How much to charge for a wedding gig?

[Nate Dogg]

Recently, I was asked to DJ a wedding for a local dancer.

In the past, the few weddings I did, I did for free as wedding gifts (I did accept the inevitable tip). But, those were for dancers that I was pretty good friends with. I am not as close with this particular dancer (in short, I would have been at the previous weddings whether I DJed or not, it is highly unlikely I would be at the upcoming wedding without the DJ angle).

Not factoring in sound equipment, which I will rent and factor into my price, what would be a good hourly rate for labor, use of my laptop, and music. PM me if you prefer.

Serious replies only (try to avoid the temptation to do wedding DJs jokes, Nathan jokes, etc...). I need to get back to him soon and I don't really know what my market value is, since everybody pretty much DJs for free in our scene.

But, I am going to this one, since I am having to re-arrange other plans to do this.

Nathan

[djstarr]

I thought some prices were covered in the wedding DJ thread? some where in this topic. I seem to recall $500 for the evening as being a reasonable price.

[JesseMiner]

I would reccomend charging at least $50/hour plus the cost of equipment rental.

I would suggest finding a good equipment rental company that will both rent you the equipment and also drop off, set up and break down the equipment. It's usually still quite reasonably priced - $300 last time I did a wedding. Doing a wedding is already a lot of work, so it's nice when someone else can be taking care of the technical end of things, especially when it's not on your dime.

Jesse

[ScottieK]

I could have sworn most wedding DJs were $100/hr. I'd charge that.

[Utah_Nate]

In Utah you can charge a high price for weddings because there are so many everyday that they are desperate for djs. (I'm not saying that you should though, lol)

[Matthew]

A few ideas:

Take a few minutes and shop around as if it were your own wedding. Call local wedding DJs, and ask how much it would cost.

Keep in mind that whatever you quote may form the basis of future fees, due to referrals. So, if you charge X, and the dancer loves what you do, they may recommend you to a friend, saying that you charged X.

One option (just an idea - I'm not necessarily advocating this) would be to mark up the rental costs, if you know them and the dancer doesn't, making your fee seem smaller in the eyes of the dancer.

[Lawrence]

A few ideas:

Take a few minutes and shop around as if it were your own wedding. Call local wedding DJs, and ask how much it would cost.

Keep in mind that whatever you quote may form the basis of future fees, due to referrals. So, if you charge X, and the dancer loves what you do, they may recommend you to a friend, saying that you charged X.

One option (just an idea - I'm not necessarily advocating this) would be to mark up the rental costs, if you know them and the dancer doesn't, making your fee seem smaller in the eyes of the dancer.

Exactly what he said, although I do think you can legitimately charge more as your reputation and business grows.

1) You are worth what people are willing to pay, so market price is definitely a factor. If you want to build a business, then underprice the market to build a client-base for referrals. If you don't want to do it as a business, but you wouldn't mind doing it occasionally as a hobby (or if you were paid enough), then set your price a bit above the market price.

2) The service you provide at a wedding is competitive with bands that usually charge $3000, not with volunteers willing to do it for free (as in the Lindy world). Although $3000 for a DJ gig is ridiculous, it makes a $1000 fee look cheap in comparison.

3) Many DJs require a base fee, reflecting an hourly rate for a three or four hour "minimum," with the hourly rate tacked on for anything beyond the minimum. (example: $50 an hour rate breaks out to a base $200 fee for four hours, and $50 an hour thereafter). You can also bump up the set fee or discount the hourly fee. ($300 for four hours, $50 an hour thereafter). Doing so ensures that it is worth the effort of travelling there, setting up, and taking time out of your free time to do it.

4) In Austin, because we have UT students posing as DJs, the market price is lower than usual: commonly, from $300 for a four hour minimum. Some of the more established DJs with good reputations charge $650 or more for a four hour minimum, and $100 an hour thereafter.

[Michaelwagner]

Here in Canada (different currency, different marketplace) I tend to charge about $75/hour for wedding DJing, plus $50/hour setup/teardown time, plus any rentals (I don't generally need to rent all that much these days, since I've started to buy my own equipment, but that doesn't change the rate I charge for equivalent equipment), plus I mark up the rentals (because I'm taking care of delivery, setup, teardown and return of rentals). I never thought of having it delivered and set up for me, but for a larger event that would be a good idea. I've not done much over 100 people in a room.

By the way, I'm breaking down the price here for the board, but that's not how I present it to a potential customer. I interview them, see the room, see the accoustics, visit the rental store for a quote if necessary, then quote them one price. I don't show them the breakdown. I might if they asked, I suppose, depending on my relationship with them, but so far it's never come up.

There's more to consider, though, than price alone.

I recently had a chat at with two other long-time DJs in the area (they've been doing oldies dances since they were in their late teens - although they weren't called oldies dances then lol). They both agreed that weddings were a lot harder than regular dances. For a start, even though the people who hired you said "I just want you to play swing" or whatever they told you, once you get there that night, you're going to find that someone brought their kids along, who wants Nickleback or Britney or rap shit or something, and someone else brought along their great-grandfather, who adores Mantovani, etc. So at the very least, you need to be prepared (mentally if nothing else) to deal with those kinds of requests. Better yet, if you have the depth in your repertoire, you might actually play them. Even just a little bit.

I did a wedding last fall where, at the end of the night, I got requests for Led Zep and Iron Butterfly (and yes, I had them ). Totally different from the rep. (and demographic) I was told to anticipate. Nice thing about computers is all those extra tunes don't weigh any more. Hard disk weighs the same full or empty, so might as well fill-er-up

Another thing to consider is duplicate equipment. For most swing dance society gigs, I show up with my computer system and a few small books of backup CDs. The gig provides a CD player, etc. When I do a wedding, I provide 2 music sources (usually my computer and a professional CD "Head"), more microphones than I'm supposed to need, more speakers, more cables, more of almost everything (I haven't so far duplicated amplifiers, but then, amplifiers are pretty reliable these days, and I usually test them the (business) day before, so I could always nip out to the rental place again).

Since it's someone's wedding, Oops isn't going to cut it. People expect to pay more for that level of service.

So those are some things to think about. They all cost money and they all go into wedding prices.

[Platypus]

Don't forget prep time in thinking about your cost. For our local dancers, who KNOW music, we met at least twice, for at least 2 hours each time, just gong over music ideas and the schedule for the evening. Give them due dates for when choices need to be given to you, so that you have time to prep.

[Michaelwagner]

Don't forget prep time in thinking about your cost.

Oh, good point, thanks, I forgot that.

For people who know music, I've asked them for a list of songs they'd like to hear. Then I went through my collection, in some cases I had the same song but by a different artist, checked with them if the substitution was OK, etc. I typically end up buying several new songs for each wedding I do. Usually they're good and I can keep using them.

A few suck.

For the ones who don't know music, it's worse. They just want "good music" but what that means to them is illusive (not only to you, but to them too, I found out). So expect to spend a fair bit of time eliciting things from them. I've even considered taking a laptop and a portable hard disk over to them and playing stuff so they can jog their memory of what *that* song is. So count more time there.