When your wedding guests enter the reception venue, they are asked to find their seats first, settle down, and mingle with other guests. The mingling, however, is often marked with reluctance and hesitation since not all of the couple's guests are familiar with each other. To ease the awkwardness, it's a great idea to open the program with icebreakers.
We asked Bespoke Manila's Ernest Pascual for some fun, novel ideas for icebreakers. Read on to see which of these four exciting and engaging ideas you can use for your wedding!
Trivia Escort
Ernest suggests including some trivia about you and your hubby at the back of the escort cards. Then during the cocktail hour, the trivia may be used as basis for an opening game for the program or as reference for the emcee's segues in the program. The tidbits will also give your guests a chance to get to know you more--and give them relevant topics for casual conversation among themselves.
Team Table
Icebreakers should involve as many guests as possible. One way to achieve this is to consider everyone as part of the game. You can group your guests according to the table they are in. One wedding that Ernest handled made use of such set-up to facilitate a "touchy-feely" game. Ernest shares, "The emcee instructed the guests to touch a body part of the guest to their right that starts with a certain letter. As soon as all the members on a table were "connected," they would then have to shout their table number and the first one to do so would be considered the winners. The competitive nature of the guests came out when this game was played."
Tied Prize
Icebreakers need not require your guests to expend too much energy--after all, they are all dressed up for your wedding. You can simply place specially marked ribbons that correspond to particular prizes under your guests' seats. The program host can announce the setup and encourage your guests to discuss their "wins" with each other. Who wouldn't get curious with exciting prizes at stake?
"I Spy"
In Pinoy weddings, a lot of guests bring their own digital cameras, and no guest would say no to any sort of photo op. Why not put your guests' picture-taking skills to the test and push their hunger for photos with an activity involving cameras? One game that Ernest suggests consists of asking guests to form groups of three or four. Each group would then be given a list of things to find and take a picture of (i.e. a girl in yellow dress, the bridal car, the cake topper). The group that photographs all the items on the list first, wins.
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