The music at your wedding reception is crucial (almost as important as the booze), and finding the right means of delivering that music is your first big challenge. Big question: DJ or band? The majority of articles on most wedding sites will argue that there are benefits to either. There are people who take say “DJ” and people who say “Band,” and while we love you all, there are tons of signs that point to DJ.
Here are 5 reasons you should hire a DJ and not a band:
100,000 Songs is Better Than 100 Songs
No matter how large a wedding band’s repertoire, there is no way they will know how to play “Hotel California” and a Greek folk song and Jay Z’s 99 Problems and the Portuguese national anthem and Finesse by Bruno Mars. It’s just not statistically possible. If you find A DJ that can do that, marry them instead and see if you can get a spot on “The Tonight Show.” And yet, any DJ with access to Spotify can satisfy these and countless other song requests from your guests. Variety is the spice of life.
The Music Will Be In Tune
The problem with a band is that unless you hire an awesome Japanese robot band, or Daft Punk, it will consist of humans, and humans are flawed. Sometimes they sing off key. Sometimes they are drunk. Sometimes they just have a different “interesting” way of interpreting Eric Clapton’s classic “Wonderful Tonight,” which they have played thousands of times and now think is fun to perform as a bossa nova or reggae number. But that is not a song anyone should ever change. A DJ is like a can of Coke. You know what you’re getting. It’s satisfying. And it’s the exact same thing every time.
Greater Reliability
When you hire a DJ, you are hiring one person (maybe two, if they bring an assistant). With a wedding band, you are relying on up to a dozen people to show up. Think about that. You now have 12 times more potential no shows.
These are musicians we’re talking about. We’ve watched plenty of movies about musicians, so we know they are all insane, or are driven by untamable passion and rage. There is an almost too-likely chance that the guitarist for the band will injure his hand by punching a hole in a wall the night before your wedding. Or the drummer will drive into a fire hydrant on the on the way to the reception. You have a lot on your mind without having to worry about a group of lunatics, no matter how professional they seem. A DJ vastly reduces the list of things that can go wrong.
Human Error
As much as we wish things were different, bands are made up of humans, and humans sometimes think and say things. This means that they could do anything from drink too much at the open bar, to hit on the bridesmaids, to make snide comments during your best man’s speech. It’s not like you know the band prior to the wedding. And a 6-person band offers more chances of that happening than a 1-person DJ.
Consider A College Savings Account
A typical wedding band will be about three thousand dollars. A professional DJ will cost about $1,000 With the $2,000 saved by hiring a DJ, you could start a 529 college savings account for the child you may one day have. Let’s say your wife gets pregnant two years after getting married. That means your 529 account would have 20 years of growth on the stock market before the kid needs to use it. By the time they go to college, your initial $2,000 will have grown enough to pay for…maybe half of their first semester meal plan? Still that’s not nothing. A DJ makes smart financial sense.
A wedding singer will steal your wife. A DJ will save your life.
