Wedding Entertainment on a Budget

 

 

Wedding Entertainment on a Budget

by Abigail Tanner

 

It’s been said that whatever your budget is for your wedding, be prepared to exceed it because you WILL exceed it. Funny how true that is. Now, by the time you begin planning the reception, you’ve likely used up your funds on the wedding dress, venues, and catering. It is imperative that entertainment not be neglected. This is THE party of your lifetime. You are getting married!

LIVE MUSIC

Taylor Swift is touring the night of your wedding and Coldplay is a little too expensive, so what do you do?

1. Check out your local indie artists. Go to Open Mics, place an ad on Craigslist, visit ReverbNation. You’ll be supporting local artists and putting some money back in your pocket.

2. Look into local college music programs. If you are a jazz fan, call the school’s music director and ask them to announce it to their students and make sure to compensate them. Students have a fresh passion for music and will be thrilled to play a paying gig.  (From my experience playing gigs in college, $75-$125 per band member for a 3 hour gig was a fair rate.  If you hired a jazz trio from a local college, that’s easily less than $500 for live music.)

3. Ask family and friends. Chances are your circles hold a few musicians. It doesn’t hurt to ask if they’d be interested in playing for an hour or two.

DJ / iTunes

If you are a big dance fan, a live band isn’t going to be your most affordable option.  To find a full band that can give a stellar performance in any genre from any decade, you’ll need thousands of dollars.

1. If you want a really good deal, call a DJ a few weeks shy of your wedding. If they are available on your wedding date, they want to be booked! Politely negotiate a good price with them.

2. Create a songlist on iTunes and play it on your iPod. Ask an outgoing friend or relative to emcee periodically. Make sure that all of your cables leading to the power outlet are taped securely to the floor and the back end of the iPod and/or computer. At one wedding I attended, someone kept tripping over the cord and the song kept skipping – it was so annoying!

DANCING

It’s important to have a good mix of upbeat dance songs with slow dance songs. Some people are truly gifted with coordination and rhythm, others are not. The slow songs are for them.

I grew up in a conservative Christian home and, as a little girl, Baptists didn’t dance…at all. Times have changed and so has the church’s stance on dancing. Knowing that a lot of church folks would be at my wedding and that my hubby loves to dance presented a problem. My church folks were okay with dancing, but didn’t have a clue how to dance! So I asked my good friends, Joe & Denise, to teach swing dance lessons at my reception. They are super talented full-time dance instructors and they rocked it at my wedding. The guests had a blast and it was fun to watch them pick it up.

1. Call some dance studios and compare rates for group dance lessons. It’s an affordable and unique twist to an otherwise predictable wedding reception.

2. Call local dance companies and ask if they have any dancers preparing for a recital or dance competition who would like an opportunity to practice for a live audience.

KARAOKE

If all else fails, rent or borrow a small sound system, hook up your computer to a projector, and make sure you have Wi-Fi. Go to www.youtube.com and type in what you’d like to sing, “I’ve had the Time of my Life” for example, and you’ll have instant karaoke and lots of laughs.

Your San Diego wedding is sure to be unique and affordable if you follow these helpful tips. Let me know how it works for you!!