My husband warned me about this before our wedding. I'd never heard of it before and he explained that it was a Northern tradition (he's from Ohio). His side of the family ended up not doing it, though... I think it was because we didn't sit down long enough to give them an opportunity! We did a heavy hors doerves buffet, and were up dancing the rest of the night. :)

It's funny that he's from Ohio.... Every wedding that I've been to where that was done was either IN Ohio or the people getting married were FROM Ohio. :)

That's been done at every wedding I've been to. I'm in the Chicago area...it was also done at one in Michigan.

We traditionally did the tapping on glasses to make the couple kiss and sometimes people go so crazy that they don't have time to eat. The replacement for that has become this: To make the couple kiss, you have to stand up and sing a love song. They usually do this as a whole table and is much funnier than the tapping on the glasses. It also lessens the frequency because a lot of times, people don't want to stand up and sing! I've been to some weddings where they held up cards rating the kisses on a scale of 1 to 10. I've never been to a banquet type reception where one of those two things weren't done. Then again, I'm from Michigan and so are all the people whose weddings I've been to!

The last few weddings I went to, the guests either had to sing a love song, or there were little bells on the tables to ring to get the new couple to kiss.

I liked the bells, but you have to be careful how you word an announcement about the love song - one (tacky) group sang Love Stinks!

I didn't realize that my post would start a band vs DJs debate. In my experience people have had bands not DJs at weddings. My sister is getting married next month and will have a band with a DJ to play their special songs. Yeah it's going to be a huge wedding.

Yeah, yeah....

dance vs. no dance, dj vs. band... who really CARES?

if they want their wedding w/ a dj, why shouldn't they be able to have it that way without everyone critizing (what spelling looks way weird!!!!)? If you don't want YOUR wedding that way, then don't do it that way for YOUR wedding and be over it.

i've been to weddings w/ DJs and weddings w/ bands. They were both equally fun & great.

I went to a wedding and at the reception, there were little bells on the tables with a heart-shaped handle. Guests were supposed to ring the bell for the groom & bride to kiss.

At first it was cute, but it definitely got old VERY quick....

This is huge up here, but the bride and groom usually ask people not to do it too much during dinner.

I went to wedding in Sudbury (Northern Ontario) this summer and they don't do that up there. Their reason was, people drink too much and glasses get broken. Anyway, what they had instead was a bowl of rose petals at the front and written on the rose petals were tasks. In order to get the bride and groom to kiss, the guests had to go up to the front and perform the task on the rose petal they got. They had to answer either a trivia question, or do a dance or sing a song, or tell a joke, etc. If they did not answer the question right or perform the task to the satisfaction of the bride and groom, the bride and groom did not kiss.

I thought it was a great idea. Not only did it make things fun, the bride and groom could actually eat their meal.

I've been to weddings where there has been a lot of glass-tapping to get the bride and groom to kiss. Fortunately it didn't happen at my wedding.

I got a great suggestion off alt.wedding for getting around the glass-tapping thing: When the guests start to tap their glasses, the bride and groom should tap their own glasses as well, and look confused... :p

We just didn't kiss when people did it. By the second time, people just saved their energy and didn't do it at all.