You have debated the pros and cons of a wedding DJ, a band or a do it yourself approach. Finally, you have decided to hire a DJ for your wedding reception. Now to plan your wedding playlist!
The DJ is an Expert (hopefully!)
We advise that you provide (mostly) a guideline for your DJ. At your final consultation, you can fill in all the blanks as far as flow of the event, but also discuss specifics on music preferences as well. Don’t feel like you need to plan the entire wedding playlist out prior to the meeting. Your DJ should have constructive ideas to help pull the details of your specific together!
General Tastes
Overall, let the DJ know your taste in music and the tone you want – country, B & B, hard rock, big band. Are the guests predominantly Millennials or Baby boomers? The DJ will want to know the overall tone of the reception and wedding playlist, but don’t try to pick out every song! That never actually works!
Of course, if there is a specific song you do or don’t want, let the DJ know. A list of what you don’t want to hear is much more helpful to a DJ you trying to pick every song to be played that night!
Determine the Flow
The flow of events generally run a cocktail hour (before the wedding party arrives), entrance, welcome/blessing, cake cutting, dinner, toasts, first dance, Father/Daughter dance, Mother/Son dance, general dancing. You can really get funky with the order of these and, of course, don’t need to do all of them. At the final consultation be prepared to discuss the order of events and specific songs that will be needed for each.
The DJ as the MC
The DJ makes several announcements during your event. It is very important to you to provide the names of the people that will be announced during key events, most notably the entrance, and review pronunciations and relationships.
It’s also a good idea to discuss things like how dinner is going to work if there is a hosted bar, etc so that your DJ can keep your guests informed on these items,
AUG
