One fun addition to your wedding celebration in recent years is including a Slideshow for all your guests. These can really be a great success when done properly and can add a great bit of mood to the atmosphere you may want to set. However, if done incorrectly, they can fall short.
TOP 10 IDEA LIST ON – HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL WEDDING SLIDESHOW FOR YOUR RECEPTION
The Wedding Slideshow is one of our popular DJ packages. It has become something many couples want to add, but don’t really know how. Having been the disc jockey in countless weddings in the Albany & Saratoga Springs NY region, I have seen quite a bit of good ones and also, some really bad ones. Here is a list I have put together to help clients understand what they should think about when considering a wedding slideshow.
TOP 10 THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHEN CREATING YOUR WEDDING SLIDESHOW
1) PRESENTATION – Do we want the slideshow to be a featured activity as an event with a start and finish, or rather a backdrop decoration on a continuous loop?
2) PICTURE COUNT – Usually around 75-100 pictures is great for an event slideshow where your guests are instructed to watch a music video-like powerpoint presentation of pictures.
If you have a lot of pictures, it is best to make your wedding slideshow a continuous loop as a decoration in the background. Having your guests watch a 10-15 minute presentation as an event is too long and they will lose interest before the end of the slideshow.
3) MUSIC SELECTION OR NOT – Featured activity should be announced as an event and works best when set to music packaging it like a music video, with maybe one or two songs. (More than three songs begins to feel too long and your audience may lose interest.)
Digital Projection for Slideshow / Video
4) WHEN TO PLAY SLIDESHOW – “What time of the night should we show it?” Wedding Slideshows played as an event tend to work better during dinner while people are still eating, as to not take away from dancing time. If you are running a continuous looping slideshow as a decorative backdrop, usually cocktail hour is a good time to run it – and maybe into dinner – shutting it off during the dancing segment of the celebration.
5) ADDING SOUNDS – It is best to “keep it simple.” Adding crazy sounds or many little pieces of tracks to your slideshow is distracting to your audience and takes away from the visual on the screen.
6) EFFECTS – Avoid distractions. Powerpoint is loaded with them and it is easy to fall into using different ones everywhere. However, multiple effects like odd slide transitions become annoying to your audience quickly.
7) PICTURE SELECTION – It is best to try and have roughly the same number of slides for both the bride and groom. Using a sequential order is also a good idea, using the oldest pictures first, building up to the most recent. Then finally, having a number of pictures of the bride and groom together at the end, is best.
A slideshow can also be effective for couples who have had a destination wedding, or an elopement and want to now share the pictures of the actually ceremony to those at the reception that were unable to attend the vow exchange.
8) PICTURE TIMING – Usually around 4 seconds (give or take) is the best period of time to use between slide transitions. If you have a really large amount of pictures, you can cut off a half a second or so to help make it move a little faster.
9) SPEAKERS – Many people I have seen have opted to go with using their little computer speakers for the event-type slideshow. This is usually, as far as I can gather, usually because they want to exactly sync up pictures with the a particular line or something in music. However, I still believe it is best to keep it simple and just select a song or two and have your DJ play the song selections – and let the pictures do their thing.
10) PREPARATION – Many people try and get by with Microsoft running a slideshow automatically, however this is not a good idea. Using a program like Powerpoint PPT or even Google presentation is better. Using software that is designed to create a slideshow better lets you select the order in which you want the pictures to appear, as well as the time the picture remains on the screen.
