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How much for a wedding band?!?!

#21
It's around 2K in my area. Sometimes more. Even though some might dis a wedding band, there is a lot of prep and work on the night of the gig to keep the party going.

I've turned down many a wedding when the bride tells me..."We have a budget and we can pay the band $800 but no more"

With gas creeping up to $4.00 a gallon and we travel pretty far for some weddings....either you pay us our price or you don't. pretty simple really.
 
#23
Our band has never played a wedding, but we will be playing our first one soon. The bride is a part time DJ who sometimes works with us when we play banquets and plays music during dinner and between sets, so she knows exactly what we can do. She also knows that we won't be learning another 30 songs so we can play all night long, but we will be learning a few new ones just for the wedding.

She has found a lot of gigs for us lately as people are always asking her if she knows of a good band, and she gives us a good price when she DJs with us, so we're playing for $1200 (she offered that, and we accepted with no negotiation). That's not bad considering we're only doing our 4 usual sets, and not starting until after dinner.
 
#32
jaywa said:
Bands in my town would jump all over a $1200 wedding job. That's about going rate for a weekend (Fri/Sat) in the clubs around here.
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We don't play bars, we do banquets and socials...socials are unique to Manitoba. They are basically a fund raising dance (tickets are sold) held for wedding couples or sport teams. Our usual fee is $1500 - $1600, which includes a DJ for between sets.
 
#33
Kind of funny timing, but I just had a wedding bid shot down today. Here's the response I got:

Zac,

I appreciate your guys willingness to play at our wedding, but Tiffany and I have decided that the proposed amount is more than we should budget for music. Thanks for taking the time to try and line this up. We're going to go with a DJ, so we can put more money in other areas of the wedding.

Sincerely,
Click to expand...

A DJ? No class. :ninja:

Quoted price was $7900. Win some lose some.
 
#39
First, thanks OP for the joke, I hadn't heard it before, very clever, I will use something like that to justify my rates.

I own and operate a mobile entertainment company working with upscale clients exclusively. I charge between $1000 and $1500 for my solo DJ services, which includes a huge amount of pre-event planning and coordinating. I'm not a "press play" DJ, I am a true MC and co-host.

I also book my seven-piece variety band at upscale events, and we will not even pack up our gear for less than $300 per person. And I provide the same kind of pre-event planning, MC-ing, and co-hosting duties with the band. Sometimes the client wants continuous music, so they pay extra for band + DJ, and we rotate sets.
 
#40
We went to the courthouse and paid a judge $20 to do the deed, had a big family dinner to officially welcome her into our clan, then spent the serious money on a 15 day trip to Japan. I asked her if she could go anyplace in the world where would it be and she picked Japan. The judge was her idea BTW, but her practicality is one of the many things I find so attractive about her. Not to mention we were both in our 40's by the time we decided it was about time to quit all the messing about and settle down. It's the first time for both of us and more than 20 years later I'm still excited to see her if we've been apart for more than a day. I'm still not sure what she sees in me, but I don't worry much about it either. I'm too busy being happy to give it much thought.
 

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