Bride-to-be Blogger Alyse: The Band

Back2Life.

Having a band rather than a DJ was one of things that my fiance always expressed a strong opinion about. I also knew, deep down, that I wanted a band, but I had two major concerns: First, I knew that a band could really eat into the overall wedding budget. Second, listening to and interviewing bands in the Philadelphia area would be difficult to do from New York.

To play devil’s advocate, I told Kevin that celebrities actually have DJs at their weddings, because they prefer to hear the songs played by the original artists. I was reminded that there would be no “original artists” at my wedding, so there was little to no chance that I would be offending anyone. Also, one of my favorite shows is Glee, so that argument was going nowhere.

Although we knew that the band was important, we had zero interest in taking up precious summer Fridays or Saturdays traveling to check out talent. So we started by emailing two bands that we had heard at other weddings. One of the bands was booked. Commence Wedding Freak Out #1: This is when I first realized that July 7th (7/7!) might be a more popular date than I originally thought.

The second band was not booked, but I had a minor issue with them: There were no female singers. After agonizing about whether an all-male band could do Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” justice or whether having a few songs played on an iPod would be a big deal, we decided to go with the all-male band. Great. Decision made. Then… Wedding Freak Out #2.

Booking the band was one of the things on Kevin’s Wedding To Do List and something he had complete control over. The all-male band sent a follow-up email to him at noon one day asking: How serious are you about booking July 7th? Because we have another offer and would like to give you first dibs. Kevin waited until later that night to write back, presumably so that I could proofread/write the reply email. I’m sure you can see where this is going… The band signed with the other group at 2:00 p.m. that day, so we were too late.

Kevin and I had a brief discussion about balancing timely responses with my superior proofreading ability—but honestly, I thought it was a little inconsiderate of them not to give at least until the next morning to respond, so Wedding Freak Out #2 was mild. Turns out, Kevin’s parents went to a wedding that weekend and highly recommended the band there, Back2Life from Brandywine Valley Talent. They had many YouTube videos of their sets, so we didn’t need to travel to see them and, best of all—even though their name reminds me of a ’90s boy band—they have excellent female singers! We quickly booked them and will be responding to wedding vendors right away from now on.

Did you have any issues booking your vendors? Did you lose out on any you were interested in because of communication issues like this? How did you choose your band or DJ?

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