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There are many different ways you can save money on a live wedding band in 2024 including booking them for the off-peak season, on a day that isn’t a Saturday, taking advantage of any freebies or extras they offer, combining your live band and DJ, or even offering them freebies and perks so you can negotiate a discount and stick within your wedding budget.
Hello! In this post, I take our years of experience performing in the wedding entertainment industry to deliver the definitive guide on how to hire a live wedding band on a budget in 2024. After reading this I’m sure you will be able to save money on your live wedding band and stick within your wedding budget too.
Many of these money-saving tips are relevant if you are looking to hire a band for your party or function so read on!
It’s really helpful to first understand how much wedding bands generally cost so you can see how much you need to save or what’s realistically in your price range. Over the last 3 years, we’ve been doing some in-depth research into the true cost of wedding bands in 2021, 2022, and 2023 and below are just some of the results. It’s a great starting point as you begin your quest when hiring a live band on a budget.
Here are the average costs of live wedding bands in England in 2023.
And below are the average prices for our live wedding bands in England as of 2023 too!
There is something else I have up my sleeve that you may find very useful too. It’s our in-depth and very popular guide on how much wedding bands really cost in 2024 where all the data we’ve compiled is laid bare for you. We uncovered some pretty amazing results including the average price for all types of wedding bands in every county or major city in England. It’s proved really helpful for all future newlyweds out there. It’s a must-read.
Yes, of course, I’m going to recommend you hire your live wedding band with us but we are on average £100 cheaper than everyone else out there because we don’t employ salespeople. No salespeople means we don’t need to include commission in our pricing like other websites so you get the same amazing wedding music bands you would do anywhere else but without all the extra costs. Couple that with our covid cover, comprehensive booking contracts, and special 15% off any 2024 or 2025 booking offer, and I’m sure you’d agree that’s how you hire a live wedding band on a budget!
Hopefully, that’s helped you get an idea of how much live wedding bands cost and the kind of budget you may need. Let’s now look at the ways you can hire a band on a budget. If you are struggling to choose a wedding band why not take a look at some of our most popular guides below for inspiration?
If you are thinking of hiring a few live wedding acts, like for example, an acoustic duo like Talking with Fireworks (above) for your ceremony, wedding breakfast or drinks reception, and then a full-blown wedding band for the evenings partying but are struggling to stick to your budget, why not ask the act you like the most if they can perform both of these shows for you?
Good wedding bands can often accommodate you and will usually offer a discount if you book them for both shows. Most of our acts like the popular Paper Boats (above) do and because they perform these acoustic sets so often, they do a fantastic job which our newlyweds absolutely love! You can see how much they love it in our reviews section if you’re interested.
Did you know that all our bands (and I assume a good few others out there) offer a discounted if not free DJ service if you book them? All of our live wedding bands, including the uber-popular Electric Jukebox (below) offer it free of charge! Not having to pay for that wedding DJ may be a great way to save some money and stay on budget.
After reading this guide, you might also want to have a little read of our post on how to choose between a live band or a wedding DJ.
What’s your wedding venue got to do with your live wedding band budget you ask? Well, speak with your venue and see if they have stage lighting, PA, or even musical instrument backline. If they do, this can save bands a lot of time and effort when it comes to performing for you and you may be able to haggle a discount out of them because of it. Bingo!
When visiting or talking to your venue, get a good idea of what they can accommodate musically too. Did you know that over 50% of couples said they wasted 30% of their wedding budgets? I’ve seen many couples hire wedding bands that are way too big for their wedding venues and it’s sadly resulted in money wasted. If you speak to the wedding band or get the venue to liaise with them or their representative, you can hire exactly what’s suitable and exactly what you want without wasting any money.
I’m pretty sure that at least one of the 50 best wedding venues in the UK would be able to help you with some of this!
As savvy wedding planners, I’m sure you will have noticed that wedding supplier pricing can be highly seasonable. Glorious sunny summer months cost more than those autumn and winter months with their potentially rainy weather. The difference between picking a Saturday or a weekday can also really have an impact on your live band budget too. Picking an off-peak time of year or just a day that isn’t a Saturday for your wedding could save you quite a bit with wedding bands usually offering discounts of up to £400 where appropriate!
All our acts generally offer discounts so it’s worth chatting with our wedding experts to find out what we can do for you. Our popular wedding band for hire, Flowers (below) are a wedding band that really understands the stress of staying within your wedding budget and offers some great seasonal discounts. Personally, when considering the randomness of English weather, I gambled on a Friday in September for my wedding and because of that, saved enough money to upgrade to a nicer wedding package with our venue. The weather ended up being pretty good too! Few…
Why not ask a wedding band if they offer any discounts, freebies, or extras? You never know?! Do be wary of live wedding bands that offer too many (see our wedding bands to avoid guide) but on the whole, musicians are a lovely bunch of people and they will try their best to fit into your budget plans. We certainly try to do that here so why not read our guide on the 5 freebies you didn’t know wedding bands offered here to find out more?
At Seventh Second we come up with all sorts of creative ways to help couples book a wedding band on a budget. Wedding bands can downsize for example. Remove a trumpet from a 5-piece band and you could already save yourself £200. Acts like The Motown Boys (above) do this pretty regularly and it works a treat!
Sometimes we can play slightly shorter live sets, arrive later or finish early so we can chip away at that final price for you. You could always look at booking a duo or trio like Encore (above) so you really bring those costs down. Wedding bands like Acoustic Captain are very used to performing simply as duos or even as strictly acoustic acts and it can sound amazing! If a live band doesn’t have to bring PA or lighting and can simply perform at a wedding with minimal equipment, you could again be looking at savings of over £200. Have a delve into our guide on acoustic and folk wedding bands for more on some of these small but mighty live bands.
Maybe you can offer them some free accommodation for the evening or photos of their performance from your wedding photographer? Maybe you can offer them future work? Get creative as all these little potential savings could really add up and keep your budget in check or even mean you have bonus money to spend elsewhere. Who knows?
Weddings are hectic and complicated to organize I’m sure you would agree. I’m sure you are trying to be as organized as possible so if you hire a wedding band a year or two in advance you can sometimes squeeze a discount out of them or at the very least, you will save because you will avoid any of the inevitable annual price rises. You could save yourself £100 easily! The later you leave hiring a wedding band, the more it will cost. We have a great guide on when you should hire a live wedding band too.
This probably seems like a no-brainer but because most wedding bands like Brighton-based Good Fellas (above) are happy to travel all over the UK and the world for a great wedding, couples don’t always notice where these bands are actually based. Hiring a band based near your venue will save you money for sure. For example, if you hired a 5-piece wedding band based near your venue they could actually cost less than booking a 3-piece band that’s based 120 miles away from your venue. Yup!
We all like to be trusting of others but when hiring any live wedding band, make sure you get a full and honest quote. No hidden extras, no last-minute fees, none of that! Make sure any band or agency you deal with gives you the full cost upfront just like we do. Large wedding entertainment websites have expensive overheads and they sometimes hide these costs in wedding band quotes or in “special one-off admin fees” that they ask you to pay. I don’t want to see you get ripped off so ask for honest quotes.
This brings me neatly onto one of our many real wedding stories. We had some friends who had a tiny budget for their wedding and they really couldn’t afford to go over budget. What did they do? They got super organised and went DIY! They organised as much of their wedding as they could, making the food and designing and creating wedding invitations amongst other things. Having a guest who could DJ really helped and picking a Sunday in October for their wedding meant they had some wiggle room in the budget so they could hire a wedding band. Because they could afford some really fantastic live music, we managed to shrink a four-piece into a three-piece, organise slightly shorter live sets and get some free accommodation for the band to really bring the cost down for them.
Now, I get it, not everyone wants to toil in a kitchen cooking their own wedding food but we hope you’ve seen that using any of the tips and tricks I’ve covered here can help you towards affording the live wedding band and wedding you really want. Combining all my ideas could easily save you £400 or more and maybe that simply means you stay on budget or maybe it means you can even add some extras to the wedding band you’ve hired.
With 42% of newlyweds overspending on their weddings in 2023 alone, hiring a live wedding band on a budget and sticking to it would be a major achievement! Good luck and please do get in touch if you need any further help or advice. We’re here 7 days a week, 10 am to 10 pm via email, the usual socials, live chat, phone, and text, and if you liked what you read please consider sharing it with others.
Bye for now…
Jon and the Seventh Second Team
