A little background about the wedding: The Big Day will be this July out in Estes Park, Colorado. It's a destination wedding, so the guest list is on the smaller side (~55) and nearly everyone will be from out-of-state. We have a beautiful venue to hold both the ceremony and reception. Follwing an outdoor cocktail hour from about 2:00 through 2:45 (while fiance and I do photos), we'll likely have a 3-4 hour reception indoors. This will include a plated meal.
I definitely understand and recognize the need to have someone who knows what they're doing to move the reception along and keep things running smoothly in the background. This is where the DJ/MC thing comes in: I've been speaking to a couple DJs (both highly recommended by my venue) and several things have hit me 1) how expenseive they are, and 2) the dancing aspect of things. I hate dancing. And I hate dance parties. I didn't even go to my high school homecomings or proms. Neither my fiance nor I want to do a first dance. I won't be doing the father/daughter dance (which my dad is eternally grateful for). However, both DJs separately told me that they've never done a wedding without at least a first dance--and they've been in business since the late 80s and have done about 1600 weddings each.
I am very confused about what to do here. I recognize the need to have a dancing outlet (friends of mine will want to), but I don't want the afternoon to be about the dancing. I also don't want to spend the whole time being pressured into dancing.
And with all this in mind, I find it harder to justify the $1000 price tag on all these DJs/MCs when I'm not asking them to facilitate a dance--and that's the average going rate for the area. If I didn't have one though, I wouldn't know what to do for the reception. People have traveled/spent money to come to this--it should be a properly organized event.
I'm desperate for advice and beginning to feel overwhelmed. Cue the "we should have eloped" lamentations.