70 Cool and Funky Wedding Entertainment Ideas — The Ultimate Guide!

70 Cool Ideas for Wedding Entertainment

I’m a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er so I get to see LOADS of dif­fer­ent Wed­ding Enter­tain­ment Ideas. Things to enter­tain your guests with dur­ing the drinks recep­tion or after the speeches.

Based in the West Mid­lands but shoot­ing wed­dings all over the place, (espe­cial­ly Shrop­shire, Worces­ter­shire and War­wick­shire) I’ve seen it all.

I’ve seen welly wang­ing and space hop­per races, piña­ta and conkers, quizzes and tug o war. You name it, the chances are I’ve seen it when it comes to unusu­al ‚alter­na­tive ideas for wed­ding entertainment.

Some of them are great for a wed­ding drinks recep­tion, some for the evening, oth­ers all day long.

There are ideas which will def­i­nite­ly cost you mon­ey to hire, some that are pret­ty cheap and lots of DIY ideas. Some of them are great fun enter­tain­ment for wed­ding guests of all ages, with a few that are def­i­nite­ly only for the grown ups. 

So I thought I’d share the weird and won­der­ful enter­tain­ment ideas I’ve seen to make your wed­ding fun!

TL/DR

If you just want to get straight to the list of ideas, here you go.

Or, if you want to browse and find out a bit more about them then they’re spilt them up into dif­fer­ent categories:-

• Music, Enter­tain­ers and Entertainment
• Gar­den Fun & Games
• Food & Drink
• DIY/Alternative

Music, Entertainers and Entertainment

This first sec­tion is all about wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas that involve singing, danc­ing, music gen­er­al­ly enter­tain­ing your guests.

Bands

I guess the most pop­u­lar way to enter­tain your wed­ding guests is with a band!!

From my expe­ri­ence of wed­dings, a band is a great way to get the par­ty start­ed. Because you’ve got some­one per­form­ing you often seem to get more peo­ple danc­ing more quickly. 

There are absolute­ly loads and loads of wed­ding bands out there and most will have videos online for you to get an idea about how they sound.

Alive Net­work is a good place to start with lots of bands and singers list­ed. Their web­site lets you fil­ter by area, type of music etc.

A few bands that I’ve seen, who all put on a bril­liant show are.…

The Spec­trum

Indi­en­ation­al

Can­dy & The Sound

Tritts & the Numbers

You will also find bands that will arrive ear­li­er in the day and do an acoustic set dur­ing the drinks recep­tion. Usu­al­ly as either a solo singer with gui­tar or a duo.

It’s a great way of adding some more live music to the day

Singing Waiters

I’ve done a few of wed­dings where they’ve had singing wait­ers and they’re brilliant! 

The one’s I’ve seen pre­tend to be wait­ers dur­ing your meal and then after­wards, they reveal their true iden­ti­ty and start to sing and enter­tain your guests. 

You’ll get a set that’s about 30 min­utes long and as you can see from these pho­tos, your guests will be up and dancing!

High­ly rec­om­mend Under­cov­er Artists for this. 

Sing-a-Long

You’re not allowed to use reli­gious music at a civ­il cer­e­mo­ny, which is per­haps why they tend not to include singing.

But there is no rea­son why you can’t get your guests to join in with a sing-a-long of your favourite song!

I’ve seen this a few times now and it’s a won­der­ful­ly joy­ful way of mak­ing music.

Brass Band

Believe it of not, the Groom at this wed­ding man­aged to have an entire brass band set up with­out his bride hav­ing a clue!

It was mar­quee wed­ding, with the dance­floor cur­tained off. So as the guests ate, the band crept in through the back of the mar­quee and set up (very qui­et­ly) behind the curtain.

After the meal, the band start­ed play­ing and the bride did­n’t know where the music was com­ing from, until the cur­tain was pulled back to reveal the band!

Ceilidh

As wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas go, a ceilidh is a fan­tas­tic way to get even the most reluc­tant dancer on their feet and join­ing in. 

Marryoke

Steel Drums

Drinks recep­tion music with a dif­fer­ence here with tra­di­tion­al steel drums. 

They sound­ed amaz­ing at this wed­ding at Dav­en­port House and the Bride had a go too!

Jukebox Guitar

When I saw this recent­ly at a wed­ding I thought what a bril­liant idea. 

Matt, the singer/guitarist has quite a few dif­fer­ent pack­ages for you to choose from if you hire him, and this one was for his ‘Juke­box Gui­tar’.

Basi­cal­ly, your guests choose his set list as he plays so it’s crowd-sourced event!

Magician

That’s all the musi­cal ideas, now mov­ing on to non-musi­cal and first up is hav­ing a magician

Now we’re not talk­ing a David Cop­per­field, Vegas style mag­ic show where you need a stage and very deep pockets. 

All the magi­cians I’ve seen do close-up mag­ic, wan­der­ing around going from group to group of your guests and bam­boo­zling them! 

It fits in well to either the drinks recep­tion, or in that gap between speech­es and the party.

A cou­ple of magi­cians that I’ve seen at work on var­i­ous occa­sions (and have NO idea how they per­form their tricks!) are Owen Strick­land and Patrick Aitchi­son.

Casino Games

There are some wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas which are great for dur­ing the drinks recep­tion and oth­ers that are very much for the evening. 

Hav­ing some casi­no games is one of the later.

Caricaturist

This could be one of those wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas that makes you say “Ooo, we did­n’t even know that was a thing!”

These pho­tos are of George, The Wed­ding Artist, who is a bril­liant artist and will draw a sou­venir for any of your guests who are brave enough to have their car­i­ca­ture done!

Duck Herding

Yup, you read that right.

Duck herd­ing.

Actu­al ducks.… to be herded!

Def­i­nite­ly anoth­er wed­ding enter­tain­ment idea that will sur­prise your guests!

This was a wed­ding at the fab South Farm in Cam­bridgeshire which has lots of space for an activ­i­ty like this.

The Bride & Groom had the first go fol­lowed by as many as the guests who want­ed to, chas­ing the ducks around the field!!

Kids Party Bus

If you’ve got a wed­ding with quite a few chil­dren it’s always worth think­ing about ways to keep them entertained.

Lots of the gar­den games in the next sec­tion tick this box and it’s quite com­mon to see goody bags for the kids when they get to the table for the wed­ding breakfast.

But how about this as a way to real­ly wow them, a soft play area inside a dou­ble-deck­er bus!!

Train Rides

Last one in this sec­tion and to be fair, you’ve prob­a­bly got to be very spe­cif­ic with your venue choice if you want to have train rides!

These are from some wed­dings at the won­der­ful­ly eclec­tic Avon­croft Muse­um, near Bromsgrove. 

As luck would have it, right next to the muse­um is the Broms­grove Soci­ety of Mod­el Engi­neers with their minia­ture train lay­out. You can arrange with them to have a pri­vate hire of the train for a cou­ple of hours in the afternoon.

Choo, choo!!

Garden Games, Lawn Games, Funfair Games, all kinds of games!

Now we’re going to take a look at the many and var­ied dif­fer­ent wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas that involve games and get­ting active.

Things to bring out the com­pet­i­tive streak in them!

Space Hopper Races

I’m going to start with the more ener­getic games and straight out of the gates lets start with space hop­per racing!

Lots of fun… if with an inher­ent risk of wardrobe malfunctions!

Very very sim­ple to organ­ise, you just need two or three space hop­pers and some will­ing guests.

Tug of War

This is def­i­nite­ly one for when you’ve got com­pet­i­tive friends but is also very simple.

Get your­self a long rope and you’re in business!

Sack Race

Anoth­er one which is super sim­ple to plan but much fun whether you’re a big kid or a lit­tle one.

Get some sacks and then READY, STEADY, GO!!!

Bouncy Castle

One that you need to hire and per­haps not a com­pet­i­tive activ­i­ty but def­i­nite­ly lots of fun.

As you can see there are boun­cy cas­tles pur­pose made for wed­dings and hav­ing a suit or wed­ding dress on is no rea­son not to give it a go!

Crazy Golf

Until I saw this for the first time I had absolute­ly no idea you could hire crazy golf for your wed­ding but what a bril­liant idea!

This was a tipi wed­ding, with a bless­ing by the river­bank and the crazy golf seemed the per­fect match for the relaxed vibe.

Pitch and Putt

If you like golf but aren’t keen on crazy golf/don’t have the space then why not set up your own hole and have a putting competition?!

Trampoline

When I’ve seen tram­po­lines at wed­dings, they were already at the venue. But they’d be very sim­ple to set up if you have one you can bor­row and as you can see, def­i­nite­ly not just for kids!

Skittles

Now this is some­thing that I’ve only seen once, and the skit­tle lane was already there. 

It’s at the won­der­ful­ly his­toric Fleece Inn, near Eve­sham. Owned by the Nation­al Trust it’s ori­gins go back to the 15th cen­tu­ry and has a medi­ae­val thatched barn for your wed­ding, plus an out­door skit­tle alley!

Rounders

Has your wed­ding venue got a lawn? Then what about a game of rounders to get every­one up and active after the meal?!

Boules

Anoth­er option if you’ve got some grass is to crack open a case of boules and have a game. Have to say, the folks at this wed­ding were def­i­nite­ly expe­ri­enced boules play­ers, they’d got the throw­ing tech­nique off to a tee! 

Croquet

Cro­quet is some­thing that peo­ple often already have, hid­den away in an attic or garage. Or I find that quite a few venues have their own set, ready to be used.

The ques­tion is though, does any­one actu­al­ly know the rules of croquet?!?

Hula Hoops

Per­haps this is one that you com­bine with some­thing else, a few dif­fer­ent things laid out on the lawn ready for use.

Some impres­sive hula skills here!

Welly Wanging

Wed­ding Welly Wang­ing, now that’s an allit­er­a­tive tongue twister!

Did you know that Welly Wang­ing has ‘offi­cial’ rules?! Who knew.

Although I’ve actu­al­ly seen two ver­sions of this, as you can see. One cou­ple used hula hoops as tar­gets to aim for with points scored for hit­ting the target.

Anoth­er cou­ple had it set up like a javelin con­test with dis­tances marked and lit­tle flags for peo­ple to use to record their throw.

Either way, very sim­ple and lots of fun.

Connect 4

A cou­ple of peren­ni­al wed­ding favourites here, start­ing with Con­nect 4. 

There are plas­tic ver­sions that gar­den cen­tres seem to sell or some peo­ple make their own.

Giant Jenga

I’ve prob­a­bly seen Jen­ga at more wed­dings than any oth­er sort of enter­tain­ment but it’s pop­u­lar for a reason! 

A game that most peo­ple will know, not much space required and great to play as you enjoy a drink in the sunshine.

Kerplunk

Stick­ing with super­sized ver­sions of fam­i­ly games I give you.… Kerplunk!!

This was hired from Pollyan­na’s Par­ty Hire and looked amaz­ing. Stick­ing faith­ful­ly to the orig­i­nal con­cept of the game, but a giant version!

Outdoor Draughts

With quite a few small chil­dren in atten­dance at this wed­ding, I’m not sure if there were actu­al­ly any games of draughts that made it through to the end!

Card Games

These were what you might call ‘alter­na­tive’ card games, like explod­ing kittens.

One on every table there was lots of choice.

For a win­ter dur­ing the cold­er months this is a sim­ple idea to enter­tain peo­ple indoors.

Board Games

At this wed­ding there was a chill out area with a vari­ety of board games dot­ted about. 

One’s that they’d brought from home, rather than buy­ing them spe­cial­ly for the wedding.

Anoth­er idea that works well when you’re guests are like­ly to be indoors all day.

Coconut Shy

This was anoth­er game hired from Pollyan­na’s Par­ty Hire and as you can see, there was one very hap­py Grooms­man when he man­aged to hit the target!

Tin Can Alley

A game that can eas­i­ly be played indoor or out­doors, it’s pret­ty easy to make your own ver­sion — get sav­ing those baked bean cans!

Hook a Duck

Not just the pre­serve of fair­grounds for this, hook a duck is anoth­er great idea for a lawn game at your wedding. 

Limbo

I’ve seen this on the dance­floor a few times, usu­al­ly impro­vised with a tie as the lim­bo bar and often end­ing up with peo­ple flat on their back!

Here we see it dur­ing the after­noon and some impres­sive flexing!

Test your Strength

This lit­tle sec­tion fea­tures some wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas with games hired from a com­pa­ny called The Tra­di­tion­al Fair­ground Co. They were at a mar­quee wed­ding recep­tion at a rug­by club in Clee and had some bril­liant games, like this test your strength machine. 

The Bride was one of the few to make the bell ring and was right­ly very pleased with herself!

Wire Buzzer Game

Next tra­di­tion­al fair­ground game idea is that fiendish­ly dif­fi­cult game where you have to manoeu­vre a hook along a wire with­out touch­ing the wire, and mak­ing the bell ring.

Hard­er than it looks! 

Ball in the Bucket

Final one from The Tra­di­tion­al Fair­ground Co is a game where you have to throw a ball in the bucket.

It sounds easy but trust me, it’s not!

Pick up Sticks

This next sec­tion has a selec­tion of games that were hired for a wed­ding at Gor­cott Hall, from the fab­u­lous Fetestall.

The sto­ry behind Fetestall is real­ly nice. Aria, the woman behind the com­pa­ny was get­ting mar­ried and her Dad made some games for their wedding.

Their wed­ding venue liked them so much they offered to buy them after­wards which plant­ed the seed with Aria that there was a busi­ness in the making.

Then hey presto, Fetestall was born with lots of great wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas !

Gone Fishing

This is a bit like hook a duck but com­pet­i­tive! 4 play­ers, each with their own rod, try­ing to fish the wood­en pegs before their oppo­nents do.

Hoopla/Quoits

If you have a few games like this then you can set them up across the lawn and let your guests do a circuit. 

Noughts & Crosses (Hearts & Kisses)

I liked the roman­tic vari­ant on noughts & cross­es by turn­ing them into hearts and kiss­es, very apt!

Target Board

This last one from Fetestall is anoth­er one of those games that looks sim­ple, but isn’t. 

All too easy to over cook it and have your bean bag go career­ing off the oth­er side on to the grass! 

Cornhole

I have to admit that until I pho­tographed this par­tic­u­lar wed­ding in Devon, I’d nev­er heard of Corn­hole! They had a cou­ple of games that seemed to have been played in the fam­i­ly for years but both were new to me.

Corn­hole involves throw­ing a bean­bag towards a raised board with a hole in it. your oppo­nent is throw­ing the oppo­site way and you get more points for get­ting it in the hole.

Sim­ple!

Ladder Golf

This is the oth­er game that was new to me, lad­der golf. 

You throw your bola (two golf balls joined togeth­er with string) towards the ‘lad­der’, which is a wood­en frame with three rungs. 

Dif­fer­ent rungs score dif­fer­ent amounts and there are tac­tics involved where you can can­cel out your oppo­nents bola!

Kubb

Wed­dings have proven to be a voy­age of dis­cov­ery for when it comes to learn­ing new games and this was anoth­er new one, called Kubb.

Which it turns out you can buy from Ikea!

The wed­ding was at the amaz­ing Sheep­drove Organ­ic Farm in Wessex.

The game involves throw­ing small wood­en blocks at a larg­er wood­en block called The King…I think… best go to Ikea if you want to be sure!!

Piñata

Now this is some­thing that we’ve done for our kids for birth­day par­ties and I’m sur­prised I’ve not seen it a few more times at wed­dings. This was a wed­ding at The Matara Cen­tre in the Cotswolds

Very sim­ple to set up. So much choice of dif­fer­ent sorts of piña­ta. Fill it with the sweets of your choice. Let your guests at it! 

Conkers

Every time I see a new idea for ways to enter­tain wed­ding guests I won­der why no one has done it before!

This was an autumn wed­ding, so the per­fect time of year to col­lect the conkers and there were def­i­nite­ly lots of guests up for the battle!

Hammer & Nail

Take one tree stump, one ham­mer and lots of nails.

Then stand back and watch the sparks fly — pos­si­bly literelly!

The idea is that on your turn you get one swing of the ham­mer, you’re not allowed to line it up first, you just have to go for it. The aim of the game is to be the first per­son to ham­mer their nail into the tree stump.

It’s hard­er than you think!

Food & Drink Ideas

There are lots of inter­ac­tive ways to bring food & drink into your wed­ding to pro­vide both refresh­ments and entertainment. 

Here are a few that I’ve seen

Biscuit Bar

Candy/Sweet carts are real­ly pop­u­lar but how about this for a twist on the idea?

Pick your favourite bic­cies and away you go.

Cus­tard Creams for me please!

Ice Cream Cart

Loads of dif­fer­ent options for this out there. 

Whether its a con­vert­ed camper vans like this, tra­di­tion­al bike and bar­row, take your pick of where your ice cream is served from, then enjoy!

Hot Chocolate Stand

I guess that an ice cream cart is more for the warmer months so how about a hot choco­late stand for when it’s cold?!

Lots of things you can give your guests to let them per­son­alise their hot choco­late, yum yum!!

Marshmallows

Day­time or night­time, marsh­mal­lows are popular.

Whether it’s eat­en off the end of a stick, as the two chil­dren are doing, or done the smores way and squashed between two bis­cuits, it’s a very sweet, sticky, sug­ary treat!

Donut Wall

More sweet treats here and oh my good­ness, did these donuts look tasty!

As you can see in the last pho­to, some of the wed­ding guests had to be phys­i­cal­ly restrained!!

Pimp your Prosecco

A cou­ple of alco­holic ideas here, start­ing with a great way to add a lit­tle pizazz to an already pop­u­lar drink.

Hand out the fizz and let your guests add their own gar­nish and flavour.

Champagne Tower

This was a 1920s themed wed­ding and these tra­di­tion­al cham­pagne glass­es, arranged into a tow­er real­ly fit­ted the bill.

I can’t remem­ber exact­ly how many bot­tles of cham­pagne it took to fill all the glass­es but trust me, it was a lot!

DIY/Indoor/Alternative

To fin­ish are a few wed­ding enter­tai­ment ideas that don’t real­ly fit into any of the oth­er categories!

A few of them are good for indoors so ide­al for a win­ter wed­ding but of course would work all year around. 

The After Eight Game

So you’ve played the After Eight game…right?!

You put an After Eight on your fore­head and then have to get it into your mouth.…. with­out touch­ing it.

It’s a recipe for much facial con­tor­tion and some very strange expressions!

Treasure Hunt

If you’ve got a venue with lots of grounds to explore then why not cre­ate a trea­sure hunt as a way to get your guests wandering?

Throw in bags of your favourite sweets as the prize for com­plet­ing it and job done!

Wedding Speech Bingo

It’s per­haps more accu­rate to describe this as a wed­ding relat­ed drink­ing game! 

Hav­ing heard MANY wed­ding speech­es then I could imag­ine any and all of these com­ing up.

Wedding Speech Sweepstake

This is a game that I have played many times myself as a wed­ding guest.

Peo­ple pay to enter and have to guess how long the speech­es will be. Clos­est answer wins the money

I Spy

Here’s one that’s aimed at the lit­tle ones. 

Although I’m sure you could eas­i­ly turn it into a drink­ing game for the grown ups!

Quiz

At this wed­ding the quiz was hand­ed out for the guests to fill in between cours­es and bring back.

But I’ve also seen it done in the style of a pub quiz in the ear­ly evening after the speeches.

Mr & Mrs

I guess this is also a kind of quiz but done in a way that involved lots of audi­ence participation.

Ques­tions like “Who is most often late, the Bride or the Groom”. 

The answers are then rep­re­sent­ed by the guests either putting their hands on their heads (if they think it’s the Groom) or their hands on their chest (if they think it’s the Bride).

Get it wrong and you’re out.

Lots of fun, very entertaining!

Play Your Cards Right

This was a vari­a­tion on Mr & Mrs with ques­tions asked about the Bride & Groom that would make you go high­er or lower.

There are some very inge­nious peo­ple out there!

Photobooth

Hir­ing a pho­to­booth is very pop­u­lar but you could always think about going down the DIY route.

If you do that and there are lots of kids at the wed­ding then maybe move the cam­era to a high shelf oth­er­wise you’ll have no film left!!

Blackboard Wall

Get your guests to do a bit of wed­ding relat­ed graf­fi­ti or leave you a cre­ative mes­sage with this idea. 

Gingerbread Man Icing

I have to say there is some­thing rather sur­re­al about see­ing a table cov­ered in var­i­ous­ly dec­o­rat­ed gin­ger­bread men and women!

A chance to dis­cov­er which of your friends have hid­den tal­ents with this wed­ding enter­tain­ment idea. 

Sparklers

Hav­ing a sparkler parade is great alter­na­tive to con­fet­ti (or maybe have both)

If you’ve got sparklers left after­wards then it also gives your guests the chance to do some spark­ly sky writing!

Phew, there you have it.

70 wed­ding enter­tain­ment ideas (I think?!) to wow your guests.

Hope it inspires you for your wed­ding planning!

OTHER BLOGS TO CHECK OUT

• How to have Awe­some Wed­ding Confetti
• A Guide to Out­door Weddings
• 31 Unusual/Alternative Wed­ding venues around Birmingham

If you’re look­ing for a Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­ph­er, then please get in touch. I’d love to have a chat!