Choosing a wedding disc jockey for your function is one of the most important decisions you can make to insure the success of the event. Everything else can be perfect, but if the music isn’t good, the party will fizzle. Selecting the right wedding disc jockey can be confusing there are well over 15,000 DJ’s in America all promising they’ll do a great job for you. So how do you pick the right one for you? This article will provide some guidance to help you make the decision easier.
How do you tell which one is best?
Probably the worst way to choose a wedding disc jockey is on price alone. Some wedding disc jockey companies are more expensive than others prices can range from $100 to $2,000 for a 4 hour event.
That’s quite a difference, and it would be very tempting to choose the cheapest alternative. If that’s all you can afford, than you have no choice. But, consider the law of supply or demand. There is a reason some professional wedding disc jockeys charge more money than others: They are usually worth it than more expensive wedding disc jockeys, tend to be the more experienced ones they can charge more because they have a lot of jobs, and they have a good reputation.
Generally, the less experience wedding disc jockeys on the low end of the price scale are new to the business, and trying to get established. They could do a great job, and might be worth a shot if your party is on the informal side. But there is probably more risk with a less experienced person.
The best and easiest way to find a wedding disc jockey you’ll like is to hire one you’ve already seen. If you’ve been to a wedding or a party where the wedding disc jockey was great, find out who he or she was. If you didn’t get their card, ask the host or manager of the function room where the party was held. If you haven’t seen a good wedding disc jockey recently, ask your friends. Your friends probably have the same taste in music as you. Maybe they’ve been to a function you missed. Let them know ahead of time you’ll be looking, and ask them to keep their eyes and ears open.
If the previous suggestions don’t work, your job gets tougher. You might have to go to the Internet or Yellow Pages. Search under Disc Jockeys, Music and Entertainment. You may find Disc Jockeys listed any of these categories. Circle the ads in which the wedding disc jockey mentions the type of party you are planning. For example, if you’re planning a wedding, a WEDDING DISC JOCKEY whose ad says “We specialize in weddings” would be a good one to call.
As you speak with the DJs, pay attention to their professionalism over the phone it tends to spill over into their DJing style. The most important thing to ask about is their experience with your type of event. If you are planning an event like a wedding, school dance, or company party, it would be normal to expect a professional wedding disc jockey to have performed for at least 20 of these events. A number in the hundreds is actually common for a wedding disc jockey that is well established.
Please feel free to post your comments I would like to hear from you.
Here’s an interesting blog post regarding “Are Wedding DJ’s Obsolete?” I would like to share with you. Granted, it’s pretty long but I wanted to give you the entire article along with my response because there’s a lot of people who really don’t understand the value of a professional DJ. Please note in the video a newlywed couple has made a decision to use an iPod instead of a professional DJ for their wedding reception.
I’ve gone to my fair share of weddings this summer, and if there’s one critique that I walked away from each, it’s the wedding DJ. I wonder what’s stopping couples from building up an iPod playlist, hitting play, and letting the music take care of itself. Outside of providing/setting up equipment (lights, speakers, amps, etc.),I wouldn’t want the DJ to play any other type of role during the reception.
Here’s why:
Who the hell is this guy? Why do we have some paid attendant with no affiliation to the bride or groom MC-ing the event? Wouldn’t it be better to have a member of the wedding party, a relative,or a friend introduce events like the first dance, the bouquet toss, etc.? It wouldn’t be too difficult of a task and it would give your reception a more personal touch.
Why the hell does he keep talking? To piggy back off the last point, you often find wedding DJs with their own agenda of silly games that are rarely fun and almost always intrusive. At one wedding, the groom had to publicly tell the DJ to stop after she started to interrupt dinner with”a kissing game.” At another, the DJ had a fun little thing going where all the married couples slow danced, and he would call out a number of years (starting at one and increasing each time after) denoting how long each couple has been married. If you’ve been married longer than the number he calls, you keep dancing. If not, then you sit down. It was a fun little game and got all the parents and grandparents up dancing. The only problem was that between calling out numbers, the DJ just kept jabbering away with senseless drivel.Just let the folks dance and enjoy the nice music! Lastly, I get irritated when wedding DJs feel the need to keep the microphone in their hands and yell out stupid crap between or during every song.It’s almost as obnoxious as those weekend party mixes you hear on radio stations like 101.3 KDWB. Again, all of this stuff can be handled by friends or family. If we really want some obnoxious yelling in between each song, I’m sure there would plenty members of the wedding party who could fill this duty after consuming a few drinks.
What the hell is he playing? I can be somewhat of a music snob,so I shudder when I hear some of the selections that wedding DJs play. I know the idea is to cater to everybody and play well known hits that people like to dance to. I’m OK with that. It’s not really the selection of some songs, but the timing of how they are played.I’m OK with the Chicken Dance. It’s silly, fun, and easy to dance to. But when a DJ follows the Chicken Dance with the Electric Slide, YMCA, and the Cha-Cha Slide, I get upset. Just playing all four of those songs in one night is pushing it, but all four in a row is too much. By the end, you just have a bunch of tired and disinterested people lazily stomping along in a line. I also can’t stand hearing songs with horribly inappropriate lyrics for a wedding. I’m not talking about lyrics with a sexual overtone. Those are just fine (it is a wedding, after all). I’m talking about DJ’s who play bad 90’s alt-metal by bands like Korn or Papa Roach that have lyrics about suicide and school shootings. I know they have catchy riffs and beats, but they’re just not good selections for a wedding.
Lastly, I’d just like to see a bit more creativity with the playlists. There has been a lot of great music recorded over the last 70 years or so, and most guests ages 20 and up have had ample time to get to know a lot of this music. If that’s the case, then why do we always have to hear “Baby Got Back” and “Ice Ice Baby” at every wedding dance? Isn’t there any other early 90’s hip-hop that we used to shake our booty to as pre-teens? Arrested Development, Warren G, or Naughty By Nature, perhaps? There’s a lot of great tunes that we all know by heart, and I wish I would hear them more at wedding dances.
I’d actually just prefer to hook up an iPod and create two carefully crafted playlists. One for party songs and one for slow songs.The DJ could then just be in charge of switching the two playlists whenever he feels the need to slow things down or speed things up. The song selection would remain in the hands of the happy couple (or just the control-freak groom).
So maybe wedding DJs aren’t completely obsolete. They have unique goods and services to offer. But if I were in the business, I would work harder to give couples a customized experience.I would have them fill out lists of songs they want to hear and songs they do not want to hear, and then I would build playlists to reflect those preferences. I’d ask them what level of interaction they want the DJ to have with the guests.
I’d let them select family or friends to handle certain MC duties,and get their feedback on what type of games or traditions they want to partake in.I would bill myself as “Chris Brummund: The Unobtrusive Wedding DJ”,and I think a lot of people would like it.
I actually have lots of critiques for every little detail at weddings.I won’t share them now, but I will have lots of obnoxious little demands if I ever have a wedding of my own. I should send in my application for Bridezillas right now.
Here’s my response:
Chris, you make a few good points but as a professional DJ note I didn’t say a professional wedding DJ because I offer so much more services to my clients I have to strongly disagree with you.
I just want to say yes there are DJs out there that could make a very special event into something “cheesy” and trust me I would be the first to jump out of the window when I hear them perform. Before you or anyone else goes with the iPod route for your special event please take a few things into consideration.
Let’s take a wedding event since you mentioned this type of event in your initial article. This is where a professional DJ could make or break a reception: There’s a lot of pre-planning that goes with the client(s) regarding this type of event and you could tell immediately if this did not happen during the DJ’s performance.
When I receive a call from a prospective client their first question asked is how much do I charge for a wedding reception and my response is I really don’t now because your event could be different and/or unique from what I’ve performed in the past. Then I proceed to listen and inquire about what they want to happen for their wedding reception. Now I have an idea what they want and what I can deliver to them.
There are DJs who use what I call the “cookie cutter” approach meaning they are going to do what they are going to do no matter what the client or client’s guest wants. This is where I think you had your awful experiences with these types of DJs.
As for using the iPod ask yourself when you go out on the town and enter a popular nightclub at $25.00 or some cases depending on the market $30.00 and you hear the music playing but you always hear pauses between tracks because someone has to manually change the songs on the iPod.
How would you feel? As for me, I would be ticked off because I feel like I’m being cheated. Devices like laptops, iPods or CDs are really cool but they can not compare to what an experienced live DJ or band can bring to your event.
Here’s another quick example. Would you hire a non professional photographer, videographers, caterers, and etc for your most important event of your life?
It’s okay to hire a professional just do your homework and you’ll find the right entertainer for your event. I have attached a URL address that shows what happens when you hire a non-professional.
Professional vendors will provide the services you want and if they don’t then you have the right to open the door and kick them to the curb.
Remember professional DJs are your friends not the enemy…
