Weddings: Would you hire an MC or use a family friend? (Professionals are just that – professional!)

A WEDDING being a once in a life time event, you can’t leave it in the hands of a friend or a family member just because you are trying to cut on expenses. To begin with, you do not want to take the chance that your friend could bore your guests and kill the festive mood of the wedding. A professional master of ceremonies on the other hand can study the mood of the guests and know how best to keep them ‘alert’. A counter argument to this is that a friend would fare better as he or she knows most of the guests at the wedding and can better engage them. But as any professional master of ceremonies will tell you, they do not need to be acquainted with the audience to crack them up. You can also hire a famous comedian who a large section of the guests are familiar with. The volunteer MC has no motivation to give their all during the event, if anything, volunteering alone is the most you could ask for, so in case they do not crack up the guests as much as you would want, you can only sit and suck it up. But a hired master of ceremonies will want to give you value for your money, he is trying to earn his bread so there is no way that he will mess that up. At most weddings I have been to - they are not that many- the friend or family member who volunteers as the MC is mostly an elderly aunt who insists on telling embarrassing stories on how she has seen the groom grow and how she cannot believe he is the same kid whose diapers she used to change. You do not want your aunt giving details of what was in your diapers, do you? Volunteer MCs may not be able to control the guests since most of them are familiar with him or her and could break the rules when it comes to the length of speeches. Weddings should be unique from other regular events, they should not feel like family meetings or any other gathering of friends and a professional master of ceremonies is the ingredient needed to give the event the different feeling that will make it memorable. The impartiality or neutrality of the professional master of ceremonies is a plus too. We all have disputes or scores to settle in our families. Do not judge; we all have family problems and you wouldn’t want the volunteer MC trying to settle theirs on your big day. You also do not want your cousin calling out your old man because he spanked her when she was 10 in front of guests. They can call each other out on their own time.