How to Find Good Wedding Entertainment Acts
For most aspects of wedding planning, it has long been common to turn to specialist providers. In many cases, the bride or, sometimes, the bride's mother will have attended specialist wedding fairs. Almost inevitably, the kitchen table in the bride's house will be covered with a wide range of magazines that are aimed exclusively at the bridal market. These magazines will also feature specialist companies that often operate on a national basis.
Indeed, almost all bridal services such as cars, wedding dresses, suit hire, flowers and venue hire are normally arranged as wedding specific services. The one major exception in this highly developed and organised marketplace is wedding entertainment. By entertainment, I mean the acts, usually musical, that are such an important part of making a wedding day truly special.
When couples first start to look for an individual musician or a band, they inevitably set very high standards for what might well be the most important day of their lives. They also, quite understandably, want to make it a memorable and impressive day for their guests, whether friends or family. Whilst many aspects of wedding planning are highly organised, wedding entertainment is not one of them. Unfortunately, most couples will end up choosing from a small pool of relatively local acts with little guarantee as to the quality of the performance. This is especially true when a couple is looking for something a little bit different, such as a string quartet or a steel band. Unless you live in London or, for steel bands, Birmingham, the chances of being able to choose from several high-quality acts are almost non-existent.
Unless you were prepared to look through local newspapers and magazines or simply ask friends, the only way, until recently, to access a wider pool of musical acts and musicians for a wedding was to use one of the National website services that list bands and musicians, usually by different genres. The drawback to these services is that they are not specifically focused on the needs of the wedding marketplace. For example, they usually list many types of music that are unlikely to be used as a wedding. Conversely, some types of music and musicians, a good example being bagpipers, are hardly represented at all on such websites, despite being very popular wedding entertainment.
Surprisingly, we were only able to find one example in the UK of a wedding entertainment website that is genuinely specialist. I Do Music was apparently established by musicians with over 20 years experience of performing at weddings and managing wedding acts. The acts listed cover a wide variety of genres that are appropriate to weddings and many of them seem to have particularly high profiles in the music industry. In fact, their biographies seem littered with references to private celebrity parties and media industry events, as well as high-profile weddings. However, we were surprised to find that acts of this quality do not appear to cost significantly more to hire than the usual mediocre local offering.
Indeed, almost all bridal services such as cars, wedding dresses, suit hire, flowers and venue hire are normally arranged as wedding specific services. The one major exception in this highly developed and organised marketplace is wedding entertainment. By entertainment, I mean the acts, usually musical, that are such an important part of making a wedding day truly special.
When couples first start to look for an individual musician or a band, they inevitably set very high standards for what might well be the most important day of their lives. They also, quite understandably, want to make it a memorable and impressive day for their guests, whether friends or family. Whilst many aspects of wedding planning are highly organised, wedding entertainment is not one of them. Unfortunately, most couples will end up choosing from a small pool of relatively local acts with little guarantee as to the quality of the performance. This is especially true when a couple is looking for something a little bit different, such as a string quartet or a steel band. Unless you live in London or, for steel bands, Birmingham, the chances of being able to choose from several high-quality acts are almost non-existent.
Unless you were prepared to look through local newspapers and magazines or simply ask friends, the only way, until recently, to access a wider pool of musical acts and musicians for a wedding was to use one of the National website services that list bands and musicians, usually by different genres. The drawback to these services is that they are not specifically focused on the needs of the wedding marketplace. For example, they usually list many types of music that are unlikely to be used as a wedding. Conversely, some types of music and musicians, a good example being bagpipers, are hardly represented at all on such websites, despite being very popular wedding entertainment.
Surprisingly, we were only able to find one example in the UK of a wedding entertainment website that is genuinely specialist. I Do Music was apparently established by musicians with over 20 years experience of performing at weddings and managing wedding acts. The acts listed cover a wide variety of genres that are appropriate to weddings and many of them seem to have particularly high profiles in the music industry. In fact, their biographies seem littered with references to private celebrity parties and media industry events, as well as high-profile weddings. However, we were surprised to find that acts of this quality do not appear to cost significantly more to hire than the usual mediocre local offering.
