The UK Alliance of Wedding Planners - The leading industry body for the UK Wedding Planning Market | Promoting professionalism in Wedding Planning

You will remember reading the first part of this interesting post by Brad Lazarus of LM2 Entertainment. We hope you enjoy the second half below…

So far I’ve covered a couple of what could be described as intangible reasons why comparable bands are maybe priced differently. The tangible reasons can be a little easier to quantify:

• Fully professional musicians - Great professional musicians cost more than mediocre ones and even more than semi pro or amateur ones. A band made up of all professional musicians will have a much greater cost base which is reflected in the fee charged to the client. Moreover band leaders demanding the best of their band as a unit will need to keep attracting first-class professional musicians by paying them consistently at that level.
• Continuous improvement and development of show and repertoire - A great professional function band has to earn their ‘great’. Remaining static in terms of their repertoire and show is therefore not an option. Like any product in a competitive market place professional function bands need to continually find new ways to differentiate themselves and better their offering. In many cases new musical arrangements come at a cost. If the bandleader takes on the job himself, then time spent working on new arrangements is time not spent earning elsewhere. As the modern day musician must develop multiple revenue streams to make a living, time really is money. Moreover new arrangements and the development of any band require rehearsals. Again the time factor is at play here and influences the bands fee.
• Unseen costs - By unseen costs I’m referring to maintenance of PA and lighting gear, upkeep of vehicles, vehicle road tax, public liability insurance, PAT testing and time to deal with administration. A professional function band is a mini business. One that is run that way will have overheads.
• Reliability - For me reliability is not just about turning up when you said you were going to! It’s having systems in place that make you more efficient and easy to deal with. This covers an efficient contracting process, communication pre and on event day, a procedure for taking responsibility should an unforeseen situation arise etc. A reliable band will offer an enhanced client experience and thereby increase their reputation and hence fee.
• An extensive musician’s network - Professional function bands in general do not rely on one static line up. The reasons for this are wider than the scope of this post. Great function bands rely on ‘deps’ to fill in for other more regular members. A band who works week in week out will have ‘deps’ that have played with the band multiple times before so quality of performance is guaranteed. A band leader without a network of deps greatly increases the risk to the client should a band member be taken ill on the day of a booking. There is huge value in this network which is reflected in the price.
• Ability to see the band before booking - Wanting to see the band live before booking and have the ability to ‘touch’ and ‘feel’ what they are paying for has become the norm rather than the exception in the sales process. A band with a regular ’showcase’ gig for prospective clients to go and see them is a huge value add. 9 times out of 10 a bride will come back from a showcase for a band we manage and book the next day at the price quoted.
• Be sure as to what’s included in the quote - We always like to quote an all in fee for our bands and ultimately absorb the costs of travel and accommodation if needed. Many bands own their own PA and basic stage and dance floor lighting. If they don’t own their own system they’ll be incorporating the cost to hire it into the fee.

Hopefully I’ve given you some things to think about when you’re next advising your client or looking at band options to present to them. Use the above points to formulate questions to ask the band leader or representative. The value you place on the band in each of these areas only you can decide. We often get distressed brides calling us 2 weeks before the wedding with stories of the band breaking up or that the guitar player didn’t realise he was on holiday for the wedding day and the band can’t now play at the event. On discovering that the bride had booked a 7 piece band for £500 it becomes very apparent why issues have occurred. Much of the value of a band is wrapped up in the peace of mind they give you that all is going to go well on the event date itself, so what price peace of mind?

Today, we introduce an extremely useful post by Brad Lazarus, which we have scheduled in two separate parts, today and Wednesday.

Brad is founder and MD of LM2 Entertainment, a professional function band management company. Brad also writes extensively on the topic of professional function bands through his LM2 Entertainment blog and recently published an ebook ‘The Greatest Night of Your Life’ - The essential guide to booking the right function band for your event. He shares his knowledge and experience by serving as a mentor and running occasional master classes for music degree level students and alumni looking to pursue a career in the professional function band market at one of London’s foremost music institutions.

We hope you enjoy reading Brad’s useful advice and insights….

I often get asked this question by prospective private clients and event industry professionals alike. The question could do with some clarity so we can look a little deeper into it - “What makes one 6 piece swing band more expensive than another 6 piece swing band”. When I have a conversation with a prospective customer around this question there’s an understanding that one can’t compare function bands purely on the basic metrics of genre, number of personnel in the band etc in the same way that one might compare a commodity product. Commodity products have little to compete on other than price. So there seems to be an understanding that choosing a function band based on price alone is a risky game to play but how does one ascertain the value of comparable bands at different fees.

People tend forget that the market for function bands is like any other market ie it’s subject to the same rules of economics as everything else ie demand and supply. So in its simplest and purest form there may be two comparable bands, one busier and in more demand the than the other, if the band have read the market well and identified this, they’ll put their price up. If they’ve misjudged the market and overpriced themselves the market will ‘tell them’ ie their diary won’t fill up in the same way it did before and they’ll have to make a decision to drop their fees.

Reputation can be a huge value add for a band and influence its fee. Reputation comes from, word of mouth recommendations, testimonials, positive social media comments etc etc. A band that has understood their reputation and its positive effect on the market will likely increase their fee as the client is likely valuing them more than their competition and will probably pay more for that value. But who can deliver such prized customer satisfaction time and again?  This is possible where a well run professional function band is really going to steal a march on the competition and with good reason. 

We hope you have enjoyed Brad’s post and will read the second part on Wednesday.

We would like to thank Stacey-Marie of Cherry Topped for submitting this post and Galloway Photography for writing it and for the beautiful images. When I first glanced at the post and saw ‘Art is Marmite’ I just had to read on………

Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ and Damian Hirst’s ‘Mother and Child Divided’ (the famous cows in formaldehyde). Is it art? When these two iconic works were exhibited at the Tate and the Venice Biennale respectively, you can guarantee that an awful lot of critics and gawpers alike asked that very question. People still talk about it today, almost two decades later. The real answer is not ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, but ‘Does it matter?’ Art is subjective. Always has been. Art is Marmite.

So isn’t it safe to assume that any creative work is subject to a mixture of opinions? Whether it’s architecture or animation, comedy or cuisine, some people just prefer marmalade to Marmite. Somewhere Wedding Photography fits snugly into this elaborate metaphor. There is not just one style of wedding photography. So, how do you find the right fit, the photographer whose style mirrors your own taste? Now unfortunately, there are literally thousands of wedding photographers and finding the right one can take some time. It’s like buying a house, you need to search and search…and search some more. Then sooner or later you’ll have that ‘hallway moment’. You haven’t even seen the whole house, but in the first 30 seconds, you’ll see yourself in a hallway mirror grinning from ear to ear and you’ll know, the short list just got a lot shorter.

Now with commissioning a photographer, (or anything else to do with your wedding for that matter), you can do it one of two ways; you can go blind on Google sifting through hundreds of websites, or you can go through a wedding planner. A  good wedding planner will have gone to the trouble of collecting a relatively small but perfectly formed list of suppliers. They’re not just there on the day for keeping things together, their very taste is an asset from the start, when the wedding is merely embryonic, building the day from the ground up. A character in a film once said ‘taste and style are commodities that people desire’; pick a wedding a planner with an abundance of both and indeed you’re making the short list a lot shorter.

So how do you know what you’re into? Bridal magazines will tell you a whole load of things about how to find the right person for the job. Some of which I think are appropriate, some not so much. So take a large pinch of salt when taking advice from a monthly special on photography, no one can tell you what you’re into apart from you. Here’s my take on what to look for in a photographer.

I reckon the most important thing is the pictures. Kind of obvious when you think about it, but there are a lot of packages out there offering you all sorts of things from Thank You cards to extra albums. But before you start comparing photographers to see who gives you ‘more for your money’ (a term many wedding photographers dislike), just think about the sort of work that really flicks your switch. Because after all, once the dust has settled and you’re looking at the one album that you have in your living room, the only thing that matters is that you love the pictures. It probably helps to think of it as commissioning a photographer rather than hiring one, it places the emphasis on the style that comes with him/her rather than the extras that come with the package. Now I can’t tell you what sort of style you should like but I can say that since the introduction of digital, there has been an explosion of styles in wedding photography. Whether you choose a posed specialist who makes you a Hollywood couple for the day, or a reportage expert who will aim to document the day discreetly and be almost invisible, it’s important that you choose someone who gives an accurate account of the day. In other words, someone who won’t just take 500 beautiful close ups but also give a real sense of atmosphere and surroundings. More often than not, that will mean a photographer who is skilled with a wide angle lens and is not just dependent on huge zoom lenses.

Job two, pick someone you see eye to eye with. You don’t have to come away from the whole experience thinking that the photographer is at the top of your Christmas card list from now on, but it’s important that you understand how he/she works, and that you have an ability to communicate with each other both on the day and afterwards too. If you don’t feel comfortable with your photographer, then things can get lost in translation. And when it’s too late, it’s too late. The best thing to do is to get your requirements across the table before you commission them. In the initial meeting you should see at least 2 to 3 complete weddings. Make sure their consistency matches their talent. It’s also handy to ask how many weddings your photographer has shot. It’s not the be all and end all because if there’s talent there, then it’s there; but it’s useful to know how much experience there is dealing with things that inevitably don’t go according to plan.

Now back to that pinch of salt. Magazines will tell you that you should come at a photographer with a checklist of pictures you’re after. My advice is TRUST YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER or don’t hire them in the first place. The longer the list, the less freedom a photographer will have to be creative. Some of my favourite shots aren’t necessarily the kind of scene that you could put a label on (eg bride getting out of car, couple cutting the cake), but the light was perfect, the atmosphere was emotionally charged, everything fell into place and a simple moment resulted in a magical image.

With that said, the most important thing is to enjoy the build up to your wedding. It can simultaneously feel like it’s right around the corner or a decade from now. When choosing any supplier, going with gut instinct is often a good tactic, so long as you’ve looked at all they have to offer. And with regards to wedding photography, an even combination of art and professionalism is probably the best way to slice your toast, whether you’re into Marmite or marmalade.