Wedding receptions are a special day for both the bride and groom, as well as the invited guests. Marking the beginning of a beautiful relationship, the wedding reception is a time for the family and friends of the newly weds to meet each other, hit the dance floor, and take advantage of an open bar. Unfortunately, guests may not be familiar with each other, and even though booze might be flowing, getting the guests involved in wedding reception games is a great way for breaking that initial uneasiness and serve as a means for entertaining conversation and mingling.

These ten wedding reception activities will spice up the night and leave guests talking for weeks to come.

1.) Roll the Dice:

Here’s a fun twist to the familiar tapping forks against glasses to see the bride and groom kiss.
- Have people pair off at their tables, and between dances and courses, each couple must roll a pair of dice once. If they roll an even number, then the bride and groom kiss…but if they roll an odd number, the rollers must kiss!

2.) Wedding Couple Trivia:

In between music sets or down time before the meal is served, Have questions about you and your new spouse written down ahead of time on cards. (Based on the tolerance level of those invited, questions can be serious or even racy.) Each question should pertain to you, your spouse or both of you:
- Where you met, where your first kiss was, what’s your favorite ice cream flavor, etc..
- Have your DJ, master of ceremonies, or one of your parents stand at the microphone and select a guest to answer the first question. If the guest answers correctly, he or she then steps up to the microphone to call on the next guest, and so on.

2a.) Wedding Couple Trivia: BUFFET EDITION

Follow the same steps as the above activity, but those who correctly answer the questions get access to the food buffet table.
Choose the table who answers the question first to get to go up to fill their plate.

3.) Counting For Flowers:

Instead of tossing the bouquet to the bridesmaids, set up a jar of marbles in colors that match the wedding reception decor. Make an announcement during speech time that each unmarried female attendee must guess how many marbles are in the jar. The guests should write down their answers on their name placement cards. At the end of the evening, collect the answers and determine the winner, who is then presented with the bouquet.

4.) Musical Chairs:

Play this game the traditional way–the disc jockey or band plays a tune, then stops suddenly. Guests then try to quickly find a seat. Each table of guests should be short one chair. In this way, after each round, one person will be out at each table. When only one person is left at each table, he or she wins the table centerpiece.

4a.) Musical Chairs – Guys as Chairs:

Another version of musical chairs that includes all your guests involves using men as the chairs. All the men who wish to take part in the game should sort into a line and kneel on one knee. The women begin playing the game of musical chairs, but when the music stops, they must find a knee to sit on. No “chairs” are removed during the version of the game, but people are eliminated when either the man or women falls.

5.) Roman Hands and Russian Fingers:

This game is guaranteed to get the men in the audience chuckling. The bride is blindfolded while the best man places three small clips somewhere on the groom’s body. These should be in difficult-to-find places, such as the groom’s shoelaces or the back of his head. The blindfolded bride must then find each of the clips with her hands. To make this game even more interactive and fun, allow guests to call out “warmer!” or “colder!” as the bride’s fumbling hands get closer to or farther away from a clip.

6.) Scavenger Hunt:

This wedding reception game calls for one volunteer per table. Have a few items hidden in various places within the reception hall. The DJ or master of ceremonies then calls out the item, and the table volunteers rush to find the item. This can be quite hilarious as guests climb under tables or rush past one another to find the item. The guest who finds the most items wins a special prize!

7.) Wedding Garter Relay:

Here’s another wedding reception activity for the male audience. Divide the guests into two teams. Place a chair a few yards away from the participants. Have the teams flip a coin to see which will go first.

-The coin-toss winners then select one of their team members to sit on the chair. At the sound of a whistle or other signal, the first team member in line dashes to the man in the chair, with the bride’s garter in his hands. He hurries to place the garter on the calf of the seated member. The two then switch places, and the garter-wearer runs to the line, quickly removes the garter, hands it to the next man in line and goes to the back of the line.

-The new holder of the garter runs to the man in the chair and places it on the sitter’s leg, and the game continues in this fashion. When the last man has received the garter and has run back to the line, a timer goes off.

-The next team does the same. The team that performs the relay the fastest is the winner.

8.) Raffle:

The good old-fashioned raffle drawing. Give a card with a number on it to each guest when they arrive, and have a box with the same numbers for a drawing for “prizes”. The prizes don’t have to be expensive, but everyone loves winning something, and with the inclusion of items such as a mini barbeque grill, the guests will rush to take part. You could also raffle the bride’s bouquet, or a special dessert of some sort.

9.) Name Finding:

Get a 3 x 3 inch piece of paper and write one guest’s name on each. Give each guest a pen (use multiple colored pens) and randomly hand out the pieces of paper – the guest needs to find the person whose name is on the paper. This not only gets guests involved, but once the drawings are all collected they can be pasted on a big piece of cardboard and used as a personalized memorabilia for the the bride & groom.

10.) Photo Description:

Print out a collection of odd photos involving both the bride and groom on an 8X11 peice of paper. These photos should be ones where funny and witty descriptions could be thought of to describe. Eventually the DJ will collect each paper, put the photo up on the projector, and read what each table came up with for the photo. The people at the table with the best interpretation get’s a prize.

Wedding Favors and Gifts