The recipe for a successful wedding

Speaking from the other side of many successful weddings, including my own now, has made me think of what really is essential to make a wedding a success, which in my case means getting them giddy and on the dance floor for many hours, for others however it is measured differently.

Image by Spiros Tsambikakis

In my experience the most important factor for your wedding reception is the setting, the venue, the location!!!! It really is fitting that location, location, location is number 1 for weddings as well as real estate! To explain the reason for this, if you find a beautiful location, to me this means mainly an outdoor area with a great view, feel, or a walled garden or area with great scenery or even a historic or rustic venue with a great vibe to it then you have almost nailed the entire event.
Consider your venue really carefully, as if you find one that is beautiful in itself, you will find yourself saving a whole lot on decoration later!

Food and drink, of course these are essential to getting your guests in the mood to party, if possible ease into the meal with a cocktail hour with hors d'oeuvres giving your guests time to mingle, take pictures, enjoy the venue and get into the mood!
I chose to keep the sit down part of the meal as short as possible so guests didn't get too full and heavy, nor get too used to sitting down. Instead I organised a buffet (more standing) main course and then purposely set up the dessert buffet beyond the dancefloor which opened along with the dancing! This worked perfectly as guests all got up to dance and then milled at the desserts and bars and didn't sit back in their seats!

Entertainment, I was worried that my options would be a little bland, we had an unplugged guitar duo play during the cocktail hour, they were amazing, everyone wanted them to continue but one of the members of the band was a friend and guest and I didn't want him to feel he had worked at our reception, so I insisted that they keep to the schedule and stop at the time appointed!
During dinner we had compiled some great atmospheric music, easy listening, jazz, soft rock, I don't actually remember the music, but I know I liked it and it didn't interfere with conversation which is what I wanted.
Finally we had a DJ that we both love play at the reception, due to our guests being mainly Greek, I chose to have a mixture of disco, pop and Greek pop which sounds pretty bad but it worked well and I knew our DJ could do a great job! The dancefloor was full until 3 AM when we had to turn the music down due to hotel regulations!

When you get these three elements right, the rest will fall into place, add some details, add some candles but definitely add emotion, love, tears and lots of laughing and this is the recipe to success!