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When you are looking to hire a live wedding band, certain bands should be avoided and these include live acts that don’t offer robust, legally binding contracts, covid cover, a professional attitude and service, reliable and established representation, realistic and detailed pricing, genuine customer reviews and good promotional material. These should all come as standard for any live wedding band you are looking to hire.
Don’t avoid Matrix as seen above though, they are an epic live wedding band for hire with us!
Today’s topic is about a question we get asked by all sorts of people and my advice today is relevant for any function, party, or live wedding band you are looking at hiring. Uncertain couples, parents, guests and even aspiring new wedding bands ask us this regulary. It’s a really important question and it’s never really been properly answered, until now! Let me start with some stats though…
According to Hitched the average cost of a UK wedding in 2021 was £17,300 with newlyweds easily spending on average over £1,200 on a live wedding band. Year on year, the average cost of weddings goes up, and when you take into account that over 50% of newlyweds need financial help to cover their wedding costs and that many of them have reported on reflection that they wasted up to 30% of their wedding budget, picking the right live band and making sure you avoid the bad ones is something you really have to do!
Here’s the average cost of live wedding bands in England in 2024.
3-piece band £1250
4-piece band £1650
5-piece band £1720
6-piece band £1980
And here are the average prices for our live wedding bands in England as of 2024.
3-piece band £970
4-piece band £1390
5-piece band £1480
6-piece band £1690
Our award-winning wedding bands are on average £100 cheaper than the national average but regardless, live wedding entertainment is still quite the investment so I don’t want to see anyone let down by their wedding band, wasting their hard-earned money on a band that should be avoided. Make sure you book smart by reading some of our other top guides (which you can see below) plus our super popular guide all about how much it really costs to hire a live band for a wedding as it’s packed full of up-to-date info and top tips.
Why should you worry? Why should you care? Someone told you they saw a good band down at the pub so they must be good enough for your wedding right?
Well, I know of a good few cases where newlyweds have had a verbal contract with a band that their mates said was great. Said band then either didn’t show up at their wedding, were incredibly late, or at the very least, performed badly. Bad eggs! I’ve heard of wedding band members getting into drunken fights with wedding guests, arguments about money, accusations of theft, musicians storming out, you name it! You have a million and one things to organise for your wedding so make picking a live band simpler and safer by following my checklist and quick and easy top tips below.
Let me take you through what you should be checking regarding any live band you are looking to hire. If alarm bells start ringing when going through the below checklist then proceed with caution…
Any live wedding band worth booking should have some great reviews. If you regularly hear or read bad things about an entertainment agency, website, or band, they are to be avoided. There’s plenty of fish in the sea after all! Lots of bad reviews are obviously a big red flag but if you don’t see many reviews and the band has clearly been around for some time, ask their representatives why this is. Conversely, we all have to start somewhere and fantastic, brand-new wedding bands may not have loads of reviews yet so bear this in mind too.
The League of Gentlemen (above) are a great example of an established and loved wedding band with loads of great reviews over many years.
If a wedding band’s promo looks a bit cheap or poorly done it’s unlikely that their performance at your wedding will be much better. Creating new promotional material is expensive and time-consuming so don’t necessarily write off a wedding band just because their promo is a tad old but still of great quality. Live bands should take pride in their promo and presentation because your wedding is important and your wedding band should reflect this so you all have a great time! If a band doesn’t seem to have much promotional material, this is worrying as you aren’t getting a true feel for them.
Flair Twelve (above) are a great example of a wedding band with top promotional material.
Musicians can have a habit of letting the “rock god” ego creep in and this is something to watch out for. Although most wedding musicians are professional and highly skilled in their art, they are still there to perform for you and your guests and should display professionalism and respect. I would strongly recommend you only hire a wedding band that is a full-time, professional outfit. Part-time, hobby musicians usually don’t fully understand what’s required of them as a live wedding band. It’s not their profession after all.
Any wedding band that bosses you around is rude or unprofessional in any way should be avoided too. Wedding bands that don’t let you discuss booking options, setlists, or first dance ideas for example, clearly don’t understand their job and should be avoided. Although you should always listen to a live wedding band’s advice, they are there for you and to make you happy. All wedding bands you deal with should have this attitude.
We all strive to be as professional as possible here at Seventh Second and Good Fellas (above) really excel at this with their customer service. They are lovely blokes too!
This may seem obvious but always check any contract you sign thoroughly and understand your rights. Any live wedding band that tries to charge extra money or claims you need to pay for extra items or add-ons should be avoided. When you sign any contract with a band or agency all parties should understand and agree on what you have paid or are going to pay. No sneaky extra costs or add-ons at a later date should be tolerated unless you have agreed to them. Check out our terms and conditions, covid cover, and FAQ pages or ask us for more information or example booking contracts if you are curious.
Although this doesn’t always spell doom, if a wedding bands promo seems to include wildly varying musicians in every photo or section of video this could be worrying. Are they a real band or just a random collection of musicians who don’t really perform that much together? Also, if a band has a disclaimer explaining you won’t ever get the exact same band members shown in their promo or that you only get the singer with random musicians making up the rest of the band, proceed with caution.
Of course, with any live wedding band, regular band members do leave or sometimes can’t make a show for multiple, important reasons and excellent stand-in musicians should be used but if a whole band line-up is liable to change, it’s best to avoid.
Because we perform in the bands you see on our website, we rarely suffer from this issue. Even our larger and super popular wedding bands like The Grassroots Folk Collective (above) with their popular line-up keep things very consistent all year round.
Another red flag to look out for is if a live band seems to be too cheap compared to similar acts or seems to be willing to offer an awful lot of freebies. It’s likely this is because they can’t get enough work and that may mean they aren’t very good, aren’t reliable, or simply aren’t very professional. Always check with their representative as fantastic live wedding bands do offer special deals sometimes. All our band’s special offers are clearly displayed and you can check their prices for any location quickly and easily on any of their unique pages.
I love a great pub band. It’s great to see hobby or budding musicians perform their hearts out at a pub. However, there are reasons websites like ours exist. The difference between performing a few tunes that you know to your mates at your local and having to entertain a whole wedding party for over two hours with professional renditions of hits from the ’50s to the ’20s is big. Don’t forget your wedding band may perform your all-important first dance too!
To pull off the greatest wedding in wedding history you need the best suppliers and professionals and that includes your live band. So, be cautious about booking a live band through their own website. Unless you’ve seen them before or know them, you really have no idea how good they are or if they will even turn up to your wedding.
Websites like ours exist as a seal of approval and guarantee a certain level of quality with the wedding bands they promote. Like ours, wedding bands on these websites should be made up of full-time, professionally trained musicians who have the best sound, lighting, and musical equipment.
Unless you’re booking a live wedding band you’ve seen or know well, I strongly suggest you book through an entertainment website for peace of mind. Take us for example, we are in the bands we promote so if we were awful, no one would book us and we wouldn’t exist! We have to guarantee our own quality. Pub or part-time bands don’t.
You can read more about how we work here and why not check out our glowing customer reviews here?
So let me boil all that down into a nice little tick list for you. If you tick any of the below when looking at a wedding band, either avoid them altogether or ask them or their representatives for some clarification.
Here’s a checklist showing you what you should see when looking at any great live wedding band. If you tick all of these off, you’re onto a winner! Why not check out our most recommended wedding bands for 2024 and 2025 here too as they tick all these boxes and then some.
One last bit of very relevant advice from me. The repercussions of COVID-19 will be around for some time and so any wedding band you are looking at hiring should have some comprehensive covid cover included in their contract with you. All our live band bookings come with covid cover and you can read all about it here so you know exactly what should be covered. I would always suggest avoiding any wedding band that does not offer up-to-date, comprehensive covid cover as no one knows what may happen in the future and I wouldn’t want your wedding ruined because of an unprepared or unprofessional wedding band.
That’s it from me today. I hope this has helped but if you want more information check out our guide on booking a live band online, our lovely wedding bands for hire (like Regal RnB above) or just give us a shout. If you’d like a pdf or word doc of my checklists just let us know too.
We spend a lot of time making our guides the best we can for you so if you liked what you read please consider sharing it with others and don’t forget that we are here 7 days a week, 10am to 10pm via text, live chat, the usual socials, email, and phone to help design your perfect live entertainment and help in any way we can!
Thanks and keep checking back for more on live wedding bands…
Matt and the team at Seventh Second
