Wedding Information Con't.

What is the "Afternoon-Lull" issue?

Note, this section has been written by a former professional photographer, and is based upon his many observations of how people "react and behave" during a lengthy lull in activity at a wedding e.g. the "Afternoon-Lull."

Just to recap, the Afternoon-Lull issue specifically relates to the period that starts shortly after the wedding breakfast, and only ends when the evening party *FULLY gets going. Depending on exact timings of these two parameters, an Afternoon-Lull will usually last somewhere between two to six hours. Generally, this is the only part a wedding day where there is very little going on, and this period of inactivity can lead your guests becoming very tired and lethargic. If this issue is not addressed, this tiredness and lethargy can, and often does, have a negative impact on the evening party.

*FULLY gets going: Means from time when the Band or DJ is able to attract many of your guests onto the dance floor, and then to keep them there until the end of the party. It does NOT mean from the arrival time for evening guests, or for an early evening 'First Dance'.

From my many observations, most people (adults or children), can amuse themselves for an hour with relative ease e.g. the adults will mill around chatting with other guests, and the children will run around and play. However, anything beyond an hour and your guests enthusiasm and energy can start to wane. This may seem to be short period of time but you need to consider that most guests will have already been sitting in cars, standing around, or sitting around for many hours.

Important Note: The bride, groom (and a few other key people), will probably be extremely busy all day, so they will rarely have to endure any periods of inactivity. In fact, they are often so busy throughout the day, that they will not notice that there is an Afternoon-Lull issue at all. That said, anybody who has been a guest at a few weddings, should know exactly what I am writing about!

So, before moving on, lets think about just how big of an issue is an Afternoon-Lull. Based on my observations, I believe that it is a huge problem that can, and often does, undermine what should have been a really good wedding day. That said, let's examine the Afternoon-Lull period from two different perspectives e.g. the bride and grooms versus the daytime guests: -

The Bride and Groom: They are busy flitting around all day long; they are endlessly smiling; they frequently state that the day is flying past; and all they are worried about is that their big day will all be over far too quickly.

Guests: Many are sitting or standing around doing nothing; they are becoming very tired and lethargic (often trying their very best to disguise their frequent yawning, and also trying to disguise how frequently they are checking their watches); they only smile when the bride and groom are in close proximity; time is now just dragging on at a very slow pace; and for them it feels like the day is never going to end!

Obviously, there is a big disconnect between the two different experiences. However, had the bride and groom known in advance about this issue, and how inexpensive it would have been to avoid this issue, I am pretty sure that they would have arranged some form of entertainment for the guests. Let's face it, if someone is having a modern full day wedding, another few hundred pounds added to their costs is pretty insignificant.

So, the true benefit of afternoon/early entertainment is that it will provide a place of "fun and sparkle" for your guests to gather around during the afternoon and early evening, and this will significantly help to prevent the onset of tiredness and lethargy. However, there are some other benefits too e.g. it will help to prevent the fragmentation of guests (e.g. people who wander off and/or, who form small cliques); it will help to reduce excessive drinking (and the negative behavioural issues related to excessive drinking); children will be less likely to become irritable and misbehave.

Note: The job of an afternoon/early evening entertainer is not to become the spotlight (that's for the bride), but more of a focal point for your guests to gather around during any periods of inactivity. Your guests are still very likely to get up and move around (usually for a bit of exercise or to socialise), but after a while most guests will be drawn back to the entertainment. The area around the entertainer will become a pleasant and comforting place, and this is especially important for those guests who don't know many other people; for those who are not well versed in the art of small talk; and for those that are physically not able to stand around for lengthy period.

To help you choose what type of entertainment you should choose, it is important to understand that Afternoon/early evening entertainment has a very different purpose to that of the evening Band of DJ entertainment i.e. the former needs to maintain and/or, gently enhance the enthusiasm and energy levels of your guests, ensuring that they are fit and ready to party later on. Whereas the latter will want to generate a much higher level of enthusiasm and energy to get people up and dancing, and to keep them there.

How exactly does this Afternoon-Lull issue undermine the evening party, and by how much?

To make this easy, let's consider that every person that attends your wedding (including the bride and groom), needs a 1.5 Volt AA battery to function, and this battery is an internally fixed rechargable type. Each battery starts the day fully charged, but it does NOT have enough charge to last a whole day. This means that every all day guest at your wedding will need the battery to be either fully re-charged, or topped-up, during the day.

Battery Instructions: -

To fully recharge a Battery will require 8 hours of sleep.

Topping-up the Battery will require one of the methods listed below: -

1) Consumption of Water & Food.

2) On eor more Catnaps.

3) Close proximity 'person to person' energy exchange (poitive energy only).

Caution: Close proximity to negative energy will drain the battery!

4) An Adrenalin boost

Battery Care: -

Warmth will reduce Battery consumption.

Cold will increase Battery consumption.

Warning: overheating the Battery may cause serious harm!

From the information given above we now know in advance, that all of the people who attent the wedding for the whole day and evening will need recharging (albeit that we don't know in advance how much recharging will be required). However, we do not k ow in advance whether evening guests will arrive with their batteries fully charged, or wheter they will need topping-up.

Now we have to consider how much of your guests batteries have been consumed prior to the Afternoon-Lull e.g. Energy consumed travelling to your wedding; standing around waiting for the wedding ceremony to commence; sitting down during your wedding ceremony; standing around after your wedding ceremony; standing around before the wedding breakfast; sitting around for the wedding breakfast and speeches.

Important Note: we can exclude the bride and groom from the above, because these have plentiful supply of "Adrenalin" to recharge their batteries (typically, very few others will have this form of recharging available to them unless the Band or DJ provides it, and this supply won't usually be availble until around 22:30hours).

Whilst the amount of battery charge remaining will vary for each guest, it is very likely that by the time that the wedding breakfast is over, some of the guests are already significantly depleted. This may appear strange as in theory, the wedding breakfkast should be a battery recharging period. However, in reality they often last far too long and become a battery drain.

Now for the dreaded Afternoon-Lull (if you now allow one to happen).

After one hour of inactivity the majority of your guests will start to encounter a steady battery drain. If the battery charge gets too low, the remaning charge changes turns into "negative energy" which is not just bad for them, it also affects people in close proximity to them. Then as their batteries get close to being fully depleted, your guests will become increasingly desperate for a "full recharge" and they will start to plan an "exit strategy" to get one.

What happens next come more down to luck than judgement i.e. if the evening guests start to arrive with fully charged batteries, their proximity may have enough power to recharge your daytime guests batteries. This can save the day and all may end well!

However, if there is already too much negative energy in the environment, this can negate, or even destroy, the energy uplift generated by the eveneng guests. If this is the situation, then at the very best your evening party will be underwhelming. At worst, your wedding party is going to be a complete failure (tumbleweed time!).

Actually, you may have one more opprtunity for a recovery, and that would be a huge energy boost from a truly exceptional Band or DJ. However, this is a very high risk strategy, as exceptional wedding Bands and DJ's are extremely rare.

Whilst I have witnessed exceptions, you should be able but to accurately predict the outcome of an evening party at some point between 17:30 and 18:30, and it all comes down to how much enthusiam and energy has been retained by the all day guests i.e. if a significant amount of these guests have become tired and lethargic at this point... "you are probably at best, going to have an underwhelming evening party". Yes, the evening guests will arrive all fresh and full enthusiam and energy but if they enter into an environment where the majority of daytime guest are completely drained and wanting to go home (or have fragmented into small and unsociable cliques), this can quickly bring down the mood of the new guests. In fact, I would suggest that most evening guests will know whether they are in for good night out, or whether they should ber working on an exit strategy,

c) That whatever you have planned for the early part of the evening e.g. a buffet, that this helps to maintain your guests "positive energy" whilst they wait for the evening party to fully get going.

Note: Generally, adults do not want to party/dance before 21:30hrs in the evening (possibly even later if it's a beautiful summer evening), so if you are planning for your party to kick-off before this time e.g. 19:30, you may really struggle. The solution that I found to this, is to have the evening snacks/drinks at around 20:30hrs, and only after this do you get your DJ or Band to initiate the party (a first dance is a great party starter, as this will draw in all of your guests to watch).

So, now the ideal situation has been fully identified, we can now identify what will be the likely outcome if your wedding day plans include a lengthy "Afternoon-Lull" e.g. from 16:00hrs to 22:00hrs... six hours!

Firstly, if by the early evening your 'daytime guests' have already become very tired and lethargic, then their enthusiasm and "positive energy" is likely to have either significantly declined, or have already been totally lost. Understandably, these guests will already be working out an exit strategy e.g. a plausible excuse to leave your wedding at the earliest possible opportunity.

Secondly, it is important that when your 'evening guests' start to arrive (bringing their fresh enthusiasm and "positive energy"), that they do not enter an environment full of sour faced and clock watching 'daytime guests', who obviously want to leave.

Thirdly, once all of your guests are present, make sure that the evening has a good flow i.e. don't allow another lengthy lull in activity.

Conclusion: Keeping your wedding guests occupied and happy is a key factor if you want to have a great wedding experience. Generally, your guests will arrive full of positive energy and with some good planning, it is relatively easy to preserve this positive energy throughout the whole day. In fact, maintaining a reasonable level of positive energy throughout the day will mitigate almost all wedding day issues... "including poor weather conditions"!

As for how much evening parties are effected by an Afternoon-Lull, from my own observations I would suggest that about 35% are not affected at all (however, some of these had weddings had afternoon and/or, early evening entertainment). About 55% were underwhelming and fell short of expectations. And, the other 10% ranged from just being very disappointing, to being a complete and utter disaster e.g. they failed to start at all - "think tumbleweed on the dance floor, and that the guest had started to leave around seven-thirty, and the rest had given up hope and left by ten-thirty"!

Summary: Whilst I will openly concede that the above outcomes may appear a bit melodramatic, the reaity is almost every all-day-wedding will suffer from the Afternoon-Lull issue... "the only variable is by how much"!

The absolute truth is (and it is a bit wierd), even after attending more than sixty weddings (either as a professional photographer or as a guest), it is impossible to forecast which wedding guests will cope with lengthy periods of inactivity, and which won't. The weather conditions, the age ranges, the type or quality of venues, the social classes, the amount of money spent, don't appear to have that much influence on the outcome. Consequently, all that I can state with absolute certainty is 1) "That making people sit around for hours with nothing to do, considerably lowers the odds of a wedding day meeting expectations", and 2) "That the main reason why many people dread receiving a wedding invitation, is that they have previously had to endure a lengthy Afternoon-Lull, and that they know that this will probably mean that the evening party will turn out to be underwhelmimg too!"

Reality Check: -

If a bride and groom are "really lucky", the arrival of a fresh batch of evening guests and/or, the onset of the evening party, may re-ignite the positive energy and enthusiasm of your lethargic guests (especially if you have engaged a really good DJ or Band). In such cases all will be well... "happy days"!

However, I have witnessed far too many evening parties that have failed to meet expectations, and this was almost always due to the Afternoon-Lull issue. So, I would suggest that if you don't want to rely solely on luck, just ensure that you limit the Afternoon-Lull to no longer than sixty minutes!

Lastly, I know that the above may appear like I'm a "gloom & doom merchant," and that organising your wedding may now appear to be even more of a logistical and financial burden. However with regard to the logistics, most weddings are just a predictable sequence of specific parts, and almost all of these parts will have professionals involved who should be able to help you with the planning and timings e.g. Hairdressers, Make-up Artists, Photographers, Chauffeurs, Clergy or Registrars, Caterers, Venue Managers, Entertainers, DJ's, etc. Once you have a plan and the timings for the day, all you have to do for is look for any long gaps and in most circumstances, the only long gap will be the "Afternoon-Lull". With regard to the finances, in the grand scheme of things an afternoon/early evening entertainer should not add that much to your overall wedding budget.

Top Tip: If you have a tight budget, sacrifice things that are not going to really add much value to your own, or your guests, wedding day experience e.g. fancy invites, extravagant table or room decorations, overly expensive wines or Champagne, fancy food/snacks, etc. Generally, guests won't give a damn, or remember, any of these things. However, they definitely will remember sitting around for hours with nothing to do!

I will end with this... in my opinion, "a good wedding is one where those people who really wanted to attend, those who were duty bound to attend, and those who were coerced into attending, all come away having had an enjoyable experience".

For those of you that have read this section, I do hope that it will help you to have the wedding of your dreams.

PS: Zara aka "Chasing Leaves," would be a very good choice for your afternoon/early evening entertainment"!