Wedding Entertainment
Posted: Saturday, January 12, 2008
by Simon Ellinas
Cartoons and Caricatures
On the surface, organising a wedding is, er, a piece of cake! And the wedding cake is simply a small slice of the arrangements. You have to book a church and choose a dress for the bride and outfits for the bride groom, best man, bridesmaid and other attendants. You have to order and send out invitations. And then perhaps book a car to drive the happy couple to church. That should do it.
No! The guests are going to want some entertainment!
Music is essential and there are thousands of acts out there, on the books of Entertainment Agents, eager to perform for your special day. You can choose from solo harpists right up to twenty piece big band ensembles. The usual choice though is a three or four piece pop/rock band happy to ply their trade bashing out popular covers.
In the interim periods between Reception and meal and during the courses, a disco is essential to provide low volume background music. And in the absence of a band, if you're economising, the disco can provide all the dancing music as well. Well, that's sorted!
Not quite! At most weddings there is a lot of waiting time during which relatives from both sides of the family have to meet, often for the first time. This can lead to an icy atmosphere sometimes and it is this ice which needs to be broken if the whole day is going to be a success.
So, the occasion needs some sort of interactive, mix and mingle entertainment which can get everyone laughing together and really smoothing over those awkward patches.
The first thing most people think of is a close-up magician which is an excellent choice. The magician walks around the company introducing himself and his act and truly amazes the guests with his own particular brand of magic. People always love watching magic tricks and puzzling over how it was done and it is a spectacular entertainment when done by one of the top professionals on the circuit. Magicians are plentiful and available to book from all the best Entertainment Agents.
A little rarer and perhaps a bit more unique are the Party Cartoonists. They are also known by the less spell-able word 'caricaturists' and often refer to themselves as On-The-Spot Caricaturists. They are rarer because it seems to be less easy to learn the skills to draw a person's face within five minutes than it is to learn those apparently mind-boggling magic tricks. It actually seems that you have to be born a cartoonist as it is a very difficult skill to teach.
It is the caricaturist's job to circulate at the wedding party drawing as many people as possible and to joke and banter as he/ she does so. A caricature invariably gets a whole crowd laughing and the ice melts immediately. Particularly effective are the caricatures which include bodies and hobbies as this extra personal touch makes the drawing so much more keep-able and will probably enhance its chances of ending up on the recipient's wall.
Drawing couples on the same sheet is very popular and adding the names of the bride and groom plus a date (possibly pre-printed) ensures that no-one is going to forget where they received this unique memento.
This neatly illustrates the other key benefit of having caricatures drawn at your wedding – so many people get to take home a memorable gift. What magician or musician can manage that?
But, as with everything in life, it is the careful combination of entertainments that will spell the success or failure of any event. So, a caricaturist and magician often work side-by-side at functions while a rock band blasts the marquee pegs out of the ground with yet another rendition of 'I Want To Dance The Night Away'.
And in the end, of course, it is not the wedding that counts, but the marriage in the years to follow. A caricature can bring you happy memories of a momentous day in your life, but it is the life you have afterwards that counts.
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