Although you will think first of your dress, photographer and flowers, your guests’ priorities tend to steer towards having fun and eating plenty. Here, Becci Clubb shares her inside experience of booking the best wedding bands and making sure your guests have a ball.
Entertainment can take up a fairly large chunk of your budget and it can really affect the mood of your day. A string quartet playing at your drinks reception will lend itself to a formal wedding reception, while steel drums playing as a barbecue is being dished up will perfectly suit an outdoor summer wedding.
Consider the style of day you are dreaming of, your venue and what you as a couple both really enjoy. Perhaps you would like a caricaturist or a magician to entertain your guests during a drinks reception? For our unique addition, we have decided to hire a live painter. Stephanie Paints Things will be capturing our day, while our guests can marvel at her artistic talent.
When it comes to music during our day, we want the main entertainment to be during the evening reception. We took our time deciding between wedding bands or DJs. We thought a DJ might be better in our venue and perhaps play a wider variety of songs, but we felt it was now or never to splash out on a band, where as we might hire a DJ if we ever threw a party in the future. Eventually, after plenty of to-ing and fro-ing, we came to the decision that we would like a band.
Once we had settled on hiring a band for our evening reception, the next thing was to find one! We immediately started searching on Alive Network’s selection of wedding bands, the UK’s largest entertainment agency. We got our choice down to three wedding bands and then contacted Alive Network to enquire about availability. They were very quick to respond and easy to deal with.
An added bonus was that if we booked within a certain number of days, a DJ service was included once the band had finished their set, too. So we could have the best of both! All three of our choices were available on our wedding date, so we went through the media and repertoire for each of them on Alive Network’s website, choosing our favourite and booking them.
Remember when you are booking any entertainment, you need to check with your venue what will work best. For a band or a DJ, you should check how much room they need and how much room the venue has for them. For example, our venue suggests no more than a four-piece band for the space they have.
You will need to include your band or DJ in your evening food numbers and supply them with soft drinks. Be sure to liaise with both the venue and your chosen entertainment about timings and logistics. Once that’s all sorted, you’re ready to dance the night away!
