“I thought YOU were booking the band?”

“I thought YOU were booking the band?”')">

Wed­dings used to be sim­ple affairs; reg­istry office in the High Street, a few pals as wit­nesses, bowl­ing club for some egg sand­wiches. After a few dances one of your cousins has too much to drink, starts a fight then all the pre-ordered cabs show up at 1am. Job done. Oh, how things have changed. Today’s bride expects a pro­posal in a gon­dola, the cer­e­mony must be at the base of Vic­to­ria Falls and catered by Gor­don Ram­say and that’s before you’ve even thought about the entertainment.

Ask ten peo­ple what’s the most impor­tant part of a typ­i­cal wed­ding and you’ll likely get ten dif­fer­ent answers. Ask the same peo­ple what type of music goes down best at wed­dings and you’ll get another ten.

“I thought YOU were booking the band?”')">

MIB

Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey con­ducted by Bride & Groom mag­a­zine, when cou­ples were asked what were their pri­or­i­ties, dur­ing the wed­ding plan­ning, the sta­ple answers were their attire, the actual venue and the cater­ing. The wed­ding enter­tain­ment is almost an after­thought. But, in the same sur­vey they also found that 72% of brides said they’d have spent more time on choos­ing the enter­tain­ment and even more sur­pris­ing, they found almost 100% of cou­ples, ques­tioned after the event, would have spent more than they did on the enter­tain­ment. I’m no sta­tis­ti­cian but I think that’s quite a high percentage.

“I thought YOU were booking the band?”')">

The Celli Quartet

One of the least thought about aspects of a mod­ern wed­ding is the back­ground music for the day­time events whether that’s the pre-ceremony drinks, the arrival of the bride and reg­istry sign­ing among other things. Low key is the key here. The two most pop­u­lar types of act booked for the ear­lier events are string acts of var­i­ous sizes and harpists. Pro­vid­ing they don’t have to come too far, these can work out fairly rea­son­able cost wise. As I’m typ­ing this north of Hadrian’s wall, you’ll be unsur­prised to learn that bag­pipers are the most com­mon type of act to be hired for the arrival of the bride. That said, this is not just a Scot­tish thing. A few years ago I was at a wed­ding in the Langue­doc region in the South of France and they’d hired a piper. I got talk­ing to him, he was orig­i­nally from Glas­gow but lived about 10 miles away from the Chateau. Nice work.

The day­time events, not just the music, tend to set the tone for the rest of the day; get that right and you’re on the right track. The evening’s enter­tain­ment is a dif­fer­ent ket­tle of worms entirely.

First things first, if you’re look­ing to save some cash, and let’s face it who isn’t these days, and are con­sid­er­ing get­ting “the guy who does the office par­ties to do it for fifty quid” imme­di­ately remove your­self from the plan­ning party and think your­self lucky to get invited to the wed­ding at all, even if you’re the mother of the bride. This sce­nario is, with­out excep­tion, a big mis­take. It’s a wed­ding not a school disco. If the bud­get is tight, there’s no need to book a ten piece party band, there are plenty smaller and cheaper options.

A two piece gui­tar duo or even solo, often with back­ing tracks can keep a smaller set of guests bop­ping and a smaller bud­get in the black too. Again, cast­ing a slightly Scot­tish eye over things, a Ceilidh and cov­ers band never fails to get the place jump­ing, lit­er­ally. These also don’t have to be bud­get break­ers, there’s a good few two or three piece ceilidh/covers bands avail­able. Obvi­ously the beauty of this option is that it appeals those who don’t fancy pure Ceilidh. The night can be split with the tra­di­tional party music in between the Celtic mad­ness. And speak­ing of which, don’t worry about not know­ing where to put your feet, they all come with what’s called in these parts a “caller”, who will walk and talk the dancers through the steps. One thing to remem­ber if you’re going down the ceilidh road, advise your guests on footwear. Kit­ten heels are a big no-no. Espe­cially for the guys.

“I thought YOU were booking the band?”')">

Wild Boys

If you fancy some­thing a lit­tle left of field in the evening music depart­ment, we’ve started to notice trib­ute acts get­ting a few book­ings. This does seem to be a younger gen­er­a­tion thing, per­haps get­ting a Grease trib­ute act to play or  for a more gen­eral set list, an 80s cover band we have on the ros­ter has had a few wed­ding gigs. My favourite wed­ding trib­ute act of late has to be the band in Man­ches­ter, (where else?) who were asked to learn an entire set of Smiths songs for a friend’s recep­tion. It took them three months to learn a set’s worth but they did it. I spoke to one of them about this recently and spec­u­lated that play­ing such songs as “Heaven knows I’m mis­er­able now” and “There is a light that never goes out” at a cou­ples happy day might be a bit of a downer. “Not really,” he told me, “we played both of them and they went men­tal.” Shows what I know. I didn’t ask what the first dance was although ‘Panic’ would’ve been a laugh.

Now, if you have the bud­get and per­for­mance space to go mad the options are many and var­ied but don’t think throw­ing a load of cash about is the way to suc­cess. That never works, look at Car­los Tevez. The type of band you want is the first thing to think about. Gen­eral rock and pop cov­ers bands are, broadly speak­ing the most pop­u­lar mainly because they will almost with­out excep­tion play music from the ‘50s up to last week’s chart so every­one from Granny to surly teenage cousin will be happy but there are other ways to enter­tain. Jazz, blues and swing acts may sound like an odd choice but the bands who offer their ser­vices at wed­dings are smart enough to know this, and will tai­lor the set accord­ingly. It’s not unknown for a jazz act to offer the likes of Lady Gaga and even White Stripes songs dur­ing a wed­ding set. These are very top end wed­ding acts, and are usu­ally many in num­ber and £s but always hugely pop­u­lar with wed­ding crowds. They tend also to be able to read an audi­ence rather well and can be left to their own devices, which is one less thing you have to worry about on the day.

“I thought YOU were booking the band?”')">

The Flam­ing Ties

One thing to remem­ber about book­ing any sort of act for a wed­ding is this; always remem­ber who’s pay­ing and who’s playing.

“I thought YOU were booking the band?”')">

Chris MacK­in­non of Freak Music

With thanks to Chris Mack­in­non for the guest blog post — I hope it’s helped some of you with choos­ing your wed­ding music or band. Do check out www.freakmusic.co.uk for more ideas and advice.

This is a spon­sored Eng­lish Wed­ding blog post. (Click the link to see what this means.)