Choosing your wedding DJ
Things to think about when booking a wedding DJ.
Not a list of trick questions to catch a DJ out. Just the things I think are actually worth considering before you decide who you want behind the decks at your wedding.
Choosing a wedding DJ can be weird.
Unless you regularly hire DJs, you probably don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to be looking for. There are reviews to read, packages to compare, playlists to discuss and a seemingly endless collection of questions you’re apparently supposed to ask.
I’ve been DJing since 1997, but I haven’t always been a wedding DJ. In fact, learning to DJ weddings taught me that some of the things people think matter aren’t nearly as important as they seem — and some things you might never think to ask can make an enormous difference.
So this isn’t really a checklist.
These are some things I think are worth thinking about when you’re deciding who you want behind the decks at your wedding.
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01 · The person behind the booth
Are you hiring a DJ, or a DJ company?
My introduction to wedding DJing happened after I’d already been DJing for about 17 years.
My partner at the time suggested that I could make some extra money DJing weddings, so I contacted a DJ company in a nearby city. They invited me to their office for a demonstration. I brought in my turntables, set everything up and started playing.
They hadn’t really seen anyone DJ the way I did before. They decided to take a chance on me and almost immediately started sending me to weddings.
There wasn’t much training.
They gave me some “Quick Hits” lists, but I knew virtually nothing about the flow of a wedding or what might be considered a standard wedding song. I’d spent my entire life listening to underground music. I was aware of pop music, obviously, but I couldn’t have told you who sang Sweet Caroline or Don’t Stop Believin’.
Are you aware of those songs?
Some people really enjoy scream-singing them at each other near the end of weddings.
Going from DJing clubs, raves and festivals to DJing a wedding was a bizarre experience. I’ve always described it as playing one sport for years and then suddenly being asked to play a completely different sport using the same equipment.
Everything looks familiar, but suddenly you’re questioning every muscle memory and every instinct you have.
Unfortunately, the company I worked for didn’t always set me up for success. Sometimes I wouldn’t receive a couple’s information until a few weeks before their wedding. There were couples whose weddings I DJed without ever speaking to them beforehand.
It’s hardly surprising that I occasionally struggled with someone’s name or had the wrong version of a song cued up.
My experience today couldn’t be more different.
Many of the couples I work with book me more than a year before their wedding. We’ve met. We’ve emailed. We’ve talked about their plans, their families and, obviously, a whole lot of music.
By the time their wedding arrives, we’re often genuinely excited to see each other. I get hugs when I arrive.
I love that.
I’d much rather feel like a welcome guest who has an important job to do than some stranger who suddenly appeared to play loud music at the end of the night.
When you contact me, you’re talking to the DJ you’re considering hiring. If you book me, I’m the person who will be standing there on your wedding day.
That isn’t how every DJ business operates, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be. But I think it’s worth asking:
Who am I talking to now, and who is actually going to be at my wedding?
Years ago, when one of those company weddings went particularly well, couples would sometimes send lovely thank-you messages afterward. They’d address them to the booking manager.
Sometimes they didn’t even know my name.
02 · Your input
How much music do you actually need to choose?
As much or as little as you want.
I’ve worked with couples who meticulously planned music for virtually every part of their wedding: pre-ceremony, ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner and different portions of the dance.
I’ve also had couples essentially tell me: “We trust you. Do your thing.”
I’m perfectly happy with either approach and everything in between.
What I’m really looking for is a vision.
Tell me what you love. Tell me what you hate. Tell me about the songs your university friends will lose their minds over. Tell me that your mom needs to hear a particular song. Tell me there’s an artist you absolutely cannot stand.
Or give me a handful of songs and tell me what you want the day to feel like.
Once you’ve hired me, I want this part of your wedding to feel like a relief.
Box checked. Music taken care of.
You shouldn’t feel like you now have another job and need to micromanage a DJ for the next year.
Give me the amount of direction you’re comfortable giving me. My job is to take that vision and help you make it happen.
03 · Reading the room
How does the DJ choose the music?
I solicit pretty hard for requests before a wedding.
I want your must-plays. I want your must-not-plays. I want the weird songs your friends love. I want the songs that remind you of being 19. I want to know what your parents listen to.
There are millions of songs out there.
Help me narrow them down.
I use all of that information to build crates and develop a plan for the day.
Then I get there and start paying attention.
I always go in with a plan.
I’ve never once stuck to the plan.
That’s not a failure of preparation. It’s the reason for the preparation.
I’m trying to give myself as many good places to go as possible once there are actual human beings standing in front of me.
04 · When the plan isn’t working
Pivot.
Switch it up. Try something else.
To me, that’s what DJing is. You can spend hours preparing a brilliant sequence of songs. If the people standing in front of you aren’t responding to it, they’re telling you something. Listen to them.
This is one of the reasons I over-prepare. Preparation gives me options. If the direction I thought I’d take doesn’t work, I don’t have to desperately figure out what to do next. I can go somewhere else.
Prepare obsessively. Then pay attention.
05 · Requests
What happens with guest requests?
I love requests.
That doesn’t mean every requested song will work at every moment, but I’ve never understood treating the people at the party as though they’re interfering with the DJ.
It’s their party.
I love music. I’ve spent an absurd portion of my life looking for it, collecting it, organizing it and playing it. But I could play you nothing but my favourite records and there’s a perfectly reasonable chance they’d be some of your least favourite records.
That’s music.
Guest requests give me information.
When someone comes up and asks for a song, I generally try to get to it fairly quickly. They don’t usually mean, “I’d like to hear this sometime within the next three hours.” They want to hear it now.
So I’ll figure out how to get there.
If I can creatively transition into their request in a way that sounds like I’ve practised it a thousand times, and the dance floor responds, something great happens: the person who requested it feels like they did that.
High fives. Smiles. Their friends get excited. Someone else comes over with another idea. More people become involved.
And when more people feel involved, more people have fun. That’s what parties are supposed to be.
Requests have also introduced me to an incredible amount of music. There are songs I probably should have known years earlier that I first heard because somebody asked me to play them.
I’ve searched for songs at weddings, bought them, downloaded them and played them for the first time minutes later — to a dance floor full of people who already knew every word.
I love that. I’m still learning about music from the people I’m supposedly there to play music for.
06 · The craft
Does the DJ actually mix?
When I started DJing weddings, I heard versions of this surprisingly often: wedding DJs don’t really need to mix. The audience doesn’t care.
I couldn’t disagree more.
People notice.
I’ve had couples specifically mention transitions in reviews. I’ve had elderly guests who had probably never watched someone properly mix records before come over and comment on how smoothly one song became another.
You might not know why something sounds good. You don’t need to know what phrasing is, what key the songs are in or what the DJ is doing with an EQ. You can still hear it.
It’s one of those things that may not seem particularly important until you’ve heard it done well. Then you start wondering why it isn’t simply the standard.
But I’ve also changed my thinking about this over the years.
The transition matters. The song matters more.
I have routines I’ve developed around particular tracks. At one point, if someone requested one of those songs, I might have thought, Perfect. I know exactly what I’m going to do.
These days, I’m much more likely to get to the part of the song they actually want to hear.
I might know they’re missing an incredibly clever transition. They don’t.
They asked me for the song, not a demonstration of my DJing.
07 · The quote
What are you actually paying for?
This is worth understanding before you compare prices.
Does the price include the ceremony? Cocktail hour? Dinner? Microphones? Lighting? MC services? How much dance time? Setup and teardown? What happens if the wedding runs late? Are there upgrades you’ll discover you need later?
My approach is deliberately simple. I have one wedding package. I bring what I need to do the job properly.
I don’t want to spend the year leading up to someone’s wedding trying to sell them things.
I’d much rather get the money conversation out of the way and spend the rest of our time talking about music.
Whatever DJ you choose, make sure you understand what their quote actually represents.
08 · Setup
When does the DJ arrive?
Ask.
Setting up a wedding isn’t the same thing as walking into a bar with a laptop.
There may be multiple sound systems, wireless microphones, lighting, cables to safely run, equipment to test and coordination required with planners, venue staff, photographers, videographers, musicians and whoever else is involved in the day.
I generally plan to arrive about three hours before I need to be operational.
I’d much rather be completely ready far too early than still troubleshooting something while guests are arriving.
And I only book one event per day.
Your wedding isn’t the second stop on my Saturday.
09 · Backups
What happens when something goes wrong?
Something always happens.
Almost every weekend, there’s some little moment that makes me think: Thank goodness I accounted for that.
A cable fails. An adapter is needed. Someone hands me a device that needs to connect to something it was never designed to connect to. Another vendor needs something. Technology decides today is the day it’s going to be technology.
I don’t know how I managed to do this job years ago with the amount of redundancy I used to carry.
Today I bring two completely duplicated DJ workstations and independently duplicated music libraries. I carry backups and adapters for things I don’t necessarily expect to need. I frequently end up lending those adapters to other vendors.
Almost all of those systems exist because at some point in my career something happened that taught me to account for it next time.
Experience isn’t preventing everything from going wrong. It’s having somewhere to go when it does.
The people who hired me should never know there was a struggle.
10 · The microphone
How does the DJ use the microphone?
I’m perfectly comfortable with a microphone.
But being comfortable with one doesn’t mean I need to constantly use it.
Just like the music, I try to respond to what the room is giving me.
Sometimes a crowd wants energy and being bigger on the microphone makes sense. Sometimes the appropriate thing to do is make a clear announcement, say what needs to be said and get out of the way.
The microphone isn’t there to make the DJ the star of your wedding.
Ask a prospective DJ how they approach it, particularly if they’re also going to be your MC.
Make sure their version of “bringing the energy” resembles yours.
11 · Your venue
Does your venue have sound restrictions?
This is something I think couples should ask about before the wedding day — and ideally before signing their venue contract.
Sound restrictions aren’t inherently unreasonable.
Venues have neighbours, local bylaws, property considerations and relationships they need to maintain. Outdoor weddings in particular can present challenges that simply don’t exist in a ballroom.
But you should understand exactly what the restrictions are.
- Is there a decibel limit?
- Is there a specific time outdoor music has to end?
- Are subwoofers permitted?
- Can your DJ bring their own sound system?
- Does the venue require the use of an installed system?
- If so, what does that system actually consist of? Where are the speakers? Is there a subwoofer? Who controls the system? Can the DJ supplement it if necessary?
And importantly:
Are those restrictions written into your venue agreement?
Your venue and your DJ ultimately want the same thing: a great event that doesn’t cause problems for the property or its neighbours.
That’s much easier when everybody understands the rules well in advance.
12 · Familiarity
Has the DJ worked at your venue before?
It helps.
Knowing where the power is, where equipment can be loaded in, how a particular room sounds, where ceremonies happen and who you’ll be working with can make things easier.
I’ve worked at a lot of venues throughout Muskoka, and I’ve started documenting what I’ve learned about them because I think that information is genuinely useful to couples.
But I wouldn’t make previous experience at your venue a requirement.
Every DJ eventually works somewhere for the first time.
I’d be more interested in how they approach working somewhere for the first time.
Do they communicate with the venue? Do they ask questions? Do they arrive early enough to solve unexpected problems? Can they adapt?
Familiarity is useful.
Adaptability is more important.
13 · The fine print
What does the contract actually say?
Read it.
I say that as someone who once had a contract that was much too long.
I hadn’t thought particularly hard about that until a couple who booked me happened to be lawyers.
They actually read the whole thing.
And then they pointed out that some parts appeared to contradict other parts.
Well then.
I eventually reduced my contract to a couple of pages.
Contracts matter. You should understand cancellation terms, payment schedules, overtime, responsibilities and what happens if circumstances change.
But philosophically, there’s really only one provision in my contract that captures what I want from the people I work with:
By signing this, you’ve agreed to be cool.
That’s obviously not the entirety of the legal language.
But it’s the relationship I want.
Communicate with me. Treat me, your guests and the other people working at your wedding reasonably. Tell me when something changes. Don’t deliberately put people or equipment in ridiculous situations.
I’ll extend the same respect to you.
The contract should establish expectations. I don’t want anyone spending the wedding thinking about it.
14 · The fit
Do you actually like talking to this person?
I think this might be one of the most important questions on this page.
When someone contacts me about potentially booking their wedding, I want to meet them. I want to talk to them. I want them to see who I am. I want to be real with them.
I’m not particularly interested in selling someone on my services. I want them to decide that they want me to be at their wedding.
Because when I arrive on their wedding day, I want my presence to create a sense of relief.
Jamieson’s here. This is taken care of.
A professional who cares deeply about what he does is here, and we’re all going to have a good time.
But that only works when we’re the right fit for each other.
Years ago, somebody handed me that note while I was DJing a wedding. I kept it.
And I kept it because it reminds me of something important:
I was the wrong DJ that night.
The person who handed me that note knew it.
There were DJs who could have absolutely crushed that wedding. I wasn’t one of them.
That’s okay.
I don’t want every booking I’m offered.
I want the weddings where the couple understands how I approach this, gets excited about it and wants me there.
And I want couples who need something completely different to find the DJ who’s perfect for them.
It’s much better for everyone to figure that out while sitting around talking about a wedding than halfway through the dance.
So, how do you choose a wedding DJ?
Talk to them.
Reviews matter. Experience matters. Equipment matters. Pricing matters. Mixing matters. All of these things can tell you something useful.
But you’re also inviting a person into a pretty intimate day. They’re going to speak to your family and friends. They’re going to have a microphone. They’re going to make hundreds of little decisions about music throughout the night. And when something unexpected happens, you’re trusting them to figure it out.
You don’t need to understand everything they’re doing behind the booth. You should understand how they think.
Ask questions. Tell them what you want. See whether they listen. See whether you enjoy talking to them.
And when you’ve found the right person, hopefully hiring your wedding DJ doesn’t feel like you’ve just created another year-long project for yourself.
Box checked. You’re taken care of.