» How to Choose Songs for the Anniversary Dance

When assisting with the planning of your reception, we’re going to ask you a lot of questions to find out what you want and don’t want to do on your big day. The Anniversary Dance is one of the events we will definitely ask about, and it usually gets one of two reactions: either people are totally into it, or they’ve never heard of it.

So, let me explain.

During the Anniversary Dance, we will ask all of the married couples who are in attendance at your wedding to come to the dance floor. As the song continues, we will ask couples who have been married for less than X amount of time to exit the dance, typically starting at less than a year, and moving up accordingly depending on the number of couples that are dancing. The goal is to find the longest married couple at your reception and the other guests will typically give them a nice round of applause. The couple might also present the couple with a gift, sometimes the bride’s bouquet (especially if she’s not doing a toss), or a bottle of wine or some other token of affection. Oftentimes the couple will have an idea of who the longest married couple will be, usually grandparents of one of them, and will tailor the gift to them specifically. The newlyweds can either choose to remain on the dance floor the entire song, so at the end we have the longest married couple and the newest, or they can be the first to exit, being the newest married, and use the dance to talk to the other couples as they come off the dance floor.

Since the theme of the Anniversary Dance is the longevity of the couples that are dancing, the general theme of the songs that most people choose is along the lines of long standing love. It is usually a slow dance since you’ll have all age ranges included; you don’t want to choose something that is going to cause grandparents to put out their hips. To give everyone at least a little bit of time to dance you can do one of two things, look for a longer song that includes the general theme you’re looking for, or pick two shorter songs that we can play back to back. It’s more fun for everyone if we don’t have to rush them off the dance floor in just a few seconds because there’s 30 couples on the dance floor and the song is only two and a half minutes long. The ideal length is about four minutes, we can let everyone dance the first 30-40 seconds, and then start calling out years at 15-30 second intervals depending on the number of couples and the length of the song. However, the choice is yours and we will work with whatever you want to do for your Anniversary Dance.