Life as a Wedding DJ
must be great You work Saturday night for 5 hours and make $1,000 or more. What a life. It has been equated with the sale of drugs: the lucrative business of wedding DJs is not what it seems. The reality is that this is far from the easy money that a prospective wedding client thinks it is. They are shocked when they first hear the price professional DJs charge and think they are being ripped off because “wedding” was in their vocabulary when they asked for a quote.
Here are some interesting facts to better understand what the life of a wedding DJ is really like:
o Customers call at all hours of the day: the phone rings from 8 am to 11 pm almost every day. For the most part, you should be available to answer calls because most people won’t leave a message if you don’t.
o Most weekend nights are spent out and about meeting with clients or potential clients.
o Most weekends are spent away from friends and family who work at their events. Forget the 4th of July picnic and New Year’s Eve.
o Wedding DJs book a year or two in advance, so your friend’s last-minute call asking you out to dinner or a concert is a missed call. You are already booked.
o Your daughter’s concert that is on a Friday in May: you will most likely miss it. Again, you are already booked.
o Try to stand for 5 hours straight and see how your legs and feet feel.
o Did you know that one of the most feared things is public speaking? As a wedding DJ, that’s what we do every weekend.
o Most people bring a cup of coffee to work: A wedding DJ brings over $15,000 in equipment and another $20,000 or more in music for most events.
o A wedding deejay will haul around 1,000 pounds of equipment in and out of the reception, which means climbing stairs, traversing rickety stone paths and parking lots, kitchens, and in the cold and rain.
o A typical wedding lasts 5 hours. Your wedding DJ will arrive an hour early for setup, will be there after guests leave, and typically drives 30-60 minutes each way to the event. They have to spend time preparing the equipment before leaving the office. They have to unload and put away the equipment when they return. That adds up to between 8 and 10 hours on the day of the event just invested in your wedding.
o A wedding DJ will normally meet with you prior to booking (pre-sale meeting) for approximately one hour. Most disc jockeys will drive to meet their clients. Pre-sales and travel to and from this meeting will add approximately 2 hours of your time to your event.
o When it is time to discuss the details, your disc jockey will drive back to meet you and spend another hour with you going over the details, return to the office, write this information down, and send you a copy. They will spend a couple of hours arranging the music, talking on the phone, and sending/receiving emails from you over the course of the two months leading up to your wedding. You may realize that they just invested another 5 hours preparing for your event.
o Total time spent per event will be around 5-8pm when all is said and done. That $1,000 for 5 hours is now really $1,000 for 20 hours.
o A wedding disc jockey will spend about $2,000 or more each year on musical upgrades. They could invest between $2,000 and $6,000 in equipment, repairs, and upgrades each year. They will spend $1,000 – $10,000 on advertising, bridal shows, printing, etc. They will spend between $5,000 and $20,000 on office supplies, computers, and business services. They will spend between $500 and $1,500 on liability insurance policies. They will spend between $2,000 and $5,000 in shipping costs. They will travel to one of the national DJ conventions to keep up with the industry and spend around $1,500 to do so. They will have an 800 number, cell phone, fax, and voice mail services that will cost them about $5,000 each year. They will spend $5,000 each year on health insurance. They will spend $5,000 in gas to get to and from meetings and events.
o A wedding DJ will drive 25,000 – 35,000 miles each year between meetings and to and from their events. That will be approximately 750 hours away from home each year in travel time alone.
The reason wedding DJs charge the price they do is simple. It is the cost of doing business. The value that a professional disc jockey brings to your event is priceless. Turn off the music and you’re just inviting friends and family over for food and drinks. That’s about 2 of the 5 typical wedding reception hours. Your professional wedding DJ is responsible for coordinating every detail of the event flow, from introductions to cutting the cake. They are the intermediary between the banquet staff, the photographer and the videographer. They are your wedding coordinator. Without adequate quality entertainment, guests will leave shortly after dinner.
If a typical wedding reception costs around $25,000 (or $5,000 an hour!) If you’re torn between a cheap $500 DJ and a professional DJ that costs $1500, the decision should be an easy one. Trying to cut back on entertainment could cost you $10,000. The extra $1,000 is money well spent when the big picture is in focus. The time and effort that a true professional DJ puts into your event will be worth every penny.