Have you looked into the cost of hiring a band or DJ for your wedding? If you have, you’ve probably realized that they don’t come cheap!
Now, it is definitely true that a good emcee or DJ can impact the tone and fun level of your reception. But perhaps when you and your partner consider your wedding priorities, entertainment falls lower on the list when compared with your guest list.
Fear not… if you’re on a super tight budget, the wedding reception music is something you can easily do yourself. There are so many tools you can use to help make the process simpler, too!
If that’s the case for you, then we can totally help you figure out how to take the DIY DJ route. Yes, you can become your own DIY wedding DJ with just your iPod or laptop and a speaker system.
I should tell you… I’ve gotten some major backlash for sharing this type of wedding advice in the past. Professional vendors seem to take offense to someone saying that their job could be outsourced to an iPod. I get it. But at the same time, when you’re working with a super limited budget, you have to make sacrifices. Some aspects of your day will have to be DIY if you want to have them at all.
Side note: DO NOT let anyone tell you that your wedding is going to suck because you didn’t hire a professional. Don’t buy into the snobbery and pressure.
When to DJ Your Own Wedding
I suggest having an iPod DJ if you can’t afford a pro. I can safely recommend this because that’s what I did at my own wedding. And to make it even more budget savvy, we borrowed the equipment we needed instead of renting. We borrowed a speaker and the necessary audio cables from a friend, so our wedding entertainment was totally free. #savvyAF
We spent time pruning the perfect reception playlist prior to the wedding day. When the big day came, we just plugged in our laptop and let it play! For the few moment we needed to get everyone’s attention or give speeches, we had a microphone in order to speak over the music.
Overall, we were relieved to not have to pay for something that we so easily did ourselves.
I’ll be the first to admit we had a low-maintenance outlook on the wedding day. This idea maybe isn’t for you if you’d rather pass it off to someone else. You could still get a friend to run your playlist and make introductions and save yourself a ton of money. Most DJ services start at $1000, so there are significant savings to be had.
When it comes to selecting the music, you can either use songs you already own, purchase new music. You can buy from iTunes, or use Spotify to build the perfect playlist from a nearly unlimited library of songs. Thanks to the new Apple Music subscription, you could easily use that service as well to run your wedding playlist.
Republished from: The Budget Savvy Bride
https://thebudgetsavvybride.com/diy-wedding-dj/
Updated: December 16, 2020
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