A wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Hence the need for the best celebration atmosphere that sets the tone for a day as outstanding as your wedding day, making it memorable for you and your guests.
What makes your wedding memorable is the food and music. Music, in particular, creates a festive ambiance that puts your guests in a celebratory mood. For this reason, it should be considered carefully. From the first dance to the reception, music brings that lively vibe that keeps the wedding entertaining.
So, you want music at your wedding, but who’s going to play it? You could do it yourself, sure, or you could hire a wedding DJ or live band to handle it, giving you room to focus on other aspects of wedding planning.
This article will share tips on how to decide between hiring a wedding DJ and hiring a live band to play at your wedding.
Should You Choose a Wedding DJ or a Live Band?
One way to know whether a wedding DJ or live band is the right choice for you is by weighing the pros and cons of each and taking them into consideration.
Pros of Hiring a Wedding DJ
Below are some of the pros of hiring a wedding DJ:
- Wedding DJs have the ability to interact with you and your guests in addition to playing music, creating a remarkable and satisfying experience for everyone. This is great because guests can request songs.
- With the right instruments and extensive light shows, DJs can add color to the event; this is visually impressive.
- Hiring DJs is generally more affordable than live bands, as they do not charge as much as bands. Their affordability is due to reasons such as transportation of fewer instruments and people. So if you’re considering your budget, a DJ might be the more suitable choice.
- DJs can offer quite a few songs with recent hits when compared to live bands which tend to be less flexible when it comes to song requests.
With the variety of songs available to pick from, guests can easily get on the dance floor during the wedding reception as they can choose from a range of songs and beats.
- If you’re worried about limited space at your wedding venue, DJs are a good choice because compared to live bands, they require less space to work effectively.
- In a very sharp contrast to live bands, DJs have pre-recorded songs. So even if they want to step out for breaks, the music keeps on playing.
- Most companies will have a stand-by DJ ready to take over should anything go wrong.
- DJs take less time to set up their equipment and also test them before the ceremony kicks off.
Cons of Hiring a Wedding DJ
- Since DJs come with quite a lot of equipment and wires, their arrangement may look a little bit disorganized.
- Having a DJ at your wedding can feel less unique because they tend to not keep the audience enthused and super energetic as live bands would.
- Hiring a professional DJ can cost you a fortune – it is that expensive! Having considered all you would likely spend to make your wedding a reality, you may want to cut costs and fit all your plans into an affordable budget. However, if you hire a low-budget DJ, you may end up hiring an inexperienced one that may most likely ruin the atmosphere you dreamed of.
Pros of Hiring a Live Band
- For example, a jazz band for wedding can be more specialized and give emotive and unique performances compared to DJs that do not have much to do aside from selecting songs from a pre-recorded playlist and engaging the audience in the little way they can.
- Originality may also come into play when comparing a DJ and a live band. Nothing quite wins against the energy and showmanship of a live band.
- In cases of customization, live bands do quite an excellent job, as they can change outfits to adapt to the current theme. This further sets the mood for festivity.
- With weddings set in rustic venues, you might prefer a rustic vibe, in which case a live band would be a good choice. They can play music with traditional instruments, whereas a DJ cannot.
Cons of Hiring a Live Band
- The large number of people associated with a live band has to be fed and provided for, which incurs more expenses. The more people, the higher the price because you would have to pay each person for their time and effort.
- Since more people and instruments such as speakers, drums, and keyboards are involved, a larger space needed to accommodate all these is thus a prerequisite for hiring live bands.
- Live bands require more substantial breaks, live bands require only a few. Although some live bands try to make the breaks not so noticeable by aligning the breaks with speeches and trying to engage the guests in conversations, the breaks usually cause some form of distraction to the guests, couples, and activities.
Imagine a break in the course of the groom trying to kiss the bride! Even though the reasons for the breaks are quite understood (To enable them to provide songs from the start of the ceremony to the end), the effects cannot be undermined.
- With a live band, more time is required to keep things in order and test the instruments before the wedding starts. Nobody would want a situation whereby the ceremony is delayed because of a band, especially while the guests are already waiting, because that might set a bad tone or atmosphere.
All Things Considered
Whether you go with a wedding DJ or live band depends on individual preferences and the aforementioned factors.
Also, the need for recommendations and reviews cannot be overemphasized.
The individuals around the company of interest may be asked some questions about the quality of their performances if they evoke as much emotion as required or if they come late for events, as coming late to the wedding can spoil the mood from the very beginning to the end.
