I should start by saying I don't do weddings, far too much stress for not enough pay in my area. However this year, I've three booked, all friends who want ME . Two are no problem what so ever, both easy going, and fully aware of the mixed ages and tastes at a wedding.

One however, booked me through recomendation: I had the intial meeting with them and all of their requests are Dance and Trance (because according to them the "olds" will go home early anyway). After the first dance (cascada) at 8, they want Insomnia.

Slightly concerned, I said are you sure your guests will all appreciate non-stop dance/trance from 8 several times, to an assurance of yes's. (there is a reason ABBA is popular at weddings after all). I spoke to the recommenders (is that a word????) who seriously doubt the older members of the family will leave, because they would like to share the special day with the bride and groom.

So my main question is to the wedding experts out there, is can this work? and how can I aid it? and since they have requested that there is no cheese is their a compromise music wise people can suggest?

I am bringing glow sticks along, so I can give the "grannies" a quick crash course in how to dance to Scooter . . . . . . and luckliy I'm booked because I can chat to the audience and have a laugh.

Also since I'm doing 3 - 12, can any recomend an Ibiza style chillout that I can play during "eats".

Thanks in advance

It won't work. Trance is a very specific genre of music. I'm talking real Trance here, not the plastic crap that Basshunter knocks out. 95% of the people at a wedding will probably hate it. My girlfriend is 22 and she doesn't like it so it's nothing to do with age either.

I love Trance so if you need some help putting a set together if you decide to go ahead with it I have quite a large collection.

PS - Olds rarely leave early.

i did a wedding recently and the first dance was a bog standard tune then it was cheryl cole fight for this love remix, man in the mirro hed kandi remix then i was told to play modern charty stuff with a lot of chart remixes

it went down like a lead balloon, i got quite a bit of grief from the guests and ended up playing a lot of motown and disco and it worked

my advice - tread carefully

Sometimes it's better to say no.

In these situations I prepare defence tools



Defence 1.
At the consultation I enthusiastically say Trance or whatever genre it is and say that really worked picking a genre at Hollies wedding i did a really good Hour set of RNB then went into standard music for a wedding it worked really well and everyone was happy , this tries to focus there genre to a hour , if they insist on a whole night there is not much you can do except say no which i have done before now.

Defence 2.
At the consultation I ask if the music genre is on the invitations and all the guests know when they say no i say " Oh right" in a tone that makes them think lol

Defence tool 3.
I ask for a play list from both the groom and bride and print it out when people ask why you are playing this I say the bride or groom specifically asked for these and your not going to spoil there special day are you? (see what i did lol turn it around and make them guilty lol)

Defence tool 4.
I Announce to the guests As this is such and such wedding they have specifically requested that there Disco reception be a little different, so tonight we are not having a standard cheesy wedding music its going to be ...TRANCE!! then kick off with a big tune. let them know the score from the off

Defence tool 5.
Send them to the Bride or Groom . At the consultation i say I understand this is what you want but you will have a lot of complaints from family and in my experience these can lead to people being offensive and rude especially when they have had a few to drinks If they are giving me too much hassle is it all right to send them to you? This either leads them to change there stance on the music or gets them to say yes , if they are prepared to take the flack then fair enough i send them there way.


Defence 6.
I openly ask at the consultation that if i get over ten complaints from different people can i play other genres, I ask if I can play requests.

On the whole i have found that there are far more couples who are not considerate about other people. Yes its there day but they are taking it to extremes , a wedding is about showing everyone your commitment and love for each other not for force feeding your tastes of décor and music down every ones throats and stamping like a spoiled two year old if you don't get it your way.

I have turned down a few weddings because at the consultation I felt they were unreasonable people, for the ones that have fair reasonable demand i work my socks off for them.

absolutely no offence is meant to you marble but this couple if they are so much into trance why are they not hiring a DJ known in that field? I would say either its one doesn't exist who will do weddings in that area or the ones that are are WAY too expensive.

So they have made a choice on a recommendation of a friend, they can't expect you to be Trance DJ of the year so may be you are putting too much pressure on yourself, there real expectations may not be as high as what you expect of yourself.


What i do know from reading on various forums is that you Marble are a great DJ and Host you have years of experience of dealing with often difficult situations and coming up smelling of roses and getting high praise from not only your clients but your peers , I feel you will find these Weddings much easier than you expected ,after all if we can deal with hen and stag parties full on booze fuelled 21sts a few guests moaning about song selection that is out of our hands is hardly the biggest challenge in comparison

I Hope it turns out great ..good luck and let us know how you get on

Rob

I'm so glad you guys have said what I'm thinking.

Strangely I can see what the couple have done, they personally love hardcore Drum and Bass and have in their opinion by requesting dance and a few trance hits have gone mainstream enough to appeal to the guests.

I've got another consultation with them, and shall re-stress what you guys have said, and see if i can turn this around.

Anything song request pre- 2006 would be a godsend right now. Mind you Scooter vs status quo is halfway there

Thank again guys.

I have come across this type of thing in the past, and tbh I have turned down gigs over it. Remember that it is not just the B & G you are trying to impress, there will be up to 200 potential clients at the wedding and sometimes its best to keep your reputation intact rather than take a gig that you are clearly having doubts over.

This sort of thing can work if the bride and groom are confident that everyone else will share their taste.

Otherwise it's a recipe for disaster.

I was booked for a wedding a couple of years ago and the bride gave me a list of indie/heavy material. The only track I can remember now is Enter Sandman by Metallica.

I pointed out that the idea of a wedding DJ is to cater for everyone at some stage during the evening. The bride assured me that everyone would like the music.

She was right.

Virtually all the younger guests had been at university with the bride and groom and were into the same genre. The older guests liked it too and lots of people said what a great DJ I was!!

Last year I was booked (relatively last minute) for a wedding and the B&G gave me a list of heavy stuff, grunge and dance. No-one danced. Then one of the guests said "get this rubbish off and play 'Saturday Night'".

Not much of a contrast! But it worked. Then I was asked for Motown (by younger guests). That worked.

After that the B&G list was ditched. If I had stuck with it, the whole night would have been terrible.

I would not do the gig... I am not a trance DJ and would not like to feel that I was not giving the B&G what they wanted. I don't know any Trance tracks and not sure I even want to lol...

I have and will turn work down that I feel I am not capable of doing. I do not want to be stood up there all night feeling bad or worse still have a cue of people standing next to me telling me I am bad...

Good luck

Nik

well the gig's tomorrow, I spoke to the client again yesterday and she's given me free reign to get them dancing... so I'm packing the usual cheese alongside their requests. Failed to find any background music along the ibiza chillout route that I felt was sensible (was hoping to find a whole disk of slow remakes of old songs, but most had two well known tunes and a lot of slow versions of songs specific to that genre). So opting for good old fashion favourites instead.

The bride and grooms plan for the night is to drink and dance, and they are the same age as me, so hopefully the night will go well. Will find out tomorrow I guess :)




Done one wedding so far, the Bride and Groom loved it and the night itself was stress free .

However, the venue's manager wouldn't let us in at the pre agreed time because they had signed a "form" that wouldn't allow anyone in the room incase the cake got damaged. We were firmly told that the venue had spoken to the bride and she wanted us to start setting up at 7.

We sat in the carpark (for 2 hrs), until the guests arrived at 3:30, spoke to the bride and groom, who knew nothing about this "form" or the plan to set up at 7, and went straight upstairs to set up. Started playing music an hour earlier than originally planned (six o clock) and got into full swing at 7.

Then at 12 (as the guests were leaving), I started to pack down, to be told by the venue's manager, that we had to leave and pick up our gear in the morning. I refused and started tearing down to complaints that the venue now had to pay three (not one???? ) members of staff extra to wait around for me. I politely explained that if they had required us to collect the gear the next day, they could have told me in the three prior conversations we had over the phone before the event. They informed me that collection the next day was normal, (all their own Dj's do it and the bands they book) and I should know better I muttered something about insurance and informed them that all the venues I tend to work at have the room booked out with functions the next day. I scurried out of the venue at 12:50 (the world has never seen a female dj pack down a full rig so fast.

Sadly the bride and groom had various other problems with the venue and will be writing a letter of complaint, though our waiting around meant we came out of this smelling of roses.

So I stand by my comment that weddings are far to much stress for not enough pay.

Speak for yourself

Not in my experience, with the odd exception (stress, certainly not pay).

I did say in the first post, that the not enough pay is in my area.

I was asked less than a year ago, if I could do a wedding by people I vaguely knew. I thought I was doing a favour saying £150 (set up during the day, Disco 7-12) . . . They had three offers cheaper and declined mine. Sadly the wedding market is not that good in my area, too much competition has driven prices down.

Strangely if I move 30 miles in either direction, the pay gets a lot better.

Then cast your net in those areas thats what I have done. Travel to where the money is.

Nik

Bingo. I travelled 140 mile last week but got paid a total of £255 so it wasn't too bad. Fuel cost about £40 so made about £215. 14 hour day but enjoyed it more than the 9 hours I spend every day in the factory (read prison) I work at.

I totally agree with the comment about going where the money goes.

I'm not trying to be awkward here, but a small oversight which can be made however is looking at just the petrol cost and not counting travel time/costs. This isn't important if the DJ is doing this as a hobby/cash sideline but I think it is important if it is an income.

When calculating the real journey cost the other vehicle costs should be taken into consideration such as wear and tear, insurance, car tax etc. There are plenty of guides out there but this is a good one

http://www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/advice/a...etrol_table.jsp

D.X. I hope you don't mind but I'd like to use your numbers as an example.

140 miles in my car would have cost me more like £60 including wear and tear, insurance etc. It also means that the 9 hours total time would have meant a pay rate for me of £14/hour after taking off the travel cost.

The cheapy £100 job down the road for 4 hours plus say 2 hours setup/breakdown actually pays better at £16.70/hr (15% more income).

I'm not trying to split hairs here and this is not the only way to cost a job, but just pointing out to any new DJ's on this site that checking the overall cost guides for anyone planning on doing regular longer trips is worthwhile.



Apologies I know this is off topic

£14 an hour is still a good wage mate. I earn £10 an hour as an engineer and hate every last stinking second of it. Plus I have to spend around 7 hours per week stuck in traffic to get there and back. Driving around the country with my best mate playing music isn't what I'd call work. As the saying goes ...

"Find a job you like and you'll never work another day in your life".

Agree with a lot of what your saying, but some expenses like insurance road tax etc depreciate on a day to day basis whether you use the vehicle or not. Yes fuel and W&T need to be considered but my time to drive there and back is not a major concern as said above I listen to my music and it gives me good thinking time. As some one who used to drive trucks for a living I am used to a good three hour trip any ways lol...

Nik

Anyway back to the original post.

My daughter aged 26 went to a wedding two weeks ago and the dj was playing dance (90's) and trancey stuff. She said a few of the older, of which there was quite a lot there, were moaning about what he was playing and were definitely not enjoying themselves.

The strange thing is and what your bride needs to realise, is that people over the age of 40 want to have a good party and dance too!

Update now the gigs over. The bride was right the main family left at 5 o clock . I did a kiddies disco for 2 hours, and then she requested the harder stuff. There was only about 20 people left and 7 "little 'uns". I had a few dance/trance tracks on me (left some of my Prodigy at home due to her previous contact where she said "I could play to the crowd). So armed with a few mash ups, and some pendulum etc , they were very happy with the end result. The advantage of knowing very little about the genre, meant I (apparently) knew the greatest tunes. Although it wasn't "hard enough" for them, they appreciated what I done and enjoyed the evening. By the end I was out of music they really really liked (Which consisted of German Drum and Bass), and played a ibiza mix and went and talked to them (7 people left at this point) Learnt alot about raves and got some great recomendations musically (though forgotten most since they were German names I couldn't pronounce). . . .

Strangely they went downstairs (it was a hired room in a social club) and danced to the "cheese" on the jukebox at the very end.

Fascinating night and I really enjoyed it. Though I was shocked to find the Prodigy Vs Enya wasn't cool.

Taxi for dj silver!
Well done indeed, another lesson in the never ending learning curve in mobile disco land!

Enya is good. The Prodigy are good. But they should never go together. I'm going to guess you played that awful SMBU Orinoco Flow track. As a huge Prodigy fan that's sacrilege

Glad it all went well. Wish I could get a few gigs like that, as an ex raver I have tons of hard music that I'd love to play over a big system.

Guilty as charged

I will only listen to SMBU Orinoco Flow track at home on headphones. I will not play it in public.
I will only listen to SMBU Orinoco Flow track at home on headphones. I will not play it in public.
I will only listen to SMBU Orinoco Flow track at home on headphones. I will not play it in public.
I will only listen to SMBU Orinoco Flow track at home on headphones. I will not play it in public.
I will only listen to SMBU Orinoco Flow track at home on headphones. I will not play it in public.
. . .