What Is A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me
What Is A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me
What Is A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me? If you are looking for a reasonably priced Disc Jockey for your wedding, there are quite a few factors that go into that. The first thing you need to realize is that not all DJs or Wedding Photographers or Wedding Caterers are equal in value.
You wouldn’t expect to pay the same price for a hamburger from McDonalds as you do at Chili’s. They both come with a bun, condiments and a beef patty, right? Why aren’t they the same price? Is one “reasonable” and one “overpriced”? That McDonalds burger is great when you are on the run and need a quick bite to eat, but it’s not anything like sitting down to enjoy a meal at Chilis with friends.
Your wedding DJ might have speakers, a mixer and a laptop, but they might be completely different than the next wedding DJ. Maybe their gear is better quality. Maybe they have more years experience or are just a better skilled DJ. Expecting to pay the same price for an “ambulance chaser” lawyer and a NYC corporate lawyer, is unreasonable. So it goes with finding the right DJ for your wedding.
If you check on the The Knot or Wedding Wire – the average pricing listed is normally MUCH LOWER than what you can reasonably expect when planning your wedding and you are going to be totally confused when vendor pricing comes in higher than what was reported. That’s the curse of averages on a national level.
You are going to have sticker shock when planning your wedding based off of those national average numbers. You are better off finding local wedding DJs and vendors that you like and comparing prices and services offered to get a better feel for quality and pricing for your wedding budget.
I can tell you – you will find wedding DJs in this area that charge as low as $600 and some that charge in excess of $5000 for services that look on the surface to be similar. Heck, there are even wedding DJs that offer wedding photography AND DJ for prices less than most area photographers charge. But, man are you going to be so disappointed in the quality of both photo and DJ services. Let’s be serious – you always get what you pay for. Remember that $1.00 McDonald’s hamburger?
Q: What Is A Reasonable Price For A Great Wedding DJ Near Me
A: Our typical DJ price range is about $1,400 – $3,500, with most clients spending around $2,500.
Is 100 Guests Considered A Big Wedding?
Before 2020, the average size wedding was around 125-150 guests. Since the pandemic, weddings have continued to grow from the pademic micro-wedding (less than 100 guests) levels.
For our Portuguese weddings, where guest counts normally hit 300+, it will be a bit longer before those are back to normal size. Indoor v. Outdoor will significantly affect your guest count as well for the next couple of seasons when it comes to State mandates.
What Is Included When I Hire A Wedding DJ?
There are many things that might be included (or NOT INCLUDED) when hiring a wedding DJ for your reception. All these factors go into the bottom-line pricing for your DJ and MC.
Site Visit
Many DJs offer a free site visit to meet with you and walk the space and talk over the final details for your wedding. This would include travel time and the time to talk over details including staging, logistics, and music selection
Video / Zoom Meeting
If you are out of the area, many area wedding DJs will offer the convenience of a Zoom or virtual video meeting. This is a great way to get to know each other and to learn about your music style and personalities. It will give them a better understanding of what you are looking for at your wedding.
Ceremony Music and Microphones
A good wedding DJ will have a separate sound system available for your onsite or outdoor wedding ceremony. They would have 1 wireless microphone also available for your officiate.
A great wedding DJ will have that separate sound system for your ceremony. It will be battery powered so that you can get married in the middle of a field under a tree if you wish. They will have multiple wireless microphones – because you can’t hear both officiate and the two of you with just one microphone. We would typically have 1 clip-on microphone for your officiate, another one on you (typically on the groom) so we can hear the two of you exchange vows and we’d have another microphone for any readers. We can even tie in musicians into our system if needed.
Q: What Is A Reasonable Price For A Great Wedding DJ Near Me
A: Our typical DJ price range is about $1,400 – $3,500, with most clients spending around $2,500.
Music Preparation
A good wedding DJ will go over your music selections prior to your wedding day and have them organized into lists (social hour, dinner music, dancing, etc.).
A great wedding DJ might also offer custom mixes for mashup dances with your parents, beat-mixed sets of dance music for non-stop dancing, or other custom edits and preparation for your big day.
Hear What Your Wedding Might Sound Like With One Our DJs
Afraid No One Will Dance At Your Wedding?
Hear how we fill your dance floor with booty-shaking music mixed seamlessly from song to song.
Gear Preparation
A good wedding DJ will have both a main DJ system and backup tested and packed up and ready for your wedding day.
A great wedding DJ might have a specific set of gear based on the acoustics in your venue and the size of your wedding guest count. For example: If your reception is at The Riverview in Simsbury, CT (lots of echo in the vaulted ceiling venue), we’d bring different gear than if you were in The Ranch (barn venue in Southwick, MA). The same goes if you tell us that you have 50 guests or 500 – those both require a different scale and size gear for our setup..
What Is A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me
Master of Ceremony
You will find wedding DJs out there that don’t act as your MC or Master of Ceremonies. (That means they are scared of talking on the microphone or inexperienced in running a wedding)
Be sure to HEAR all potential wedding DJs either via video clip or audio recordings to make sure they reflect the style of DJ/MC that you want at your wedding. You might find out that the DJ that looks great on social media or on their website is just plain annoying or “cheesy” on the microphone when they are at a wedding. You won’t know until you hear them!
Hear What Your Master of Ceremony / Wedding DJ Will Sound Like At Your Wedding
What Is A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me –
Hear What An Experienced MC Sounds Like
Quality Of DJ Gear
You can find DJ speakers for as little as $200 and others for $1000 or more per speaker. Thinking that a cheap speaker is going to give you the same experience as better quality gear – is just foolish.
I just upgraded our wireless microphones to the newest digital series and every time we take them out and use them for a ceremony or best man’s toast, I am just amazed at the difference in clarity and quality. Yes, you can get a cheap wireless microphone for $150, but these are $1,500 each and both you and your guests are going to hear the difference.
What Is A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me
The DJ Music Library
Yes – you can get a Spotify Premium account or rip music off of Youtube and pretend to be a wedding DJ.
A professional wedding DJ will have an account with a DJ Record Pool or other subscription geared toward professional DJs. What does that get us? #1: a fully licensed copy of the music that we can play (yes – just like bars, TV commercials, we need a professional license to play music for events). #2: No profanity. All our music is “radio-edited” to remove those F-Bombs and the such so grandma won’t have a coronary at your wedding. No need to worry about whether your niece or older relatives are there – the music will be appropriate for all. That means that we can play newer Top-40 hits and you will hear them just like as if you were listing to the radio v. Spotify’s unedited versions.
Wedding Day Itinerary
A good wedding DJ might have a hand filled in questionnaire or form that they work off of with a list of your music and wedding party names.
A great wedding DJ/MC might have a typed up itinerary with all details, names phonetically spelled out and notes from your final detail meeting all clearly notated so that they don’t miss a single detail.
What Is A Reasonable Price For Wedding DJs Near Me
Reception Lighting Options
A good wedding DJ might have a couple of lights that move and change based on the music played to add energy to your dance floor.
A great wedding DJ might have many lighting options to suit your wedding decor needs. That might include LED Up-lighting to add the perfect background color to your entire venue. We also offer many tent lighting and barn lighting options including custom Edison Bulb installations and Chandelier Rentals. Are you looking to set more of a dance club feel? We have high-tech moving-head lights to do that too. More into Disco Mirror balls? We can do a custom mirror ball installation over your dance floor.
Check Us Out On Pinterest For More Wedding Lighting Ideas
Photo Booth Rentals
Many area DJs also offer wedding photo booth rentals. There are so many different styles of booths out there. Be sure to see images both of and FROM the booth so you know what to expect. Many of the web-camera style Ipad booths look great on your phone, but the quality isn’t good enough to print as a 4×6 print.
Zoom Wedding – Live Streaming
In these times, many guests are unable to attend due to restrictions or travel bans. Live streaming your wedding might be needed if you want to include guests, no matter where they are in the world. We have the ability to manage live streaming your Zoom-wedding so that not only can remote-guests be part of your day, but you can INTERACT with them as if they were there. Even from a distance, you will all feel the emotion and it will be a moment you and they will never forget.
A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me
Geography and cost of living comes into effect when DJ prices are compared. If you are looking for a wedding DJ in Florida or Ohio, the prices are much lower than a local wedding DJ here in the New England areas including Hartford, CT, CT Shoreline, The Berkshires MA, Hudson Valley NY and Newport RI (where we typically cover).
Wedding styles also vary different from region to region in the US. If you are expecting a NYC style high energy wedding in the Mid-West, it’s going to be tough to find and wedding guests will be confused. Matching DJ Entertainment style with your expectations AND your guest expectations is just as important.
How Many Hours Do You Need A DJ For A Wedding?
There are different style weddings and packages offered by local wedding venues – but there is a “typical” length to most area wedding receptions.
Reception (Including cocktail hour, dinner and dancing) = 5 hours
Ceremony (Including pre-ceremony music and ceremony) = 1 hour
Micro-Wedding (Includes ceremony, first dance, social hour) = 2 – 3 hours
How many hours do you need a DJ for a wedding? Using the numbers above, for reception only, it would be 5 hours. If your DJ is providing music and microphones for the onsite ceemony, it would be 6 hours total.
What Is A Reasonable Price For A Wedding DJ Near Me
When you factor in all the options that you need (Lighting, Amount of Hours, Additional Gear and locations and add-ons), the price for your DJ and Lighting might vary drastically. We’ve had simple weddings with just DJ that might be around $1,200 and others where just the lighting was $10,000 (yes, I didn’t add in an extra 0 – some of our clients literally spend $10,000 just on lighting their wedding).
Our typical DJ price range is about $1,400 – $3,000, with most clients spending around $2,000.
With add-ons like uplighting and photo booth or live-streaming options, you might expect to pay $1,000 – $2,500 more depending on the add-ons you want and need for your particular case.
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