Wedding Quiz: Three Ways to Do One, and What Each Costs

A wedding quiz is one of the easiest ways to fill the slow bits of a wedding day: the wait while you're off having photos taken, the gap between courses, the hour after the speeches when the band is still setting up. It gives guests who have never met a reason to talk, and it gives your friends a chance to prove they were paying attention all those years.

There are really only three ways to run one. You can print a pub quiz and run it yourselves, you can hire a quiz host to do it for you, or you can let guests play on their phones. This post walks through all three, with what each one costs and where each one falls down.

I should say up front that I make one of the options, QuizYourGuests, so I'm not neutral. We built it for our own wedding, which was in a pub, so I've also done the paper version's homework. I've tried to be fair to the other two, because for some weddings they're the better choice.

Option 1: A paper pub quiz you run yourselves

This is the classic. Answer sheets and pens on every table, a few themed rounds, someone reading the questions out, and a tie-breaker kept in reserve.

What it costs: printing and a box of biros. If you don't want to write the questions from scratch, our free printable wedding quiz generator writes a pub quiz about the two of you from a few answers and prints a card for every table. No account needed.

Where it shines: a sit-down reception where everyone is already at a table and facing the same way. A paper sheet in the middle of a table is lovely. People lean in, argue, and someone always insists on doing the writing.

Where it falls down: somebody has to run it. That means reading questions over the noise, collecting sheets, marking them and adding up scores, and at a wedding that somebody is usually a best man who would rather be at the bar. It also only works while everyone is seated, so it has to happen in one block rather than across the day. I've written up the full format, with questions, in how to run a wedding pub quiz.

Option 2: Hire a wedding quiz host

There are people who do this professionally. You have a chat with them about the two of you, they write a personalised quiz, and on the day they turn up with the equipment and host it, usually for about an hour.

What it costs: a few hundred pounds. One UK wedding quiz host we came across charges an introductory £375 for an hour, which includes the consultation, the bespoke questions, tablets for each team and the hosting. Prices will vary with the host, your location and the date, so get a quote.

Where it shines: nobody in your wedding party has to do anything. A good host reads the room, keeps it moving and makes the quiet tables join in. If you want one big, shared moment with everyone laughing at the same question, a host is hard to beat.

Where it falls down: cost, and it's a single slot. Like the paper quiz, it fills one hour of the day rather than the gaps across it, and you need the room's attention for that hour. Popular dates also go early, so book well ahead.

Option 3: A quiz guests play on their phones

This is the one I make, so take this section with the appropriate pinch of salt.

With QuizYourGuests, guests pick Team Bride or Team Groom and play on their own phones. You write the questions in advance, mixing pub-quiz trivia with questions about the two of you, and set when each round opens. On the day the rounds open and close by themselves, so the quiz runs through the day rather than in one block, and nobody has to host it. There's a photo wall too, where guests earn points for sharing photos, and a big-screen view if your venue has a screen.

What it costs: nothing for the full version, with no limit on guests. The free version shows a small QuizYourGuests banner on guest screens; a one-off £29 removes it. See pricing.

Where it shines: weddings where people are mingling rather than seated, and long days with lots of gaps. At ours, about 85% of guests played at least one round, including plenty of people I'd never have called pub-quiz players, mostly because it was there on their phone whenever they had a quiet two minutes. Team Groom had more people than Team Bride, and Team Bride still won.

Where it falls down: it's quieter than a hosted quiz. There's no one at the front building up the tension, unless you put the leaderboard on a screen or get your MC to read out the scores. And a few guests won't want to get their phone out at a wedding, which is fine: make it optional and they'll watch their table do it. There are tips on keeping it relaxed in how to run a wedding quiz without annoying your guests.

Which one should you pick?

A rough rule of thumb:

• Everyone seated, and a confident friend who'd enjoy hosting? Paper quiz.
• Budget for entertainment and you want one big moment? Hire a host.
• Guests mingling, lots of gaps, and you don't want anyone to have a job on the day? Phone quiz.

You can also mix them. A phone quiz through the day with the final round and the scores read out after the speeches gets you a bit of both.

What to put in your wedding quiz

Whichever way you run it, the questions matter more than the format. The quizzes that work are about half trivia anyone can have a go at and half questions only the two of you could set: where you met, who said "I love you" first, what went wrong on the first date.

• For questions about the couple, there are 40 templates in our bride and groom quiz.
• For general wedding trivia with answers, try wedding traditions trivia or pop culture wedding trivia.
• For a full list across every round type, see wedding quiz questions for guests.

When to run it

The best moments are the ones where guests would otherwise be standing around: the drinks reception while you're having photos, between courses, and the lull after the speeches. If you'd like to see where the gaps fall in a typical day, I've mapped them out in wedding reception timeline games, and if you're splitting the room into two sides, Team Bride vs Team Groom explains why that works better than table teams.

If you want to see what a phone quiz looks like before deciding, the demo is a real game you can join in a few seconds, no email needed.