Empowering and Helping You to Choose the Right Music for Your Wedding

For your wedding, you want to choose a band which 1) you like, and 2) is qualified and experienced.   It’s pretty easy to tell what you like, but how can you tell if a band is qualified?  Ask the band one simple question: “Can you wear tuxedos?”  (It doesn’t matter whether you want them to wear tuxedos or not.)

Most couples getting married prefer bands to wear tuxedos.  As a result, any band which has played any number of weddings at all, will own tuxedos.  If a band hasn’t performed at enough weddings to have met this demand, they are not qualified to perform at yours.

Experienced Bands Who Wear Tuxedos at Weddings

You want your wedding to be memorable in every respect, and you are willing to pay a  reasonable fee to have an unforgettable experience. But will your desire for a memorable wedding make you vulnerable to overpaying for services you don’t need, without even realizing it?

In the case of DJ Services, all promise that the DJ will learn about your needs and desires in advance of your wedding–that’s unquestionably important. But many DJ services exaggerate the time and labor required to gain that understanding.   This allows them to justify an exaggeratedly-high price for their services.

DJ Services promise all manner and means of learning about your needs and desires.  This includes multiple meetings, lunch meetings, dinner meetings, meetings in your home, unlimited number of meetings, etc.  It’s almost as though they need to live in with you until the wedding, just to know what you have in mind for music.  And remember that although it’s not itemized in the DJ Service’s fee, you are paying for those lunches, dinners and all of that face time–every minute of it.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with extensive contact with any vendor.  But as with anything else you are paying big money for, it’s appropriate and important to ask whether or not it’s necessary.

If you are willing to pay $400-$2000 more than necessary in order to have a lunch or dinner companion, have unlimited face time, have a visitor in your home, make a new friend, or just to have your hand held, then there is nothing wrong with hiring a DJ Service who will do that, and charge you for it.  (Some people who have been scared about having their cars fixed exactly right, might be willing to pay an auto mechanic for five hours to learn how to fix their particular car before she/he lifts the hood–it doesn’t make it necessary though.)

On the other hand, an experienced professional DJ can thoroughly learn about your needs and desires from a well-designed worksheet and a conversation or two.  He should not require you to pay for hours of his time to learn something he should be able to grasp much more expeditiously.

Don’t pay inflated prices by allowing a DJ Service (or anyone else) to create false needs and thereby prey on your desire to have a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime experience.  If you’re smarter than that, you  can save $400-$2,000, and lose absolutely nothing.  Can you think of a better way to spend that money?

As with all other elements of your wedding, your ceremony music should be a reflection of your vision.  But choosing ceremony music isn’t like choosing a wedding gown or choosing an entree for your reception.  You can easily look through wedding gowns and taste different entrees. 

Until now the only way for a bride-to-be to choose ceremony music was to search the internet for hours or, even less conveniently, spend hours at the library listening to all manner of recordings.  In either case,  trying to judge which pieces are appropriate for what parts of the ceremony is difficult.  And even if you get that far, you then need to find musicians who have the pieces you choose in their repertoire.  Even if all of this were possible, it’s completely impractical.

We would like to propose something different, which we think is infinitely more effective and convenient.  It also allows you to hear the specific music group you are considering, playing the standard wedding ceremony pieces even before you hire the group, while telling you the name of each piece.  This allows you to choose what you will actually hear at your ceremony.

As an example, here is a ceremony music demonstration recording for one of our most popular ceremony music groups, The Symphony String Quartet.  (The narration starts after some brief, introductory music.)    

http://www.paragonmusic.com/images2/guides/classical/symphstring/audio1.html

Should you choose to hire such a group, you can then use this type of recording to pick specific pieces, knowing exactly what they will sound like at your ceremony.

We believe that this is a convenient way for brides to choose ceremony music which reflects their vision for their wedding ceremony, without spending hours and hours, searching high and low, for pieces the group they have chosen might not even play. 

What do you think?

More information about The Symphony String Quartet:  http://www.paragonmusic.com/images2/guides/classical/symphstring/symphonystring.html

WELCOME to the Paragon Music & Entertainment Wedding Music Blog!

A very brief introduction for those of you who may not know us well–we  are  a customer-oriented music and entertainment company which has served Columbus and Central Ohio since 1985.  We offer everything in the world of entertainment:
      *Symphony Musicians (from the Columbus Symphony)
      *Professional, Fun DJs  [The Paragon DJ Service]
      *Bands (Central Ohio’s finest)
      *Soloists (All Instruments)
      *Celebrities

That’s what we offer, but that’s not all we do.  What we do primarily is to help people!

Choosing music and/or entertainment can be a minefield.  Nowadays anyone with software can call themselves a musician or a DJ.  And with web design software, they can post a convincing web site.  Whether they have any talent, performance knowledge or experience is not readily discernible.  Those considerations are however critical to the success of an event!

In coming posts, we will share some of the tools we have developed to empower you to make intelligent choices of music and entertainment, we will share information which will help you avoid all of the common pitfalls,  and we will offer tips on how to discern professional, experienced performers from greenhorns who could ruin your event. 

For now, we are glad that you are here, and we plan to make it worth your while to return again and again.  We hope that you will!