I was recently asked by one of my grooms what my opinion was of the size of dance floor they should lay down in their reception room, since they had a few size options. This is a question that actually comes up more than you’d think. It’s a great question, because it’s a very important topic. You don’t want a dance floor that is too small, but also don’t want one that is too big either.

In a nutshell, a dance floor that can accommodate the number of guests you expect to be out there and will have the dance floor about 80-90% filled is going to look much more attractive than the same amount of dancers on a much larger dance floor, leaving a lot more empty areas. Even though it’s the same amount of dancers, perception is reality, and a smaller dance floor that looks nearly full is going to be more inviting to those that aren’t out there just yet.

In my opinion, a 20x20 dance floor is perfect for a group of 100-125. In most cases, with a fun festive group, you can expect upwards of 75 people to be dancing at any one given time. Now if you don’t expect there to be a lot of dancing simply because you are absolutely certain that the majority of your guests are not dancers, then a smaller dance floor might be the wiser choice, like 12x12 or 15x15. That way, the minimal dancers that ARE out there will hopefully fill that smaller dance floor.

There’s nothing wrong with filling up a dance floor so much that people are actually dancing off the floor and on the carpet. Again, that just gives the impression that people are having so much fun that they are willing to dance on the carpet just to get in the mix.

Here’s a great chart taken from http://www.dancedeck.com/calculate.php but I cut it down to just the logical maximum number (on average) of people dancing.

I recently did a wedding (2016) at a venue so large that even the 300 people they invited couldn’t fill it up. This venue actually will accommodate 600 people. The room layout was exactly how I always suggest it to my couples: head table at the top, dance floor directly in front of it, and the guest tables around the dance floor in a U-shape fashion. The only problem here was my couple utilized too much of the outer area for tables which made their dance floor area almost 4x too large. Seriously. It was incredibly large. And because of this, even when we had the maximum amount of people dancing, it still looked empty. People weren’t spread out. They were all dancing in a tighter group, as you would expect.

I’ll say it again….perception is reality. If I knew my couple was going to set it up like this, I would have highly suggested bringing all the tables inward, to make the dance floor area smaller and more intimate. But by the time I realized this, it was too late to change it. It was still a great celebration. But a lesson learned and a big reason I wrote this blog.

Click here to learn about room set up and how the location of the dance floor, as well as many other things, will contribute to or hinder the success of the reception (or any event), as well as hurt or enhance the experience for the guests.

Thanks for reading. And as always, comment and share this! 

Photo by 808 Studios Photography