Structuring A Timeline for Your Event

Dueling Pianos can be a great form of interactive entertainment for events, but we highly recommend a few things when creating the timeline for your event.

Dinner Hour:

The dinner hour should be scheduled before the dueling pianos perform. Our whole show thrives in interacting with the audience, especially the sing-along element, which is particularly difficult when your guests are eating. Although some will commit to singing and eating simultaneously, we usually recommend that prerecorded background music be provided during this time. While we can provide live music, it tends to be low-volume background music since people are focused on eating and having conversations, and since we charge by the performance duration, you can save money by having us wait until after dinner. Speeches and Announcements:

Any speeches or announcements work best before we start performing. Once we start, we don't stop until our time is over, and this is particularly important since we're typically teaching the audience at the beginning that it's ok to sing, dance, clap your hands, and request songs - it's what makes the show fun. This whole process tends to snowball throughout the evening, and any interruptions for speeches or announcements will throw the proverbial wrench into the momentum that we're building. Announcements like the departure of transportation, last call for alcohol, and so on are best given to one of the entertainers so that they can make that announcement without fully stopping the performance.

Games and Interactive Events: Games can be a lot of fun during corporate events and fundraisers, and we can even incorporate them sometimes into our show. We've done it before with Branding Bingo, having people write their own lyrics to popular songs covering information provided at a corporate event for them to perform, or doing silly elimination games. Any ideas like that are best broached during the planning of the event so that we can help organize them. Otherwise, they tend to work best after the show.

Giveaways and Raffles:

This is a big one, especially for Holiday Parties. Giveaways and raffles or 50/50 tickets should be at the very end of the event. A lot of people will stick around until this happens, and if too early in the night, then they'll eat, wait to see if they won, and then leave. Dueling Pianos work a lot better for building up the energy and excitement, and it's tough to get people excited when they don't win one of the big items or anything at all.

Alcohol:

This is especially true for what we do. There's a reason they're dueling piano bars and not dueling piano coffee shops. A little liquid courage goes a long way, and while it's not vital, there's a noticeable difference when adult beverages are involved versus when they're not, which is why a good cocktail hour can be very beneficial in creating a fun night for your guests.

As the old saying goes:

For the perfect evening, we recommend structuring your event like below:

Cocktail Hour
Dinner
Speeches/Announcements (can be done during dinner or cocktail hour, typically near the end of dinner)
Dueling Pianos Performance (without any interruptions for games or speeches)
Giveaways and Raffles

Events that follow this formula tend to have the best success. For more information, contact us to help you plan the perfect night for your event.