I remember the first Montana wedding I went to when all of a sudden there was an call to the dance floor. “Bring up all the cash you have, and pin it or stuff it in the brides dress!” Yes, you heard me right, they were STUFFING dollar bills into the brides wedding bodice. This began my hatred of the dollar dance.
Of course, I will never shame anyone for doing a dollar dance or enjoying the dollar dance. To each their own! It is a good way to see all your guests and make a little money for your honeymoon, but it always stops the dance floor mid party! So, I just wanted to showcase a few fun ideas, besides the dollar dance, on how to make money at your wedding AND keep the party going!
Auction off the bride’s garter: Instead of having your partner go up your skirt and grab it with their teeth in front of grandma… haha… you can auction off the garter instead! This is actually pretty common at ranch weddings. It doesn’t mean that the highest bidder on the garter really gets anything, other than a huge gift of money to the couple. It also gets people hyped up hearing a call of an auctioneer! If you don’t feel comfortable auctioning the garter, you don’t have to use the garter! You could really auction anything off! It’s just a fun time for people at the dinner table to pull their money together and bid.
Shake a day with the tables: This is a really fun dice game! The player has 5 dice and you shake them and roll. You can decide how much to charge for how many times they want to roll the dice. Some people have had people pay $5 for 3 rolls. They roll the dice, if they rolled 2 of a kind they got 1 free drink ticket and if they rolled 3 of a kind they got 2 free drink tickets! You can also make your own prizes for this as well if you don’t want to give drink tickets. If they get all 5 of the same number then you win the money pot! You playing? I AM!
Pay to get a picture with the couple on the dance floor: This one might get a little hairy, since everyone is wanting pictures with the bride and groom! BUT you could have a little “pop up photo booth” set up and they pay whatever price you want to charge to do fun poses with you in the DIY photobooth you have!
Have a menu of songs that you have to pay to play: You could have a list of songs that won’t be played unless they pick from this list and pay to have it played! Could be used for the super popular wedding songs… 😉
Make bets on who’s going to cry first before the ceremony: This is a fun one! There are so many ways you could do this, but one way would to have bowls with names on them (mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother, sister, best friend…etc) at the entrance before people sit down for the ceremony. They can put money in whatever bowl they choose to bet on and then you will get to keep the bet money while whoever bets on the right person can get a little prize from the couple!
Pay to be the first table in the buffet line: Does your table want to be the first in line for dinner?? Whichever table bids highest gets to eat first while you get their bid money! Win win!
Hopefully this helps you spark some ideas for things to do other than the dollar dance! Or if you’re not a fan of any of these, you don’t have to do them! You don’t even need to do the dollar dance or any fundraising game at all if you aren’t comfortable with it! I just wanted to give options for those that would like a little extra honeymoon cash! These are just some ideas from things I’ve seen or things people have told me about. If you have any other ideas, please leave them in the comments! I’d love to add to this list! Have fun!
