Wedding Tips and Hints

Wedding tips and hints from our years of experience in the wedding industry.

Gate Crashing Someone Else’s Wedding

This can be a daunting task for engaged couples trying to book their Band & Dj… so a few wedding tips are:

• Wedding Tip 1: Dress as if you were attending the afters of the wedding. This lets you blend in with all of the other guests. It’s only when you arrive into a Wedding reception in Jeans and a T-shirt that you stand out from the crowd.
• Wedding Tip 2: Don’t be shy. Come right into the wedding reception making your way towards the bar. Have a drink or two at your leisure, as opposed to shrinking into a corner. This will make you feel far more comfortable.
• Wedding Tip 3: Try to get a good overview of the Band by staying around for as long as you can. This allows you to get the best overview of the band. Alternatively you could pop in and out from the front bar several times if you feel uncomfortable staying in the function room a long period of time.
• Wedding Tip 4: Raindance normally cater for the older generation in the earlier stages, and tend not to rock out too much until after 11pm. It can be easy to misinterpret or stereotype the Band if you only get to hear 10 or 15 minutes of the show. For instance if you only stay at a Wedding for 10 minutes and hear nothing but Waltzes and Country music during this time, it’s all too easy to stereotype the band as a “Diddly-Aye” Hillbilly Band… Whereas if you arrive while Raindance are performing Guns n’ Roses, The Killers or Kings of Leon in the latter stages of the night, you could tend to think we’re a Rock Band. What we mean is that the whole night needs to be taken in context. Another way to judge the Band can often be by the crowd reaction on the night. Overall – you wouldn’t walk out of a movie in the cinema after seeing just 15 minutes!
• Wedding Tip 5: One thing to remember is that Raindance always cater for the crowd put in front of them on the night. This may mean that while the band may not perform music to suit your specific tastes if you only hear the Band for a short period of time. Once the Wedding guests are dancing you can be guaranteed that the Band are doing their job.
• Wedding Tip 6: Finally and to put you a little at ease… remember that each Bride & Groom will know you’re there. We asked their permission. In fact they are pretty much expecting your presence on the night. They themselves had to gatecrash someone else’s Wedding to hear Raindance in the first place. Couples usually never mind and appreciate that this process comes full-circle.

Making the Most of your Afters Food

Tea, coffee, sandwiches and cocktail sausages are generally served around 11pm for a short period of time. Following this all leftover food is removed back to the kitchen where it’s usually dumped. Sinful and wasteful! Especially when there are starving guests in the sing-a-long at 3am!

Therefore our wedding tip is for you to make a request from your Wedding co-ordinator in advance. This request being that all remaining food left over after the interval be re-assembled onto several trays and served to the remaining guests during the after hours drinking session in the residents bar. Nothing will remain. Guaranteed.

Booking your Videographer

This wedding tip may be considered as a bit of a selfish one from the Band’s point of view. (No offence is meant to any Videographers out there. So please don’t take this the wrong way). But in our experience, Videographers who use the “Builders / Co. Council” lights in order to get clearer video footage, tend to ruin the atmosphere. We as a Band do our best to provide an atmosphere with stage and room lighting to set the mood. this mood disappears at the flick of a videographers switch. We also find that this can effect the amount of people who choose to dance on the night, all because they don’t want to go under the bright glaring lights.

With advances in modern technology, there are many Videographers out there using more modern video cameras that don’t require these overly bright, whole room illuminating lights. In our experience, these Videographers are far less intrusive on the guests. They move about easily and unknown through the crowd. This means that your guests are free to enjoy their evening without feeling like they’re on Big Brother.

Keeping Things Running on Time

• Wedding tip 1: One of the things that will delay you most on the day can be the photography, so make sure to stress to your photographer in advance that you don’t want to be late sitting into your meal.
• Wedding tip 2: Bear in mind that the meal & speeches will take approximately 3 hours. If you’re sitting into your meal for 5.30pm you should be wrapped up by about 8.30pm. Try to make sure that everybody seated on time.
• Wedding tip 3: Keep your Bridal party together for following the meal. In this way you can get the first dance out of the way without delay, allowing the Band can start promptly. This basically means that get the dancing started as soon as possible following the meal and speeches, and more value from your band.
• Wedding tip 4: If you’re a Bride who plans on throwing your bouquet on the night of the Wedding, give it to a member of the Band following your meal. This way know exactly where it is when the time comes for the bouquet toss, rather than having to send out a search party later in the night.

How Soon Should You Start Booking Things?

Our final wedding tip – but maybe the most important one. As soon as you set the date and book the Ceremony and the Hotel – you should start about booking everything else. It’s never too early. In fact the earlier you start booking things, the more choice of suppliers you have. The later you leave it, you’ll find that your choices become limited. All the best Bands, DJ’s, Hotels, Photographers, etc. will be booked by someone else for your chosen date. Otherwise you may have to “settle” on suppliers, rather than having a free choice. Not good.