Wedding musicians/bands are of course a must for wedding receptions. However, do you know what questions you should be asking when closing your deal for your live entertainment? If your answer is no, keep scrolling down, this article will help you a lot!

Before I go in details of the 5 must questions, I’d like to give you a brief/rough idea about what I’m going to be talking about in this article. When booking a musician or a live band the main focus should on be who you will be working with, who will organize your wedding music, whether the musicians are sufficient for the type of entertainment you are looking to have and their experience in the industry. Technical equipment/Sound system is the other thing you should be paying attention to, so let’s get started!

• What Styles/genres can you/your band play?

We live in a very multi cultural city with over 100 different communities from different backgrounds and each community has their own style of music and understanding from a “Live Entertainment”. Therefore, making sure you’re booking the right musicians/band is the bottom line for the right entertainment for the right crowd. You need to know what your guests/close-distant circle will be like and enjoy. Of course it’s not easy to know who’d enjoy what individually however a rough idea of the crowd can help a long way on this journey. After you dress down the number of musicians based on your “filters’, I highly encourage you to ask their main style/genre once again before going into details just to make sure you’re not wasting no one’s time.

• What are the technical requirements for your performance? Can you provide a sound technician as well? And who’s responsible for the set-up and tear down?

Each performer/band have certain technical/sound-light requirements to showcase their best to audiences so this is another crucial point to discuss before hand with your performer(s). Since this is a bit of a grey area, it’s always better to make it clear who’ll be responsible for the sound, light, setup and tear down at the end of the night. Most of the musicians/bands do NOT come with a complimentary technical support, unless stated otherwise. This is a completely separate service and 99% of the time charged separately. It’s totally up to you and your deal with your venue if you want it to be taken care of by your venue’s in-house sound company or  to be outsourced from a 3^rd party sound provider. Some musicians/bands can also offer you this service with an additional charge and take care of the logistics on behalf of you.

• Do you use pre-determined set lists, or do you take requests?

This is totally up to the performer/band you’re going to be booking. There’s no one standard answer for that. While some musicians are ok with taking a few song requests to make the client happy, some can strictly stick to their own repertoire, so it’s better to clarify in advance.

• Do you or Does your band perform live or to backing tracks? Is there any price difference in between these 2 performance types?

These 2 performance types differ a lot by the way they are performed and there’s a quite a bit of a price difference since number of people performing will be effected by your choice. You can book a solo, duo or a trio performance with backing tracks and have them sound like a full band if you do not have a big budget however if you’re picky about the sound and want every instrument to be played fully live and perfect then you should be ready to spend minimum $4-5K since your band won’t be less than 5-6 members. Of course there’ll be a quality and sound difference so at the end of the day; it comes down to how much you’d like to spend.

• What's your cancellation policy?

Finally the last and most important question you should be asking is; what are your terms and conditions for cancellations, postponements and date change? What are the applicable fees in this type of circumstances?  You may want to iron this out before you sign your contract to avoid all types of shocking news closer to your date. Again there’s no one standard answer for this question since every vendor has different schedules, some of them are busier than the others so if you’re booking a famous/top-notch performer/band, the chances are low you’ll get a refund since closing a date means turning down other clients requesting the same date and time for the vendor. However, some vendors might be more flexible with refunding some portion of payment. However I can guarantee you the deposits are 99.9% are non-refundable since they are collected to cover a portion of their loss in cancellation cases..