The ceremony went smoothly, the wedding breakfast was great and the speeches (to the relief of those giving them) have been delivered! Yes, you’ve reached the point in your wedding day where everyone can let their hair down and have get into the party mood.

To ensure your evening reception goes off with a real bang, it’s vital to get the music right. As part of highly experienced Bristol wedding band the Moon Loungers (find us at www.themoonloungers.com) I have performed at numerous wedding parties and can offer a few useful tips to help make your wedding party a night to remember.

DJ or live band?

When it comes to evening entertainment at a wedding, it’s all about getting your guests on to the dance floor. The choice is basically between a DJ or live music, and your selection will no doubt be based on personal taste and budget! A DJ will offer you an extensive playlist and lots of flashing lights and effects, but there’s nothing quite like the atmosphere that can be created by a live band.

It’s worth checking to see if a band will offer a DJ service as part of their package, as this can enable you to have the best of both worlds. Also don’t be tempted to put your own playlist together on an iPod and attempt to do the DJing yourself – leave it to a professional and free yourself up to enjoy the night!

How do we pick a first dance?

For the first dance, most couples will simply choose a special song that means something to them. The traditional approach is to slow dance through a verse or two, then make sure your on-looking guests join you on the dance floor. However, an increasingly popular alternative (thanks to the success of Strictly Come Dancing, no doubt) is to impress your friends and family with a choreographed routine!

We always encourage couples to pick a song themselves – if they can’t think of one, and aren’t too keen on the whole thing, then there’s nothing wrong with avoiding it altogether! Some popular ones are God Only Knows (the Beach Boys), Better Together (Jack Johnson) and Your Song (Elton John), and a favourite of ours is the 1960s classic Happy Together (The Turtles). We’ve also had couples waltz to Moon River (Andy Williams) and Mr. Bojangles (Sammy Davis Jr. and more recently, Robbie Williams), and even jive to Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen) – now that was impressive…

Of course, if you don’t like the idea of dancing in front of all your family and friends, then it’s not obligatory to do so! A nice compromise is to ask that all of the guests join you on the dance floor from the start. Liaise with the band or DJ to ensure they encourage everyone to get involved.

For more advice on the first dance, along with our top ten songs, please visit the Moon Loungers’ blog, www.bristolweddingband.co.uk.

What sort of music works best at a wedding evening party?

I would personally recommend a band that can deliver a range of music that spans eras and genres, based on the fact that the typical wedding will involve guests of all ages and musical tastes. We tend to use tried and tested set lists that keep everyone dancing, with many of the songs blending in to one another to ensure the guests don’t drift away – and when there is a gap between numbers we’ll always try and engage the audience with some light banter!

Don’t forget that professional wedding bands (and DJs) will know from experience which songs work best so I don’t recommend forcing upon them your own playlist – the songs in question may have you dancing around your bedroom, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll keep 100 people on a dance floor! Having said that, if there are a special few tunes that you know will have all your friends jumping around then make sure you pass them on to the band/DJ. Similarly, if there is anything you really dislike then there won’t be a problem having this removed from the play lists!

From experience, popular up-tempo songs are classics like Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry) and Build Me Up Buttercup (The Foundations), as well as modern tunes such as Mr. Brightside (The Killers) and Valerie (the Amy Winehouse version). We quite often invite the bride and bridesmaids on to the stage to add backing vocals to Mustang Sally (the Commitments), and Hey Jude (The Beatles) always provides a fitting finale to the live sets. There really are thousands of great songs that will keep your guests entertained and up dancing; the days of resorting to the Birdie Song and Black Lace are long gone, rest assured…

For more extensive song lists and further info on this subject, check out our web site at www.themoonloungers.com.