlor at a table just large enough to hold the pizza pan and not her drink. Thus he held her coke for her as she ate her pizza and sipped the coke. I knew as soon as I heard this story that this was her Mr. Wonderful.
Then the groom's father got up and told a darling story about his son as a boy -- how he was good at catching frogs and none ever got away from him. He tied it into catching a wonderful girl.
My sister held her reception in a private room in a lovely French restaurant. The only music was provided by a woman playing the harp. It was all sit-down except for the toasting, no dancing. It was a wonderful evening following a beautiful wedding.
It's their wedding. Let them do what makes them happy. Guests go with the flow.
I was gonna say if somebody wanted to dance to just get up and do it lol everybody could just mingle otherwise i mean just because they don't want a "first dance" where it's just them and the bridal party doesn't mean they won't dance at ALL