Paying A DJ To Play Your Own MP3 Music At A Wedding

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BobbyFowler

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We're getting married in Italy this year. We've got someone looking after the arrangements over there. I'd posted a question before about playing our own music from an MP3 player over some speakers. The cost of renting the speakers are 350 + 185 Euro (Italian Tax To Play Music) The organiser is telling us that the DJ will do their thing for 1050 Euro (that includes speakers etc) Maybe I'm just being a tight git, but I'd prefer not to pay someone 500+ euro when all I want to do is program a load of tunes & them leave them playing for 2 or 3 hours. We'll have musicians during the ceremony, at the reception & during the meal. All the same, it's an important part of the evening & if things go wrong it could fairly ruin the day. A DJ on standby would mean that wouldn't be a problem. Has anyone been at a wedding or something similar where someone just let the music play off an MP3 player? Another thing is that it would be one less thing to be worried about during the day. What would you do?
 
That's the reason I would go with it. I hadn't heard of anyone else doing something similar. I was wondering if anyone had? Just interested in hearing what others thought.
 
BobbyFowler said:
We're getting married in Italy this year. We've got someone looking after the arrangements over there. I'd posted a question before about playing our own music from an MP3 player over some speakers. The cost of renting the speakers are 350 + 185 Euro (Italian Tax To Play Music) The organiser is telling us that the DJ will do their thing for 1050 Euro (that includes speakers etc) Maybe I'm just being a tight git, but I'd prefer not to pay someone 500+ euro when all I want to do is program a load of tunes & them leave them playing for 2 or 3 hours. We'll have musicians during the ceremony, at the reception & during the meal. All the same, it's an important part of the evening & if things go wrong it could fairly ruin the day. A DJ on standby would mean that wouldn't be a problem. Has anyone been at a wedding or something similar where someone just let the music play off an MP3 player? Another thing is that it would be one less thing to be worried about during the day. What would you do?
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I work as a wedding dj and if someone contacted me and asked me to stay on stand by in case things didn't go right i'd charge full rate as if i'm there or on stand by i am working.

I often play from playlist given by couples and that isn't a problem at all. I have function on my site where they can do a list of what they want and don't want. BUT just using me as a back up in case it could all go wrong just to save a few quid........well i wouldn't advise it.

Do you know what order to play the music to keep the crowd dancing and how to work the flow of the night. No, but a good dj does and the money will be well spent if he/she can work your music to work your crowd and keep the party going.

Remember PARTY is the important word.

Good luck with your wedding, my own is in 2 weeks !!
 
We (me and Mrs YM) set up the sound system ourselves, recorded what we wanted to play on minidisks and ran it for the disco. As it was in a dark bit of the hall with the lights shining out from it, we had people coming to ask the 'DJ' for requests!
 
Sounds good Ron
May as well leave it to the experts. Is the best bet for me to pick out 100 or so tunes, burn them onto a CD, send them onto Judge Juliano & leave it to him? Good luck with your own wedding!
 
BobbyFowler said:
Sounds good Ron
May as well leave it to the experts. Is the best bet for me to pick out 100 or so tunes, burn them onto a CD, send them onto Judge Juliano & leave it to him? Good luck with your own wedding!
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Thats the way to go. At my own wedding i could pre mix the music etc myself but i know how important it is and want it done right so paying for a professional.

2 most important things for me are the food and music and they are what people comment on the next day. Sorry ladies but the flowers and dress are a distant memory the next morning.

Thanks for the good luck wishes, we are here about to start our table plan.
 
Bobby,

don't know if I replied to your last post, but we got married in Italy and downloaded all the music we wanted onto our ipod and just let it play. My sister's boyfriend is into music, so he made sure everything was working ok, then he went and played guitar in one room and the 'disco' bit was in the restaurant (we had eaten outside in the courtyard). The ipod just played away (incl. first dance) and it was great craic, and worked perfectly. The hotel had made sure we'd have lights (which we hadn't thought of) and we had to bring a connector over so it could connect up to the hotel's speaker system. People ended up sifting through the songs, looking for ones they liked, but that just added to the atmosphere and we didn't care what songs played as they were all ones we loved...

HTH

M
 
Thanks Muffin
I was looking at cost of invites & all this stuff that's adding up. For piece of mind I'll pay the cost of leaving it to a professional to organise. I don't want to be worrying about connectors & all that good stuff on the night. Had friends over last night - they were in Dubrovnik last year at a wedding. The couple did a DIY job with regards to the music & even brought their own speakers. Ended up the speakers didn't work & there were no tunes. Don't need the hassle to be honest.
 
I see you've opted to go for the DJ route, but just in case anyone is wondering if it's possible to play your own music without hitches and glitches, it certainly is.

For our wedding we hired a chap who supplies PA/sound systems for events, he set up the gear (including lights) before the reception, collected it the following morning, and for the night we used CDs of music we'd compiled ourselves (were worried the MP3 player could go haywire so decided to use CDs instead).

There were a number of people at our wedding who were able sound techies (myself and my husband included) so if anything went wrong there would be someone there to kickstart the system again, but it went without a hiccup and a 16 yr old nephew kept an eye on the CD changing (gave the poor blighter something to do as he was being harrassed by elderly aunties).
 
The option we've gone with is;
Trio Jazz during the aperitif and during dinner and DJ - 1950,00 + IVA.
We would have had to pay 350 + 185 for the Speakers/Music Tax anyway.
Tarquin - While it would have been a good idea having RC tinkling the ivories during the meal, I can't imagine him getting the punters up dancing once the meal was over. Maybe I'm wrong.
Good to hear your own day went well Snuffle - good idea to get the nephew involved - I'm sure he enjoyed the celebrity status it involved!
 
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