Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran

Mu­sic will pro­vide an out­let through which you can have the most vivid mem­o­ries of your wed­ding day.Af­ter­wards, every time you hear your first dance song or a song from your cer­e­mo­ny, you will make a men­tal as­so­ci­a­tion with it and your wed­ding.Chances are, that you will have to make mu­sic choic­es for both your place of wor­ship and for your re­cep­tion site. Some cer­e­mo­ny venues have choirs or res­i­dent mu­si­cians, soloists and/or pub­lic ad­dress sys­tems. You would need to find out well in ad­vance about this and al­so how pay­ment is made to these peo­ple, or whether the ser­vice is com­pli­men­ta­ry.

Usu­al­ly, there would be dif­fer­ent tones or styles of mu­sic for each part of the cer­e­mo­ny. Some cer­e­mo­ny sites re­strict cer­tain types of songs, so a good idea is to present your of­fi­ciant with a list of pro­posed songs and ask for ap­proval first.Re­cep­tion site mu­sic choic­es can range from a live band, per­former (soloist/mu­si­cal) or record­ed mu­sic played by a disc jock­ey (DJ).

Here are some help­ful tips when hir­ing a DJ:

• Ver­i­fy that the DJ you meet is the ac­tu­al per­son who will be play­ing at your wed­ding. You would not want an am­a­teur DJ mak­ing his pub­lic de­but at your wed­ding.

• In­form your dec­o­ra­tor about the DJ's phys­i­cal place­ment/lo­ca­tion at the re­cep­tion, well in ad­vance.

• Give the DJ a copy of your wed­ding pro­gramme or itin­er­ary, so he/she can have an idea of tim­ing and when to make an­nounce­ments or play cer­tain key songs.

• En­sure that your DJ is ver­sa­tile enough to please a wide cross-sec­tion of your guests. In or­der to be as­sured of this, have a look at the DJ's sug­gest­ed playlists for wed­dings and/or bring a list of your favourite tunes along to the meet­ing.

• Af­ter meet­ing the DJ, are you con­fi­dent the DJ has the skills to read the crowd and play the right mu­sic at the right time?

• Does the DJ have the en­er­gy and "look" that you want to por­tray at your wed­ding?

• Does the DJ have re­li­able and up-to-date equip­ment?

• En­sure that the DJ in­cludes styles of mu­sic from vary­ing eras to suit your crowd, oth­er­wise you'll be faced with guests go­ing to the DJ and re­quest­ing songs they think he should be play­ing.

• Once you have fi­nalised de­tails, sign a con­tract with your DJ and be sure to in­clude the name of your ac­tu­al DJ, date, lo­ca­tion, set-up time, par­tic­u­lar songs re­quest­ed for cer­tain mo­ments, pay­ment de­tails, oth­er ser­vices the DJ will pro­vide (eg be­ing a Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies, pro­vi­sion of cord­less mi­cro­phones etc) and con­di­tions un­der which the con­tract will be bro­ken.

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