I have spent years managing and booking bands that play wedding receptions. Over the years working with hundreds of brides, I have been asked thousands of great questions about hiring a wedding band. I share the top five with you here.
How much does it cost?
No matter your budget, cost matters. For brides on a budget, this can limit your options. Knowing what you have to spend, even as a ballpark figure, will help you quickly narrow the field of potential entertainers. No need to waste your time talking to a $10,000 band if all you have is $2,000. Avoid looking at bands outside your budget – you get what you pay for and you will likely be disappointed if you do see that $10,000 10-piece band with horns and moving lights and have to settle for a 4 piece without any bells and whistles.
For those brides able to spend what it takes to hire the band you want, you still need to know the cost and the timing of payments so you can be prepared to pay what is required when it is required. But you have a great deal more freedom to find the band of your dreams without having to settle for something less.
What do I get for the price?
It is important to understand what you get for the price. The standard evening includes 3 hours of live music over a four hour period. Usually 3 1-hour sets with 2 30-minute breaks or 4 45-minute sets with 3 15-minute breaks. Whether there is any room to modify that schedule is important – after all, the band should accommodate the bride, not the other way around. It is important to know if the band provides sound equipment, lights, a sound engineer, load-in and load-out, etc. Are there any extra expenses such as meals or travel? The best way to know what you get is to talk to the band directly and, if at all possible, see them perform live at another wedding reception. Depending on what the bands offer, you may find that the higher priced bands are the better value.
Can I make requests for songs to be played or not played or learned?
Most bands are willing to accommodate requests within reason. I once had a bride hire a band only to go through the song list and ask the band not to play all but about 20 songs. To get through 3 hours, a band needs 36 – 48 songs. Obviously, we could not accommodate her requests. Quite frankly, if she wasn’t happy with 80% of the band’s repertoire, she should have hired another band.
Asking the band to learn a song is more complicated. While most bands will accommodate within reason, it is a much heavier burden on the band – all of the members must listen to the recording, chart out their parts, learn the parts, practice on their own and rehearse as a band. Because of the time involved, you must give the band plenty of lead time to learn songs. As an example, I like to have 60 days. It doesn’t take that long, but there are other requests that the band is learning for other events and your request needs to be scheduled in among the shows, requests and rehearsals with enough time to perform it convincingly.
Some songs cannot be faithfully replicated by every band. For example, no matter how hard they try, an 80′s one-hit-wonder cover band can’t do James Brown and an R&B band can’t do Radiohead. You should always ask, but recognize that there are limits to what can be done based on instrumentation, arrangements, recording techniques and other factors.
What happens if a band member gets sick or can’t make it to the show?
This is one of the best questions I have ever been asked. Things happen that are beyond anyone’s control: illness, accidents, even death. You can’t prevent these things, but you can prepare. Nearly every band can call someone to sit in at the last minute, but truly professional bands have a designated list of go-to professional players who have rehearsed with the band, played with the band, and know the show. Great story: Memphis Train Revue’s drummer got stuck in San Antonio when we had a wedding in Austin. With about 30 minutes to go, we went down our list and we were able to get Brannen Temple, a drummer handpicked by Janet Jackson for one of her tours, to sit in. The couple never knew anything was different. That’s how it should be, but it wouldn’t have been if Brannen wasn’t up to speed with the material and the show.
What guarantees do I have that the band will show?
Ultimately in life, there are no guarantees. How do you know that the officiant will show or the wedding cake or flowers or linens? At the end of the day all you have is trust. Unfortunately, weddings are typically one-off events. There is no opportunity to build ongoing relationships with vendors. What you have to go on is reputation and experience. Upstart bands have less to go on. Established bands have more. Here is what I know: professional wedding bands understand that the wedding community is small and word travels fast. There is simply no way to recover from ruining someone’s wedding reception. Word will get out and the band will never work again. Barring hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes (actually, I’ve had a band make it through a tornado), the professional band will be there.
Ultimately, the best way to guarantee success is to have a direct one-on-one relationship with the band leader or band manager. Good, open communication will go a long way to getting all of the important information out to all parties.
Author: Mark Grossman
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger
