You’ve got the venue, the dress, photographer, and guest list on lock and ready to go! It’s time to talk about the soundtrack to your celebration. Weddings in CT are typically a 5-6 hour affair from wedding ceremony to the last dance. So how many songs per hour should you consider listing? Most songs are on average 3 and a half minutes in length. Over a 6 hour ceremony and reception, back to back, that’s about 107 songs.
So which ones should you choose? Our rule of thumb is, give us 10-20 of your absolute must haves for your wedding. This still leaves over 80 songs left. But generally, we’ll play between 2-300 songs throughout the festivities. How do we bend the space/time continuum? By seamlessly mixing and blending songs together. We can do this because we are constantly reading the audience, how they are reacting to what we are doing, and switching things up depending on the vibe we’re getting.
This is why pre-stacked wedding playlists are generally a no-no for events such as weddings. Wedding DJs know that weddings are a melting pot of people of all different age ranges and walks of life. One person’s Elvis is another person’s Drake and so on. Now I know what you’re probably thinking… The most commonly shared story that we hear about past experiences is that the DJ they experienced was playing a lot of non-danceable music. This could happen for one of a variety of reasons.
The DJ may have had explicit instructions not to derive from his client’s wedding playlist and it may have contained a lot of music that his clients enjoyed but not too many floor fillers. Or, maybe the DJ wasn’t a good fit for his client and wasn’t as compatible with the audience then they should have been. Either way, these situations can be removed from the equation by working with a quality wedding DJ that is attentive and knowledgeable.
Another tricky bit about music at weddings is that there are occasions where the timeline might be running a tad behind. And in those cases, with a pre-stacked wedding playlist, you’d have to be able to add songs on the fly that would extend the time and or create a event where it speeds things up and gets the day back on track. You have much more flexibility when you book your wedding dj. And finally, when you send your wedding dj a playlist to play with no possibility of deriving from it, you now take the reigns on the success of your wedding reception.
Your DJ is there to guide you and assist you and your guests to experience the best celebration they’ve ever attended.