Wedding entertainment

Isnt it funny how with pretty much anything you mention the 'W' word and there is a sudden price increase they forgot to tell you about! im of no help in the cheap entertainment department im afraid as we are paying £1500 for our band! i think the lovely sandysounds may be of some help to you though! x

You called????

I'm afraid I'm not much help with bands as my two associations are only for DJs.

I can shed some light on price increase when the 'W' word is mentioned though from a DJ's perspective.

When booked for a birthday party etc, there is very rarely a client meeting (although I personally still offer one but its rarely taken up), very little preparation. So the fee covers you turning up at say 7pm putting the music on and playing for 5 hours.

A wedding is a completely different ball game. For this I can only talk about what I do, although most of the guys I know round the country do very simialr.

For a wedding:

i will offer a meeting prior to booking as i believe strongly that you need to have a good rapport and be comfortable with your entertainment provider and the only way to find this out is with a face to face meeting. With travel, this can take anything from 2 to 5 hours out of your day.

Further meetings..........I will have as many face to face meetings with a bride and groom as they want. Normally they only want one a week or two before the wedding. If I'm doing the whole day and the ceremony, it will often be two. Thats one or two more big chunks out of my time. Its important to have thorough discussions so that i get to know my couple and what they want, put their minds at rest that everything will be fine, find out names and other details of family and friends so that the evening can be personalised for them. For ceremonies and whole days I help them sort out the music by playing excerpts etc....and you wouldn't believe how long that takes sometimes. Sometimes it involves taking a piece of music and altering it on my music program.... which isn't a 5 minute job.

Preparation.... having the right music doesn't happen by chance. I accept playlists. Sometimes a playlist can take more than a day to prepare if it contains versions or tracks that I haven't got. This involves searching for them and buying them....another hidden expense. I once had a wedding that didn't submit a playlist, but their first dance was so obscure that it took me a good while to locate it and even involved me emailing the singer himself and having to buy his whole CD off him which wasn't available anywhere else. Special dances are essential...... not having the one special song that means so much could potentially ruin the atmosphere and the reception.....so it is backed up on another source so that on the night both sources will be playing simultaneously....nothing is left to chance.

Other preparation things include special things such as one of my brides is having a guest speaker celebrity as a surprise for her guests and i need to prepare things with him susch as discussing the PA I'll be providing and where to insert the clips of music during his set. Other things include preparing games, kids stuff etc.

Now......I am not complaining at all because I love every aspect of what I do and I especially love the quirky weddings where there are unusual bits or not the run of the mill music etc......but it all takes time to prepare and no other service provider works on preparation for nothing. A wedding is so important nothing is left to chance and its imperative that we do things exactly how the bride and groom want.....not just turning up and pressing play like at a party. Before every wedding, I set up and check all of my equipment, spend days preparing as explained.

When you see a DJ perform for 5 hours at a reception, most people are unaware of the time and work thats been invested prior to the day. These five hours are the result of maybe another 20 hours+ preparation. i hope that explains why a DJ fee might be more for a wedding.

Hi Badgergirl...

That saddens me that whichever band it was upped their prices. Go on, name and shame - I'd love to know. There really shouldn't be a price hike for weddings. I understand Sandysounds' points above. For us though, whatever the gig is, it involves meetings with the client, be they a wedding couple or the ents manager of a corporation or a pub landlord - it all takes roughly the same amount of time.

For bands there isn't really an association as such, like the bodies that exist for DJs. As a result it can feel like a bit of a lottery. The best way to do it is by word of mouth. Do as you have done on this forum and ask. Ask your friends on facebook. Ask around at work. Has a member of your family seen anyone at a wedding recently? Do you have a wedding planner who can recommend a band or perhaps the venue know some? Make sure that recommendations come from people who you trust. Build a list and take it from there. You'll come up with a couple of names and you should then be able to google them or go directly to the website and check them out.

I've put up a number of pages on our site that help wedding couples, or, to be honest, anyone who wants to hire a musician or a group do just that.

How to Hire Wedding Musicians, What to pay for and Contracts

How much should a live band cost?

Please make sure you get a contract. Its absolutely vital.

You could also try an agency. I say that with a little reservation as I'm suspicious of most agencies. They clearly need to make money and so they take a cut. I've seen some outrageous charges being passed on to the client before so please be careful. That said, they could provide a wide range of bands to choose from and you deal with one person.

Its a difficult area of organizing a wedding, but I maintain that it shouldn't be more expensive just because its a wedding.

I hope that helps in some small way!

Tony

Thanks people!

I will bear what you said in mind Sandysounds and thanks for your suggestions Tony.