Ever wondered how to make a good playlist? And not just a good one but a fabulous one that gets people to dance the night away? Making a playlist is an art and a science, especially when you’ve got a whole crowd of all different ages to please like for example: a wedding reception!
Creating my wedding reception playlist took months to create and tweak because I wanted it to be perfect! It ended up being a hit! Our guests danced all night, had a blast, and best of all, there wasn’t a Cha Cha Slide in sight. That is a definite win! So today, I’m sharing my best playlist-making tips with you!
1. Set the Mood
Your playlist has the ability to set the tone of the whole night. Music influences people’s moods so the right song choices throughout an event are important. Whether you’re using your playlist during dinner or drinks or for dancing, it should have a really basic theme based on whatever mood you want to set for your guests. Upbeat, calming, happy, gangsta… This serves as a good starting point for your playlist. It’s a guide of what songs to start adding and, more importantly, what NOT to add to it. Songs for a wedding reception is another important theme that should be a guideline throughout. Have enough kid-friendly songs to play at the beginning of the night and then break out the crazy party songs towards last call. Speaking of…
2. Consider Your Audience
You have to be happy with your playlist but you don’t want to be the only one on the dance floor. Your playlist also has to appeal to your guests, especially the ones that you know will want to dance all night. Stay away from any obscure bands or songs that only you know and throw in a couple of songs that you know your guests love. Sprinkle in a couple throwbacks from your high school days, a few songs for your parents and the older crowd, and a song or two that your flower girl and ring bearer love.
Other ways to consider your audience is when you’re thinking about the ratio of upbeat to slow songs. The more couples you have in your crowd, the more slow songs you should play. The older the crowd, the more slow songs you should play. Why should you have slow songs when you want your guests to dance?
3. BPM
A good dancing playlist takes into account how tired the dancers may get from time to time 🙂 That’s why I recommend having every 4-5 upbeat songs followed by a slow song or a song that people may just sing along to instead of dance! For a dance playlist, hip hop or pop songs are great because they usually have a pretty fast beat. Think David Guetta, Lil Jon, and Pitbull! Follow that up with some 80s or 90s nostalgia and then more dance songs!
And there you have it – the recipe for an awesome playlist!
If we want to get more specific, I have included my actual wedding reception playlist here! (which is about 2 years old so some of the songs may be a bit dated)
I’ll include the breakdown of songs here!
Kayla’s ideal wedding reception playlist includes 60 songs and these were the main categories that I focused on.
26 were party songs
17 were nostalgic songs
7 were slow songs
1 was a song that was popular at the time
5 songs were for the older crowd
and 4 were chosen to appeal to specific people (such as my nephew’s favorite song at the time, one of my sister’s favorite songs, etc)
Ideally, many of your songs will fall into multiple categories like mine did, but for the sake of the example, I just picked one category per song but most nostalgic songs were also party songs and most songs for the older crowd were also general crowd pleasers (think: Journey or Fleetwood Mac)
I also allowed people to request their own songs and looking back, I am glad some songs got skipped to allow guests to make requests – unexpected Whitney Houston is always good – but coming in with a plan is ideal because you know what you like and you know more or less what your guests like and now you know how to combine all of that to create the perfect playlist!
basicbash says
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