• Offer an interactive alternative to keep guests from clinking their glasses to get the newlyweds to kiss.champagne glass wedding beer mug image by Paul Retherford from Fotolia.com
  
  Some couples dread the sound of silverware clinking against dinner glasses throughout their wedding reception---the signal, at many Western weddings, for the bride and groom to kiss. Because the sound could irritate some guests and interrupt the bride and groom's first meal together far too often, some people turn to alternatives that are more interactive and require guests to more or less earn each kiss that they see the bride and groom give one another.
  
  

A Challenge for Each Table

• As Theresa Chan suggests in a story submitted to "Chicken Soup for the Bride's Soul," ask the DJ or best man to announce to wedding reception guests that there will be no clinking of glasses. Instead, guests should be asked to follow the instructions at their individual tables. On each table, leave a piece of card stock that asks each table to complete a light-hearted challenge in order to get the bride and groom to kiss. Tailor each challenge to the guests seated at a particular table. For example, ask a table of the groom's old friends to recount humorous stories of him from the past. Ask a table of guests who have been married for a number of years to give a piece of marriage advice to the newlyweds. Be sure to have your photographer capture shots of each table's antics, be they songs, skits or speeches.
  
  

Trivia

• Before the wedding, write down a variety of questions about the bride and groom and give them---answers included---to the DJ or emcee, as suggested on the Wicked Good DJ website. When guests begin to clink their glasses, the DJ or emcee should announce that a trivia game will replace glass clinking and that guests should offer to answer a trivia question about the bride or groom in order to see the couple kiss. The rules are simple: Immediate family members of the bride and groom are not allowed to answer trivia questions, and only if the guest gets the question right do the bride and groom kiss.
  
  

Deflection

• Turn the attention on couples other than the bride and groom.kissing couple image by Mat Hayward from Fotolia.com
  
  This suggestion, modified from the Wicked Good DJ website, turns the attention away from the bride and groom and toward other couples attending the wedding reception. Write the names of all of the couples who will be attending the wedding on slips of paper. If there will be a sizable number of married couples attending, it might be best to include only those names, so as to avoid embarrassing any unmarried couples who may have quietly broken up shortly before the wedding or who may be reserving their first kiss for their own engagements or weddings. Place the slips of paper in a bowl at the head table. Give the DJ or emcee another list of actions or moments that will trigger a slip of paper being drawn from the bowl---perhaps when a certain song is played or when a certain word is said during a toast. When such a moment randomly occurs, pull out a slip of paper from the bowl. The couple named on the slip of paper must then kiss.