January 16, 2019

Do you know that your guests LOVE to dance? Do you want them to have an even better dancing experience on the night of your wedding? I’m sure you know what we are about to suggest simply be reading the title of this blog. More often than not our clients have decided to purchase flip flops for their guests so they can boogie all night long without getting soar or blistered feet.

How do you determine if you should invest money in guest’s comfy feet? Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is the age demographic of your group?

While all ages love taking their stilettos off, the younger demographic are more inclined to grab a pair of flops to dance in. As women get older, they get wiser, and realize it’s usually more beneficial to wear comfortable heels instead of the 5” heels that are worn for their one “Instagram post”. We’re not going to deny that’s been us a few times in the past! 

2. What flooring is in the venue?

There are a few flooring types that are harder on your feet, which mean dancing on those floors make it harder to last the evening. The two worst floor types to dance on are cement and concrete because there is no give or bounce underneath you. We highly recommend flip flops if you have a cement ground. This is most commonly found in industrial type venues which are becoming vastly more and more popular for weddings. We love seeing tiled dance floors, which is a dance floor brought in from a third party, put together in pieces. These usually have some cushion underneath which help when you’re moving around all night long! In this case, it’s not as important to think about purchasing flip flops.

If you decide to purchase flip flops for your guests, we’ve put together a few questions to think about before swiping your card.

1. When should you purchase your flip flops?

Preferably off-season. You’re much more apt to find sales during the cold months. It’s not always easy to plan this far in advance, but if you keep the tags on you could potentially return them as it gets closer if you realize you purchased too many.

2. Where to purchase flip flops for your wedding?

The most popular place we’ve seen is Old Navy. While their basic flip flop costs $3.99, it’s very common they are discounted to $2.50. During the winter, we have seen even better deals than that. It’s just about keeping an eye out. You can also search through Etsy for boutique stores that pre-assemble the flip flops with tags to make your life easier.

3. What color should you get?

That’s the fun thing about flip flops for weddings, they can be any color you’d like! Black is the most common so guests can use them at a later date. But we’ve also seen our clients match the season; whether that be spring colors, fall colors, or somewhere in between. Or, you can match your wedding colors. If your main wedding color is navy, go navy! Is your main color pink? Go for it. Usually females are the ones utilizing flip flops anyways.

4. How do you display your flip flops?

Clearly you can’t just put the flip flops on the ground. We most typically see baskets to hold all of your flip flops, organized by size. You can put tags on each individual pair which is the most convenient for your guests in case someone picks up a pair and puts it back in the wrong location. You can also put labels on the outside of the baskets. The good thing about this is it’s much easier to see what size shoes are where. It only poses a problem if someone puts flip flops back in the wrong location.

5. Most importantly, how many flip flops should you get and what sizes should you get?

Through our experience, we’ve come up with a good “formula” to calculate how many you should purchase for your guests.
-How many women did you invite to your wedding? Take ~85% of that total to get the number of expected women at the wedding (typically there’s about a 15% drop off rate).
-From the number you ended on in the first step, take away 50-55%. This is because the older demographics don’t always take a pair, some guests just don’t choose to dance, and some guests leave before dancing even begins.
-Now that you have the total number of flip flops, how many of each size do you purchase?

25% size 5/6

30% size 7/8

30% size 9/10

15% size 11

If you’re on the fence between pair sizes and you’re not sure which to get, size up! Someone can always put a pair of flip flops on that are larger than their feet, but a smaller size is uncomfortable and unusable.

Picture Credit: Katherine Salvatori, Dennis Lee, Artisan Events

-Ohana Events