What exactly is the Master of Ceremonies? You may get this included with your wedding venue or you may have an outgoing friend or family member to do this for you. Whoever is looking after those duties, make sure it's well-planned and tailored to your wedding vibe!
So what is "Master of Ceremonies" and why is it so important?
This spans the entirety of your wedding day and also any events happening the day prior or the day following the big day.
It essentially entails guest management and communication, whereby someone will be guiding and announcing to your guests what is happening & where throughout each element of the celebrations.
This could be anything from:
Requesting guests to take their seats & where before the ceremony.
Showing guests where to get confetti before the shot and helping your photographer get guests into place for the perfect moment.
General announcements for the day, should you wish to do these, such as asking all guests to be upstanding and announcing you both into the room either for your wedding breakfast or following arrival from church to your reception venue.
Being able to deliver a personal introduction to the speeches with as little or as much formality as you wish.
Alerting guests to stand around the dancefloor for your first dance or cake cutting.
What is the most important element?
Before detailed discussions are had, any and all involved parties need to know the style with which you would like these duties to be performed and delivered. Most weddings these days are fairly relaxed in atmosphere, so these may require less formal announcements and therefore a certain style and etiquette to be performed.
For those informal weddings, instead of making big announcements at each stage, say for directions to the drinks reception area after the ceremony, I will make my way round to all guests groups and advise them this is ready for them to make their way across when they are ready.
For announcing my couples into the room, I will ask them during our final details meeting how they would like to be introduced. It could be as Mr & Mrs Jones, or it could be their first names, for example.
For more formal weddings, which by the way can be absolutely breathtakingly effective when done correctly, and can make each guest feel like royalty.
So the style entirely depends on your personalities, your wedding style and your wedding venue or location.
With any style of wedding however, I always make sure every guest is up on their feet and making lots of noise as you enter the room!
When should you plan this and with who?
There could be several conversations here depending on who is going to be performing these duties during your wedding. It could be a mixture of people such as your coordinator and a family member or professional wedding host, for example.
P.s. wedding hosts are amazing! If you have the budget I highly recommend booking one.
Choosing who will all depend on the style as I've mentioned above. Someone super outgoing and fun for those relaxed, party style weddings, someone slightly more paired back for an intimate or luxury wedding. And for those castle weddings, certainly a really good formal toastmaster would be perfect!
Finally, always ensure each person involved with the big elements of your special day are aware of all these minute details, this will mean they have time to prepare, practice and allocate the right amount of time towards.
This will ultimately ensure your wedding day feels like a well-rehearsed spectacle from start to finish and will really set the whole experience apart from other wedding celebrations.
If you're unsure or overwhelmed by any of the above, then please get in touch either at by email to hello.freebirdweddings@gmail.com or at my website free bird wedding planning which is full of information about me, my ethos and some amazing words from past couples.
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