Music and food - small wedding

[greenseggsanham]

Hi all,

We are getting married next year, a small family event with 18 of us, including bride and groom.

It's in a hotel and we've booked a small function room until midnight following the meal.

Would you include a buffet after the meal? (Meal is at 5pm and drinks will go into the night)

Also in terms of music. What do we do? A DJ is over the time given the party size? We can take music and play though speakers but will that look tight?!

It's a small family group - I imagine everyone will be wanting to catch up with family, get to know the other family. Any DJ, outside musician, entertainer etc would be a lone stranger in a fairly intimate occasion. Quiet background music OK, loud music demanding attention, definitely no. If meal is at 5pm and everyone needs to be gone by midnight, you don't need the amount of breaking up the time as you would for a meal at around 3pm - you could postpone the cake till about 7, and I like the idea of small nibbles (nibbles not a buffet meal) at 9-ish.

At a recent wedding there was karaoke which went down far better than I had imagined. It was a small wedding too. People didn't feel under pressure to join in but many did and the final Bohemian Rhapsody with almost everyone standing up and singing is a memory to treasure. It was just a simple machine with two mikes and lists of the songs for people to browse (one of those 500 song cd sets)