Hi sirtofu,
Maybe I can offer some help here. If I live to see 2011 then I would have been DJing weddings for 30 years…yes that’s not a typo!!
Weddings have served me well over the years and have given me the income to explore other avenues of DJing, including Clubs, Pubs and all manner of other gigs.
Weddings are by no means easy gigs to do and I think there are a number of things to bear in mind.
A couple of stats.
The evening entertainment (in our case the DJ part) can be in excess of 1/3 of the total time of the entire wedding celebration - it is therefore fundamentally important to the succes of the whole day.
A recent study highlighted that guests would remember good or bad entertainment more than ANY other element of the wedding celebration.
I use the above facts when selling to penny-pinching brides who don’t want to spend much money on a DJ to highlight the importance of the wedding DJ, but they are just as important to the DJ to realise that DJing at a wedding is a serious business and that there is a fair amount of pressure associated with it.
As a DJ, and in my opinion, the single most important factor in the success or failure of each wedding is the crowd/audience and this will ultimately affect how busy the dancefloor is - This is something that you have absolutely no control over, but you can influence how a good or mediocre crowd will respond to you.
In the ideal world you get a crowd who have come out to have a good time pretty much regardless of what you play and they will fill the floor all night.
Obviously this doesn’t happen all of the time and you need to have some control of how you are going to try and get the crowd you have to enjoy themselves.
You need to establish what your crowd is, and most times this will have to be done on the night. With an ageing population you can easily get an age group spanning 4 generations at a wedding involving extended family. In my experience it is rare for a bride and groom to have no extended family and a crowd of just their own peers. Therfore the music that they grew up with will all be different.
Women tend to dance earlier and more than us blokes. I don’t know why, but man tend to need a few more beers and a bit more time to get up on the floor at weddings. If you can get the nucleus of women dancing early on then don’t worry, the men will normally follow like sheep in the end.
The second most important factor for the DJ is the music he/she plays.
If you have a varied age crowd then you should work on the general rule that most people like to dance to the music of their youth - the time when they were young themselves and going out to clubs or in the case of grandparents/great grandparents, dances.
I find it best to vary the styles of music for these mixed crowds and not to play more than 3 or 4 tracks of a music genre at any one time. For example - The bride’s grandfather likes rock 'n roll and Elvis, but he forgets that he was 20 when he used to dance to it. He can manage a jive with his wife for 2 or 3 tracks, but now his bones and his heart say otherwise - any more than 3 of these tracks is going to send him running for cover off the floor or worse still to A&E. (I’m exagerating of course, but you get the idea).
Early in the evening you may need to try lots of different styles of music to try and get a reaction, but never stop trying even if you don’t get a reaction for a while. The DJ who gives up will never get a good reaction.
In the typical wedding I have described above I will generally include the following music styles.
50’s rock n’ roll
60’s popular classics & Motown
70’s disco, chart & rock classics
80’s popular dance and chart tracks
90’s ditto
00’s ditto
top 40
Party classics
Dance music classics of all eras
Slow songs
I don’t tend to find that heavy rock, rap (hip-hop) or a lot of heavy dance or R 'n B works well at most weddings.
It is therefore evident that you are not going to play music that EVERYBODY likes ALL NIGHT, but you can easily play music that most people like most of the time and the rest is stuff they don’t really mind and they are certainly not going to be offended by.
Beware the requests!!
Obviously it’s good to have some requests, but don’t play them all if you feel that some of the requests will be detrimental to your dancefloor. You want to appeal to the majority, not the guy who comes up for some oscure request that you play only to see him rooted to the bar whilst your hard-earned dancefloor crowd disappears leaving you with the job of having to rebuild the damage you have done by agreeing to play the shite.
Don’t be affraid of the slow set.
Many couples at a wedding may not get the chance to dance together very often so a couple of sets of slow tracks enables them to enjoy dancing with their, or someone elses partner. A slow set also tends to cut right accross all generations.
The dreaded microphone
Most DJs don’t initially like using a mic - I see a couple of posts here already being negative about the mic and it’s use at a wedding.
It is true that you might need to make announcements and don’t be too scared of doing this - it is part of your responsibility and something that someone has asked you to do because they don’t want to do it themselves. The chef might want you to announce that the buffet is ready. The best man might want you to announce that the bride and groom are leaving. The bar manager might want you to announce last orders - They will all be grateful that you are taking this resposilbility off them.
Make sure you can be heard on the mic.
This may sound like the obvious, but what’s the use of a message if nobody heard it or they couldn’t understand it? Make sure you have a decent quality mic. Borrow a decent one from someone else if you have to, but don’t buy a shite one. Make sure you set the EQ and volume of the mic when you are setting up your gear - don’t do it at the time you have to make the announcements otherwise you could get feedback or sound issues and the audience won’t catch you message.
Using the mic is sometimes a good way of bridgeing the gap between transitions of different styles of music where mixing isn’t possible. In the idea I detailed above where you are playing 3 or 4 tracks before switching styles etc. mixing is difficult and being able to learn some interesting mic technique is very useful.
Maybe you have taken the name of the person a request is for
Maybe the next track is for the bride/groom
Maybe you can announce the onset of a different style of music
Thinking on your feet is what happens most of the time and saying something relevant/interesting does take experience and time, I appreciate that.
I tend to sructure a wedding in a basic form as follows:
Background music until 1st dance for bride & groom
Announce a few minutes before the 1st dance that you will shortly be starting the dancing so that people with cameras etc. can get them ready to take a photo of the bride and groom should they want to. - This also gets people congregating around the dancefloor - closest to where YOU want them.
Announce the 1st dance for the bride and groom (normally requested by them and normally/preferrably a slow track)- ask the audience to give them applause as they take to the floor.
About half way through the 1st dance invite family and friends to join the bride and groom on their 1st dance - I always say something like ‘I hope I don’t need to ask you twice’ to make them almost feel like they HAVE to join them (This is your instant springboard as a DJ to fill the floor very early on as the crowd will hopefully want to join the bride and groom on their 1st dance)
After 1st dance maybe 1 more slow one, but not too many at this stage.
After slow dances maybe some top 40 from a couple of years ago, something chosen in advance by you having eyed up the crowd ages etc. Something instantly recognisable, not too fast and as a transition from the slow ones before.
If you have a mid-evening buffet at you wedding - NEVER play through the buffet at your working volume. Announce the buffet, put background music on and chill out, thinking of how you are going to start again after the buffet.
Here’s the logic - Many people have said to me in the past that they don’t want the dancing to stop for the buffet, they want the dancing to continue right through. The truth is they don’t know what they are talking about and this rarely works because the truth actually is that people don’t eat and dance at the same time and what people actually do is get something from the buffet, sit down, eat and talk to others on their table.
It is a waste of your own energy to try and fight against this and you are far better just accepting it and keeping the music low so that people can eat and talk comfortably.
Keep an eye on the crowd to see when they’ve finished eating and away you go again.
The second part of the evening will usually, in my experience, be much better after the buffet break and you should work to a climax (I use this word only coz I can’t spell crashendo) of party favourites towards the end of the night when alcohol has made it’s full effect maybe with a special send-off for the bride and groom.
Having some idea of structure for the night will help you plan in advance.
Find out when the guests are arriving
When do they want to do the 1st dance?
Is there a buffet? When is the buffet?
When does the bar shut?
When are the bride and groom leaving?
What time does the music have to finish?
I can’t say I’m the best wedding DJ, but I’m reliable, take it seriously, experienced and professional.
People who get married seem to want this in their wedding DJ or at least I have found enough of them that do.
Good luck and let us all know how it goes.
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