The Most Important Moment for an Unforgettable Wedding
Have you ever been to a restaurant and had an incredible dining experience—excellent food, cozy atmosphere, welcoming service—but then at the end of the meal the server took forever to bring you your bill, making you wait to leave, and souring you on the place in the meantime? If an otherwise incredible experience ends poorly, it can completely shift our feelings about it. The reason for this is because we tend to remember an experience based on its Peak—the emotional high point—and its End, rather than a cumulation of the overall experience. Even if 99% of an experience was amazing, if it ends badly, our memories of it will ultimately be pretty negative.
That’s why it’s critical to end your wedding on an emotional high point. Most couples are reluctant to have a firm end to the party when people are having fun, and that’s understandable. We’ve all been to weddings where we’re sweating it up on the dance floor having a blast, only to be pulled out of the moment by a record scratch and the lights going on. It’s a major bummer. But letting an event peter out without a clean ending will also result in a pretty underwhelming experience. For your wedding to truly stick to people’s bones, it’s important that you shape the ending to align with your wedding’s purpose and intent. You are essentially creating a magic circle around your wedding that shapes the way people experience it, and the end of your wedding is a clear boundary between the experience of your wedding and reentry into the real world.
You can worry less about the peak of the experience because there will likely be several—from the ceremony to the dancing—but the ending is something you can actually control. Instead of just cutting people off at the peak of their enjoyment, it’s best to transition them to a final shared experience to wrap things up in a fun and meaningful way. You can move everyone outside for an end-of-the-night fireworks show or sparkler send off. You can have the last song be something special to your community and have everyone gather to sing it together. You can have a Farewell Line leaving the reception venue—essentially the opposite of a Receiving Line where you personally thank and bid farewell to every guest as they leave. You can end with a thank you speech, late night food truck, or even a piñata.
Photo by Katherine Stinnett
However you decide to end the evening, it should be fun, emotionally resonant, and most importantly, done with intention and heart. Even if everything at your wedding went entirely wrong—which of course it won’t—you can still salvage the overall experience by ensuring you leave guests with a massive impact at the end. Be bold, think outside the box, and whatever you do, don’t let your wedding simply die down til there’s only a few stragglers left on the dance floor.
