One of the great things about getting married is the opportunity it provides for bringing people together. On your wedding day, many different people from your life and your partner’s life will unite in celebration of your marriage. Having your marriage witnessed by your friends and family is not only essential to the traditional, ritual, and legal aspects of marriage; it’s also a great to chance to share a joyful time with those you care about.

While many of your guests will know each other before the wedding take place, not all of them will. This is especially true of guests who are associated with the bride or the groom, but not with both. Giving these people an opportunity to meet each other and become friends is a fun and rewarding part of organising a major event like a wedding, but getting them to warm to each other can be a little bit of a challenge. In this week’s blog post, we’d like to offer some tips for helping to break the ice so that everyone can have the time of their lives. Who knows, maybe your wedding will be the start of someone else’s romance!

Arrange for Your Guests to Meet Before the Wedding

We’ve written before about rehearsal wedding ceremonies and dinners. As well as being great practice for the big day, these are also perfect way for your close friends and family to get to know each other. However, as these events are usually only attended by the wedding party, they don’t provide an opportunity for your wider circle of friends to meet. We’ve also written in the past about engagement parties, which are ideal for introducing your future wedding guests in a convivial atmosphere. As well as arranging social events like these, remember that recruiting some of your friends and family to help with preparations for the wedding will also give them a chance to meet and get to know each other. The extra help won’t hurt, either!

Organise Some Fun Activities

Everyone knows there’s nothing like fun and games to help people socialise and bond. Organising some group activities and games for your reception is a great way to get people talking. For example, suggest your guests write an interesting fact about themselves on a piece of card, which will be given to another guest who must track them down using only this piece of information. In the course of playing this game, your guests will find themselves asking questions about each other, and this is sure to lead to some interesting conversation. You may even find your guests having so much fun that they forget about the game altogether! This is just one example of a game that you might like to use. You can find many other suggestions, or invent one of your own.

Think Carefully About Your Seating Arrangements

There’s no doubt about it, you should definitely used assigned seating arrangments at your reception. Not to do so would be a huge missed opportunity. People love to chat over a meal, so your reception is a perfect time to have some of your guests get to know each other. Of course, some guests will naturally want to sit together, as they know each other. However, you can still arrange for separate groups to be at the same table. You and your partner should put your heads together, and do your best to mix and match groups based on shared interests or mutual friends. Once the meal is served, your guests will do the rest!