PULTEVENT
Wedding table games: 7 rounds where every table plays as one team
Table eleven had been written off. Eleven was the leftovers table: two colleagues of the groom, the bride's old flatmate and her new boyfriend, a cousin from Cork, and a couple nobody could quite place. At the start of the meal they were talking about the weather. By dessert they had named themselves The Wildcards, beaten the head table in the photo round, and the cousin from Cork was standing on his chair steering a cartoon car on the projector with his phone while the rest of eleven screamed directions at him.
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Every wedding has a table eleven. The seating plan is a political document, and after the families and the old friends are placed, somebody ends up sitting with strangers. Table games are the kindest fix I know. Once each table is a team with a name and a score, strangers become teammates in about four minutes.
The difference between these and the usual paper puzzles left on the tables is that they involve the whole room at once. The questions go up on the projector, each guest answers from their own phone after scanning a QR code, and the scoreboard adds everything up by table. It runs on PULTEVENT from the host's laptop. Guests' phones need internet; nothing to install.
7 table-versus-table rounds for a wedding reception
1 Name your table
Before the first round, each table picks a team name and the host types it into the scoreboard. If your tables are already named after places or songs, keep those.
How to run it. Give tables a nudge with two or three examples on the screen, or you'll get five teams called Table Five.
A name gives a table of strangers its first shared joke.
2 Couple trivia, table edition
Short multiple-choice questions about the couple, answered on phones. A table's score is the total of its players' correct answers.
How to run it. Keep it short here; the full couple quiz is a different game. Six questions, fast.
It gives every table an early score, so the competition has something to build on.
3 The table wheel
The guest wheel spins through the table names and lands on one. That table draws a task from the randomizer: sing the chorus of the couple's song, recreate the proposal, get the groom's grandmother to dance.
How to run it. Write tasks a whole table can do together in under a minute. Nobody gets singled out.
It's the round other tables watch, and the one that ends up in everyone's phone videos.
4 Table charades
One person from each table acts out a word from the screen that only they can see on their phone. Their table has thirty seconds to guess.
How to run it. Choose words connected to the couple: places they've lived, their dog's name, their favorite film genre.
It gets people out of their chairs without anyone having to dance yet.
5 The race
Drift Arena on the big screen: up to twelve cars, each steered from a phone. Each table sends a driver, the rest of the table becomes the pit crew and shouts advice.
How to run it. With more than twelve tables, run two heats and a final. Points by finishing position.
It's loud, it's visual, and it's the one thing that gets the head table to shout at the other tables.
6 Whose photo is it
Photos of guests from their childhood. Every table guesses whose it is on their phones. Bonus points if the photo belongs to someone at the guessing table.
How to run it. Pick a spread from different tables so no table feels left out.
A calmer round after the race, and people get to talk about each other.
7 The table podium
The scoreboard ends with the awards ceremony: special awards first (loudest table, best team name, most improved), then third, second and the winning table, with confetti on the screen.
How to run it. Something small for the winning table works well: a bottle, the first slice of cake, first on the dance floor.
It wraps the games up cleanly and leads straight into the first dance while the room is warm.
The seating plan becomes the teams
Tables play as teams under their table names, so there's no shuffling people around between courses.
One scoreboard for the room
Points from every round add up by table, and the running totals go on the screen between courses.
Everybody answers
Each guest plays from their own phone, so the quiet ones at the table count as much as the loud ones.
A podium at the end
An awards ceremony with third, second and first place, and special awards you name yourself.
Why tables and not individuals
In a room of a hundred, individual scores are meaningless. Two people top the leaderboard, the other ninety-eight are somewhere in the middle, and nobody cares. Table scores are different. You're playing for the people sitting with you, you talk about every answer, and the scoreboard only has ten or twelve names on it, so everybody can see where they stand.
It also rescues the quiet guest. At a table, a shy person can quietly get three answers right and be the reason their team wins, without ever having to stand up.
Spreading the rounds across the meal
Don't run all seven rounds in one block. Weave them through the meal: names and trivia with the starters, the wheel between courses, charades before dessert, the race after it, the photos and the podium just before the first dance. The catering team will thank you. So will the guests, who never feel they've been sitting through a game show for an hour.
Talk to the venue manager about when the plates go down and come up, and put that on your timeline. Never start a round while the kitchen is serving a course.
Paper games on the tables vs games for the room
There's a place for the printed word searches and the disposable cameras. They keep people busy while they wait. But they fragment the room: twelve tables doing twelve different things. A round on the big screen does the opposite. Everybody looks the same way and laughs at the same moment, which is what the couple want the room to feel like.
Big tables, small tables, a head table
Tables of ten are ideal. Round tables of six or eight are fine. A long head table can play as a team too, or you can leave it out of the scoring and let the couple be the judges. If the wedding uses long banquet tables, split each one in two and treat each half as a team.
"Is the head table competing?"
"Only if they want to lose to table eleven."
Phones and signal
Every guest plays on their own phone, so the venue Wi-Fi has to cope with a lot of phones at once, or there needs to be decent mobile signal in the room. Test it on the site visit. If the Wi-Fi has a password, put it on the table cards and next to the QR code on screen.
No signal at all? Run the wheel, charades and the photo round with the answers shouted out, and do the scoring by hand on the scoreboard from the laptop.
Testing it
Build the rounds with the free 3-day demo, no card, and try the race and the scoreboard on your own TV with a few friends' phones. After that, the full version is a one-time license, no subscription. Prices are on pultevent.ru/en.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run wedding table games on a projector
- 1
Get the final seating plan and table names from the couple or planner.
- 2
Enter the tables as teams on the scoreboard and build each round.
- 3
Agree with the venue manager when courses are served and slot the rounds around them.
- 4
Test the projector, sound and the Wi-Fi or mobile signal in the room.
- 5
At the start of the meal, put up the QR code and let each table name itself.
- 6
Play the rounds across the meal and finish with the table podium before the first dance.
FAQ
What are good wedding table games?
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Won't the games slow down the meal?
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See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
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