Alternate Social Tourney Format Ideas?

[BigRedAce]

Hi Folks,

My wife and I host couples tourneys that have gotten quite large (40+ players) but we're losing the social aspect of the game. People get locked down at their table and only get mixed up a couple of times per night. I've been noodling about some format that mixes half the folks playing while the other half are drinking, then switch after some time. But I can't hit upon a format that would work.

What we're doing now runs about 4-6 hours (and people bitch that is too long) and is a standard 5-6 table tourney. I've been thinking about doing STTs that merge to a final table, but with these folks an STT might take 2 hours...

Ideas?