Getting people to talk to each other at wedding

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

I’m looking for any ideas to break the ice and get strangers chatting at my wedding. I know this may be a little naive, but…

I don’t want it ghettoised into foreigners and Taiwanese, work ‘friends’, school friends, university, family etc. Some of us foreigners do speak Chinese after all. And some of the Taiwanese are actually my friends, not my other half’s or defy classification.

Inevitably, some people will be on tables with some people they don’t know. I’ve heard tales of people barely getting a word out of each other before everyone leaves after the desserts. Honestly, I’d be kind of offended if they’re only in it for the food. Some who can’t make it have told us that we now owe them a meal because they’re missing out!

So, I’ve wondered about things like sing alongs, KTV, prize draw, dollar dance (despite no dance floor), speeches. One suggestion from a friend was disposable cameras at every table, dropped into a box at the end and then all uploaded to a website later. Anything to give people something to talk about.

I feel like I need to be an expert manipulator to get people to socialise.

Of course, booze helps. Or maybe a drop of liquid LSD or MDMA in everyone’s drinks.

2

How well do you know your guests? The key is in your seating charts. Try to find a good mix in placing people with similar interests, backgrounds or language skills next to each other. But as the ceremony goes on, people are eventually going to get up and mingle anyway.

Congrats!

3

Dude. Its a wedding. Get in, hand over the money, get sat, get fed, get out. If you have enough foreigners, it’ll degenerate into some serious drinking (as long as you supply enough booze) once the Taiwanese have left. Then you have to wrangle with the venue to stay – if you book for a wedding, whether its an actual wedding factory or not, they expect the punters to leave as soon as the food’s gone and they’ll be utterly nonplussed that anyone would want to stay on. If its an actual wedding factory you’ll have no chance at all – the next party will be in and sat within 30 minutes of your party having had dessert and sliced watermelon.
I had unlimited red&white house wine at mine, plus 15 cases of J&B 15-year-old. It was all gone apart from 7 bottles, but went on from about 2pm until around midnight.