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Weddings generally pay between £150 and £250 per musician in the band. Some wedding bands charge a lot more than this though.
Acoustic/Electric Guitarist
LeFunk! Wedding and Function Band
www.lefunk.co.uk
www.facebook.com/lefunkuk
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Essex modern rock covers band - we get paid 200-250 per gig which is fine for us as we're never going to make our fortune rocking out the dog and duck.
We do a few weddings - mainly for friends of friends - and charge £1000 - £1500 for band and DJ
The exception is when we play a full two-hour gig, where we usually take £200-250.
The biggest take was my last band's album launch. After we'd paid the other two bands and the sound guy, we ended up with about £200 from the door and about £300 from merch sales. We ran the whole night, though; I'm convinced that's the only way to make decent money from originals gigs until you get big enough to guarantee a good crowd.
That’s a 4 piece rock covers band.
I played in an originals band until a couple years ago. We were London based & would take around £500 on average.
After doing shows with various so called promoters..... not getting paid/double booked venues/ un-safe non-working backline 'sorry the PA cuts out now and again, give it 5 mins'
We put our own shows together ran the door sorted DJ's picked support band, chose venue, did a lot of promo etc
We also use to try and put on shows in more interesting spaces so for example we had the top floor of a cinema & other times we put on shows in art galleries.
I doubled the price for weddings a couple of years ago for the simple reason that I hate them, but we've had twice as many bookings since. That said, the weddings we do now are generally more fun than the ones we did when we started.
I still do a few originals gigs with a couple of singer songwriters which means I get to play some great gigs. I just do those for fuel and strings money if the singer isn't getting a fee, I have a personal rule of never making a loss no matter what the gig is.
If you triple that then A : you know the bride \ groom really did want a band because they are willing to pay for it B: No they won't let the venue stuff their £1500 band in the corner and be told to turn down. this band cost a lot of money!
C: Doing well paid weddings allows you to buy some very nice professional PA gear which gets used at all the other gigs.
Charging a lot of money for weddings actually solves most of the problems cheaper bands experience at weddings, regardless of how good they are. You will miss out on some work but only the work where they didn't really want you
plus if the father of the bride does tell you to turn down you can console yourself with the money
Do you honestly believe all those people have dressed up and gone to a country house in the middle of nowhere because they've been dying to see your band?
We still had about 80 people dancing all night last Saturday, but the ones who weren't dancing were happy to stay in the same function room and nod along or chat to friends or relatives they may not have seen for years.
I agree I don’t put in a visual performance for the wedding stuff but Yiu have to have presence