Must be cool. You work Saturday night for 5 hours and earn $1,000 or more. What a life. It has been equated with drug dealing: the lucrative business of wedding DJs is not what it seems. The reality is that this is far from the easy money that a potential wedding client thinks it is. They are shocked when they first hear the price professional DJs charge and think they are being scammed 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 away from home meeting with clients or potential clients.
o Most weekends are spent away from friends and family who work on your events. Forget the 4th of July picnic and New Year’s Eve.
o DJs for weddings are booked a year or two in advance, so a last-minute call from your friend asking you out to dinner or a concert is a missed call. You are already booked.
o Your daughter’s concert which is on a Friday in May: you will most likely miss it. Again, you are already booked.
o Try standing for 5 hours straight and see how your legs and feet feel.
o Did you know that one of the most feared things is speaking in public? As a wedding disc jockey, that’s what we do every weekend.
o Most people bring a cup of coffee to work: a wedding DJ brings over $15,000 worth of equipment and another $20,000 or more worth of music for most events.
o A wedding disc jockey will haul about 1,000 pounds of gear in and out of the reception, which means climbing stairs, traversing rickety stone pathways and parking lots, kitchens, and in the cold and rain.
o A typical wedding lasts 5 hours. Your wedding disc jockey will arrive an hour early for setup, be there after guests leave, and typically drive 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 store the equipment when they return. That adds up to between 8 and 10 hours on the day of the event just spent on your wedding.
o A wedding disc jockey will normally meet with you prior to booking (pre-sales meeting) for approximately one hour. Most disc jockeys will drive to meet their clients. Presales and travel to and from this meeting will add approximately 2 hours of your time to your event.
o When it’s time to discuss the details, your DJ will drive back to meet you and spend another hour with you going over the details, come back to the office, write this information down and send you a copy. They will spend a couple of hours organizing 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 find that they just spent another 5 hours preparing for your event.
o Total time spent per event will be around 17-20 hours when all is said and done. That $1,000 for 5 hours is now really $1,000 for 20 hours.
o A wedding DJ will spend about $2,000 or more each year on music upgrades. They could spend between $2,000 and $6,000 on 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 voicemail 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 on gas to get to and from meetings and events.
o A wedding disc jockey will drive 25,000 – 35,000 miles each year between meetings and to and from your events. That will be roughly 750 hours away from home each year in travel time alone.
The reason wedding disc jockeys 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 represents about 2 of the 5 typical wedding reception hours. Your professional wedding disc jockey is responsible for coordinating every detail of the event flow, from introductions to cake cutting. They are the intermediary between the banquet staff, the photographer and the videographer. They are your wedding coordinator. Without proper quality entertainment, guests will leave soon after dinner.
If a typical wedding reception costs around $25,000 (or $5,000 an hour!) If you are torn between a cheap $500 DJ and a professional DJ that costs $1500, the decision should be easy. Trying to cut back on entertainment expenses 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 disc jockey puts into your event will be worth every penny.
