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Wedding Reception Order and Planning From Entrance to End of the Banquet
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After
the ceremony at the church or registry office, the
bride and groom will generally have their wedding
photographs taken, and the
guest will begin to proceed to the wedding reception. By then, the
person organizing the
reception should be checking that everything is progressing
according to plan and that all guests are taken care of. The
tables will have to be
strategically arranged, with a card placed on each table
indicating the names of the families to be sat at each place.
A beautiful garden wedding reception area in the philippines.Photo by chicagurl
The
Wedding Banquet
After
the wedding itself, whether it be a civil or religious church
ceremony, the celebration of a banquet usually
takes place, often with an initial aperitif
(if economies
allow it). The guests arrive and wait for the bride and groom
before beginning their meal.
Don't forget to ensure
that the car park has
ample space
to accommodate all the guests' cars, and the coat closet is large
enough for everyone's coats, as well as those of the
band who will be performing the music. The organizer should also have a
good system to inform the band as soon as the newlyweds
enter the hall.
The musicians will
be at the heart of the ambience as the couple
arrive, and they
must know beforehand which piece of music has been selected
for the
bride and groom's entrance.
Seating
at the Wedding Banquet
The order of the guests
in the tables can organized in one of three different ways.
The
first method is to allow completely free seating of guests.
They
choose with whom to sit and where to sit. This can,
however, give rise
to situations where certain people are a
little isolated by not having
arrived early enough to sit with those they would have preferred.
Secondly
there is the card system, where guests have a
reserved seat,
indicated
by way of a card placed on the table by the seat that has been reserved
for
them. The bride and groom must use a lot of planning
to make
all tables organized in such a way that will avoid
problems.
The
third option is for guests to have a table reserved
but not an individual seat in particular. The choice of the actual seat
on the reserved table is made by each guest themself. In this case and
also the previous one (seat reservations), mainly if there are
many
guests, a
plan is usually placed by the entrance to the banquet hall,
indicating the location of the tables and the table
numbers.
If there are children
attending, you may wish to group them all together and even
provide a special child's menu for them.
Eating
Even
if there are plates with small snacks already served, like sausages on
sticks, etiquette dictates that the guests should not begin snacking on
these until the newly married couple arrive, sit down and start to eat.
The table where the bride and groom sit is called the Head Table or
Presidential Table. Also on the head table the father of the
bride, mother of the groom, and following custom or
preference their spouses and some close relatives like the
grandparents. If
the priest also is invited, he also sits at the presidential table.
Try not to
scrimp on the number of waiters and waitresses at the
banquet. Remember that there must
be sufficient staff to efficiently
take care of the guests' needs, and to ensure that all guest are served
promptly with none left with cold meals due to the time taken to get
everyone's plate to them.
The presidential
table is always served first, followed by the rest of the
tables. In weddings with many guests it is not necessary to wait for
every single table to be served before starting to
eat. You
can simply begin eating when all the guests sat at your
particular table have been served.
Music during the meal
must be soft and gentle.
The soup, salad
or similar starter course is served. You can then have
an intermediate dish or go straight to the main course. Don't
forget to provide wine to accompany the meal, and essential for the toast.
Finally after the desert
and coffee, the banquet
finishes, with the bride and groom cutting the cake and giving
the toast. The newlyweds usually visit the other
tables
to chat with the guests and to thank them for their attendance and
their gifts. The parents help to cover the tables, with the male
parents going to chat with the male guest and the female parents going
to speak with the ladies and children.
The
Wedding Dance
Try
to ensure that the wedding dance starts at the correct time. It
must be a song with which
the bride and groom can identifiy themselves with, and that they will
remember all their life. The couple should simply concentrate
on
no-one else apart from their newly married partner, to enjoy the dance
like no-one is looking.
After
the wedding piece, the father of
the bride will dance with his daughter alone one the
floor, and
later the bride's mother will enter
to dance with the groom. The bride's father will then dance
with
the grom's mother, and the close relatives will share
some
time dancing with the bride and groom.
Try not to let
the dance become too long, so that the
guests do not
become bored. From now on the dance floor has officially been opened
and everyone can be invited to dance.
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