Wedding Reception Games & Activities: Fun Entertainment Ideas
Keeping the party going at your wedding reception can be difficult if you haven’t planned games and activities to get your guests involved in the party. Use these ideas for wedding table games, games for guests, indoor and outdoor games, wedding shower games, games for bride and groom, drinking games, rehearsal games, and more!
Check out these entertaining and fun games and activities that are perfect for your guests, the bride and groom, and even the wedding party.
Photo: Next To Me Studios
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Table Games for Weddings
Printable pages. From mad libs to advice cards, there are various printable pages you can find on the internet to leave on the tables for guests to fill out. Plus, you’ll enjoy seeing what your guests wrote! You can check out this post for more ideas.
Board games. It’s becoming more and more popular for board games to be incorporated into the wedding reception festivities. You could set games on every table or leave games on a side table for guests to choose from.
I Spy game. If you like the idea of having candid photos taken by your guests, include an “I Spy” page on each table for guests to snap pictures of the things on the list.
There are two ways you could go about this. First, you could go the old fashion way and place a few disposable cameras on each table for guests to you. Second, you could include your wedding hashtag on your “I Spy” page for guests to use when posting their pictures to social media.
Wedding Reception Games for Guests
There are fun ways to entertain your guests and get them involved that don’t have to include the bride and groom making fools of themselves. Here are some great ideas and activities that you can play to get your guests involved and having fun.
Karaoke. What could be more fun than a little karaoke? Encourage guests to get involved with prizes and hit songs. To make things a little easier and get the fun started, have a few people pre-selected to sing the first few songs. Also, limit the number of tracks for quick song selection.
Treasure hunt. This can be especially fun for kids. Create a card with the list of things to find and have someone place all the trinkets ahead of time. You can have them find pictures, items, food, colors, people, etc. Kids are sure to have a blast and stay occupied for a while.
Kids table. If you’re having kids at your reception, you can have an entire table set up with crayons, paper, crafts, coloring pages, and games to occupy the kids while the parents have fun dancing and visiting with the other guests. You could even provide a tub of Legos and other building toys for kids to get their creativity on. Provide a few little kid friendly sweet treats too!
Check out my complete list of 36 Surefire Ways to Keep Your Wedding Guests Entertained!
Outdoor Wedding Reception Yard Games
When it comes to fun outdoor wedding games, there are a lot more options available. Depending on how much space you have to work with, you could come up with a lot of fun yard game ideas fairly inexpensively. Here are just a few fun outdoor reception game ideas:
Tic-Tac-Toe
Bean Bag Toss / Corn Hole
Ring Toss
Ladder Golf
Add more fun to your outdoor wedding reception by setting up competitions with brackets and everything! Offering prizes to the winners is also a great incentive to get your wedding guests involved in the fun.
Wedding Shower Games
Wedding shower games are fun games to play with your group of girls as you celebrate an upcoming wedding. From printable sheets to crazy activities, wedding shower games can be really fun.
Put a ring on it. Put a pile of play rings by the entrance for each guest to grab as they arrive. Next to the rings should be a sign that says something like “Don’t say ‘Bride’ or ‘Wedding’ or your bling will be taken from you!” Whoever catches someone saying the forbidden words can steal the offender’s ring. Whoever has the most rings at the end of the party wins a prize!
He Said. She Said. This is a classic game that you can find free printables all over Pinterest. The game is simple… the paper will have various phrases and you must indicate which person said each phrase. The one who gets the most correct wins.
Bridal Shower Scattergories. Have your guests fill in custom or premade cards (you can find them on Etsy) that have the blanks with words that begin with each letter in the word “LOVE”. When time is up, all the guests should share their answers aloud. The guest with the most unique words wins!
Wedding Games for Bride and Groom
The wedding reception is all about celebrating the new happy couple, and nothing could be more entertaining than watching them play a game and get a little competitive!
While there are a lot of activities guests can do at the reception, here are a few funny wedding reception games for the bride and groom that are sure to entertain your wedding guests.
The Shoe Game. This is a hilarious game where the bride and group sit back to back and remove both shoes. They both trade a shoe so that they’re holding one of each. A designated person will then ask a series of questions about the couple and their relationship. After each question, the bride and groom hold up the shoe of the spouse they think is the best answer to the question.
Who Takes the Cake? This game doesn’t require much from the bride or groom other than maybe a little cake in the face. Guests donate to your honeymoon fund by putting money in either the bride’s jar or the groom’s jar and whoever has the most money in their jar get’s cake in the face.
Read more about reception games for the bride and groom here.
Wedding Drinking Games
Probably one of the most popular wedding drinking games is a beer pong tournament.
However, if you want to do something a little different, you could have a round of Flip Cup.
Flip cup (also called tip cup, canoe, taps, flippy cup or tippy cup) is a team-based drinking game. Two teams of an equal number of players stand on opposite sides of a table, facing one another. The players directly facing are opponents. In front of each teammate is a disposable plastic cup filled with a set amount of beer. Generally, the first line inside a disposable cup is used as a marker.
At the start, it is customary for the initiating players to make a toast, after which the first member of each team drinks the entirety of their beverage. When finished, the cup is placed open side up at the edge of the table, and the player who drank it attempts to flip the cup, by flicking or lifting the bottom of the cup until it flips and lands face down on the table, If a cup is knocked over in the chain whilst moving to the next cup the player must go back and re-flip.
The player may not use two hands or blow on the cup to guide it to flip over. If the player is unsuccessful on the first try, the cup is reset and re-flipped. Only after the first teammate is done flipping successfully can the next person proceed. Additionally, subsequent players may not touch or manipulate their cup until the previous player has successfully flipped their cup. Whichever team finishes drinking and flipping all its cups first wins.
Photo Credit: One Fab Day
Wedding Rehearsal Games
Another great option is to have Rehearsal Trivia where people from both sides of the family can really get to know the bride and groom in funny ways.
Simply make a list of questions about the bride and group and provide multiple choice answers so people don’t have to use too much brain power. When everyone has finished filling out their sheet, the bride and groom can have fun sharing the correct answers.
Whoever has the most correct answers at the end wins a prize!
Wedding Reception Games for Reception Indoor
Reception games can be a little more limited due to space. However, there are some fun indoor wedding reception games and activities that you can have for your guests to enjoy.
Photo booth. This is a new and fun way to get guests involved and leave with memories. It also could replace the guest book and make for a really fun memento.
Table games. You can see the section above for more ideas, but you could have printables on the tables, board games, puzzles, and more to entertain guests.
Music games. For those who like to get down on the dance floor, fun dances are a great wedding reception idea. From funny dances, group dance, the dollar dance, musical chairs, and other ideas, you can keep the reception rocking all night long!
Wedding Olympics Games
While this is also know as Beer Olympics, you could also change this out to be a fun non-alcoholic activity. You could take any type of competition game and make it into Wedding Olympics!
This is a great idea for wedding parties, so you can have team bride and team groom, as a way to celebrate before the wedding. Here are a few game ideas that you can incorporate.
Canoe Races. All team members kneel at the table in front of an ice cube tray full of beer (or any other non-alcoholic beverage). At the whistle, the entire team sucks up the beer from their individual ice tray through a provided straw. Once you finish your tray step back from the table and place your hands behind your back. The first team to finish all the ice trays wins.
Egg Toss. Each player pairs up with a partner from his or her team. Partners line up across from each other. Start about a foot away and toss the egg to your partner with your right hand while you are holding a beer (or anything else) in your left. After everyone has completed that first toss, take a few steps back and toss the egg to your partner. Keep taking steps back until your egg breaks. Once your egg breaks, you are out of the game and have to chug your beer. The tossing continues until one pair is left.
Best Sucker Contest. Fill baby bottles to the 2 oz. mark with your choice of alcohol or any beverage you like. Everyone must suck the baby bottle empty. First team to finish their bottles is the winners!
Wedding Party Games
Many of the games already listed in this post would be great wedding party games. These could be played at the wedding reception, engagement party, bachelor party, bachelorette party, and more!
Wedding Jeopardy. Just like the popular game show, determine who knows the bride and groom the best with fun Jeopardy style questions. This is a fun interactive game that is perfect for the wedding party!
Printable games. There are also a lot of really fun printable games that you can play such as trivia, who said it, and more.
Wedding Question Games
Many of these have already been mentioned in this article, but games like Wedding Jeopardy, the Shoe Game, printable games and so forth are a lot of great options.
You could make it really fun by offering prizes to the different winners, picking out different groups of people (such as relatives, cousins, high school friends, etc.) to play different games and see who knows the bride and groom best.
These games are great for wedding receptions, bridal showers, engagement parties, rehearsal dinners, and more!
Share your fun wedding reception game ideas in the comments!
