Thursday, February 28, 2013

A Snag in Wedding Planning


I usually write posts about my reading, outdoor, or wine adventures, but today I am going to briefly break from that mold and write a post about wedding planning. Please do not worry, I am not going to change the style of my blog or redesign it with an overabundance of pastel colors. This is just a quick foray into the world of wedding planning, because at this moment, I am spending countless hours planning my own.

The majority of my wedding planning is coming together without a hitch – probably because I was pressured into helping out with dozens of weddings at my ex-church, and therefore, I have a good bit of experience. Food, dress shopping, registries, and so forth have not been much of a problem for me.

Unfortunately, the one giant hole in my planning experience is finding a wedding DJ. Where I grew up, music was appreciated, but dancing was pretty much forbidden. Because of this (and the fact the audio for these weddings, which almost always HAD to be held at the church, where controlled by the church audio team), I had never needed to search for a wedding DJ before.


As with all things attached to the word “wedding”, I instantly noticed that DJs liked to charge an absorbent amount for their services. I understand how live bands charge thousands of dollars to play at a wedding. They have to pay multiple people, and they are also wearing themselves out playing an instrument and singing for hours on end.

However, I can’t understand how a simple DJ could charge $1,000-$2,000 dollars just to sit there and play a list of songs. Truly, I get that a lot more can go into it than that, but I still think the cost is ridiculously high for such an easy task.

As I surfed through the hundreds of wedding DJ listings online, I discovered that it is easy to weed out many of the bad options by answering the questions below:
  • Does their web page take forever to load and/or look really bad?
  • Do they list their prices on their site? (not a deal breaker, but annoying)
  • To contact them for a quote, do you HAVE to call them? (Seriously, email is free; use it.)
  • After you send them an email for a quote, do they reply that they want to talk/meet with you instead of giving you a quote? (I get the importance of face-to-face, but if you're that secretive about your cost, you're obviously hiding something. No amount of you talking is going to get me to pay thousands of dollars for a DJ!)
  • Is their quote over $1,000?

Looking online is always a good place to start, but another fantastic way to find DJs is by word of mouth. Through one of Dan’s co-workers, we found out about one DJ, and this DJ led us to another one who lives closer to the wedding location. :)

We have not booked with any DJ yet, but now we have multiple people who we can talk to and see who will be the best fit for us. Hurray!

3 comments:

  1. After photographing lots of weddings and interacting with LOTS of DJs, I agree with Brandon. He says, "DJs are the bottom-feeders of the wedding industry." :P We had a string duo playing at our outdoor reception, so we didn't need to hire a DJ... but even if we had, there's only one or two DJs that I would've hired. Mostly, DJs just like the fact that they have a microphone. It's kinda pathetic! ;) Best of luck in your search!!

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  2. The wedding DJ will play an important role to entertain the guest and keep the wedding alive. Searching the wedding DJ and resources is easy using the wedding app for iPad will be useful for the newly engaged people. It also has some useful tools to plan the wedding easily.

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  3. Some dj tips for my friends hope you like. Being professional can put you way ahead of the game. Many people in the music business fail to be professional. Even though the business requires us to provide fun, some get lost and think that they must indulge. A few quick rules that should help you along... Keep your word, do what you say you're going to do. Show up on time, be ready for action. No matter what size of your attendance, play the best you can. You never know who is listening or what connection someone can provide to you. If you're distributing media kits, follow-up with a phone call or an e-mail. This also applies to all press-related info, meeting and reviews. If you give respect you'll get respect. No matter how they act, you must remain professional. Thanks
    find dj

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