Back in college, I used to shoot fraternity parties to make some extra cash. At that time cameras were film, had no autofocus, portable flashes were weak, and low light metering was iffy at best. We used fully manual approaches that worked amazingly thinking back now.

Today's digital cameras have lots of sophisticated capabilities meaning different approaches are appropriate. Following is a fantastic recipe Sam Stern, a well known wedding photographer, uses.

Set the ISO to 400; put the camera in manual mode and set the aperture to f5.6 and shutter to 1/80. Set the metering to matrix metering (for Nikons). Set the white balance to flash. A good flash is needed for this approach. It's unlikely the pop-up flash will be strong enough. For the Nikons that means either an SB800 or SB900. Set the flash to TTL mode and click the head up one notch. I remember this as the 456 8 approach.

If your camera has good performance at 800 ISO, here's a simple modification to the recipe that I prefer. ISO 800, aperture f8, shutter 1/80. Same white balance, meter and flash settings. It's the 888 approach.