The Famous Wedding Rehearsal Dinner Slideshow

As if wedding planning wasn’t keeping you busy enough, now you’re digging through old childhood photo albums to contribute photos to the the slideshow that will be shown at your rehearsal dinner. This trend is a nice way to personalize the wedding weekend and share bits and pieces of your lives — separately and together — with your closest family and friends without taking up precious (and expensive!) time during your wedding reception.

The slideshow, no joke, is one of my favorite parts of the wedding weekend. Other favorite parts include the bride walking down the aisle, cocktail hour, the Horah, and the speech from the fathers (I cry… EVERY TIME). There’s something so fun and VIP for the wedding guests that we get a glimpse of the bride and groom behind the scenes when they were kids, living the lifestyle — most likely before I knew them — with their families. This past weekend, one of my sorority sisters and best friends from college got married in Chicago and I was mesmerized by the entire slideshow. I’d really only known her in the capacity of college and beyond, so seeing pictures of her as a little girl was so fun! As it is with friends you meet in college or after you graduate, you miss out on a big chunk of their lives because you didn’t grow up together. My friend, also an Alison, played a sport back home in her suburb of Illinois — this was new information for me as the Alison I know from college only played competitive Shopping At Banana Republic and The Gap (personally, my favorite sport as well). So, all this to say, the slideshow is a wonderful opportunity to share parts of yourself and your life with your partner with all the people who love you.

Does the slideshow have to take place at the rehearsal dinner? Well, no, not really. You’re in charge. You make the rules. My opinion is that it might be too much to fit in during the wedding reception and your guests, when presented with the option of watching the slideshow for five to ten minutes or dancing with Champagne in hand, my best bet is that the dance floor would win. And I don’t blame them. Plus, you’re already paying your band or DJ for this precious time so you may as well get more bang for your buck, which you can’t do if you show the slideshow during the reception. Plus, if you want to know the truth, it’s a little too bar mitzvah-ish for my taste, but if you’re not having a rehearsal dinner at all and you’re OK with it, then this isn’t a bad option.

The rehearsal dinner is typically made up of your very inner circle anyway; bridal party, immediate family, and friends from out of town are the ones who would really appreciate seeing the bride and groom as little kids and watching the history unfold in photos. Your obligatory invites from work who would attend the wedding only and not the rehearsal dinner probably wouldn’t care as much. Keeping the slideshow to an intimate audience makes it more special anyway since the people who are there would most likely be in the pictures, which, in turn, feels good for those attending.

So what should you know about making your rehearsal dinner slideshow? Pass this on to someone who is in charge if you’re not. My mom made one for my husband and me as a surprise and I’ve seen many over the years — there are definitely a few different approaches.

• Pick a theme. Are you going chronological or categorical? Show the bride growing up? Then the groom? Then the bride and groom together during their relationship? Also, this is a GREAT place to make use of your engagement photos! Often, many couples want to decline their engagement shoot — don’t! The slideshow is a perfect place to insert the most recent and professional photos of you two as a couple. Nice way to end the show.
• If you’re going with categorical photos, think of fun pockets like “Sports and After School Activities” showing both as kids in basketball and dance class. Or you can do a college section showcasing both with their school mascots, doing fraternity or sorority events, football games, graduation, and other key moments from college. I love seeing a “Travel” section where there are photos of the couple together on their trips over the years.
• Decide who will be in it. Just photos of the bride and groom? Or are you OK with including siblings and parents and extended family? What about high school friends and college pals? It’s like math — what you do to one side, you have to do to the other. So if you’re going to show photos of the bride growing up with her siblings, you can’t leave them out on the groom’s side. Hel-lo, family politics!
• Choose appropriate music to go with the photos or the individual. Obviously, avoid tacky songs or ones with bad language, but the options are endless. They can complement the category or they can be the bride or groom’s favorite song. This is actually one of my favorite parts of creating a slideshow of any kind! Song selection is huge!
• If you’re making the video yourself using a program like iMovie or Final Cut, make sure you add in a buffer of a black screen between the time someone presses “Play” and when it actually starts. This sounds like strange advice, but I guarantee you that if the “Play” button is pressed, the crowd will still be settling down or talking and won’t be prepared to give all their attention to the screen. This means that any words or photos that begin the presentation will be missed. So include a buffer — maybe five to eight seconds? — of black or an intro slide that will, if you will, prepare the audience to focus.
• Along those lines, do a rehearsal with the slideshow equipment. Make sure your device and the screen can be hooked up without any bugs. If you’re plugging into a mounted TV that the venue provides, make sure you have the right cables. You don’t want to be figuring this out with all the guests there. The animals get restless! Plus, it’s meal time… so… you know. My advice is to arrive early and test it all out so that the technology works for you instead of against you.

Have fun with your rehearsal dinner slideshow! It can be a really delightful and sweet ten minutes of Bride and Groom-a-palooza!