Wedding planner Alex has advice on finding entertainment that guests will remember for all the right reasons.

Food and Music, these are the two biggest things that people will remember from your wedding and will talk about for weeks or even months afterwards too. So it’s natural to be concerned about getting both of these right, not only for yourselves but also for your guests. I’m a big advocate for planning your wedding just the way you want it but if I had to pick two things about your day where I’d recommend keeping your guests happy too would be the food and music.

For today I’m going to talk about how best to go about booking your band.

Word of mouth recommendations are fantastic or first hand experience of seeing a band at someone else’s wedding already. But if you are starting from a completely blank slate the following might help you with where to start.

Ask your venue for recommendations

Your venue has seen plenty of bands walk through their doors before and can let you know which bands they found professional and accommodating, and of course what their performance is like.

Online Research

Check what bands cater to your area, google “wedding bands Donegal” and you will narrow down your search to find local suppliers. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try looking on some wedding forums and directories.

Don’t waste your time

You can spend hours researching wedding suppliers online, to reduce time wasted emailing back and forth, give as much information as possible in your email enquiry such as wedding date, venue, style of band you like, and maybe even a rough budget you want to work within. Also try to narrow it down to 3 bands that you want to view. Any more and you will only stress yourself out with too much choice.

View the band live (if possible)

Once you know the band are available on your date, head along and see them perform live. Every band will have a showcase gig in a pub where they play a sample of their set list which is similar for weddings.

It’s time to book your band

If you love the band after viewing them don’t delay your booking. Bands get booked up 1-2 years in advance so you don’t want to lose out on your date. The most popular time for weddings are May-September and then December is one of the busiest months of the year and will see bookings as far as 3 years in advance. So don’t miss out on the band you love, be sure to put down a deposit and tick one big job off your list!

Happy Planning!

Alexandra

xox