Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
This is the emg podcast.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Okay, we're back. We are back and back and back again this week talking about what you should be doing at one to three months out from your wedding. Mike, how are you?
[00:00:26] Speaker A: I am so good here. We are getting down to crunch time. I mean, this is super important.
We are now going to focus more on the EMG side, the entertainment side, with these last two podcast episodes of the one to three months and then going up to the week of.
But this is the one where I think the most meat and potatoes are.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah, this is. You're getting. You're getting down to crunch time. Right. And so from an entertainment perspective, what that means for us. And this is definitely the first thing that you need to be doing right now and is preparing for your finals meeting.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Well, what. What is. Well, let's go back. What is a finals meeting and when should that happen?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Okay, so finals meeting is exactly what it is. It's talking about the final details of your wedding entertainment. And it should. You're going to hear from our office about three months out to schedule this. It should occur sometime between three months from your wedding. And the cutoff is really around two months for a couple of reasons. Number one, that gives our team enough time to respond to your requests and if we have to learn any music and all that good stuff. And for you, you don't want to put this off much further. Right. Because it really does get a little hectic. So the finals meeting is really so that we can get on the same page as you, you with us, and make sure that the details are perfect.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And during the meeting, too, it's. It's time to really make a connection with your event lead. Right. Whether it's your dj, your band leader, your hybrid band leader, whether it's our music director. You know, that type of stuff. So important, because isn't that you? That's me, actually.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: You just talked about yourself in the third person.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Our music team. Music team.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: That sounds better.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Because you're going to meet with most likely myself or Caleb from our music team for just live music. Right. And this is where we can go over, like, those granular details to really make sure that we're throwing that individualistic event that is the most important thing that we love to do in that meeting.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Common question we get. So I'll throw it to you. Client says, I don't know, I'm still up in the air. How done does my planning app need to be coming into that meeting?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question because we we try, you try to get to as much as 100% as possible.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: But our kind of cutoff really is 85 to 90%. But that's with a caveat, right? Because we really. If you are celebrating with your ceremony on site, those songs really need to be filled out as well as the most of the formality tunes. Right. Everything kind of else is a lot easier to fill in, but those are the big ones. And the reason why is because, like Mike said before, if you have musicians, we need enough lead time to resource and source that. That music, the sheet music. Right. Because it has to exist for us to play because we just. We can't just play music out of thin air.
And the other thing is, is that it allows for them to have it rehearsed and ready to go, because we're not going to be going in what we call sight reading into an event.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: So that's the most important thing.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: So be about 85% filled out.
And anything else, of course, we're happy to guide you answer any questions. There's still some flexibility. Here's another question with the finals meeting that I tend to get at finals time is, is this final?
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: So, like, is what I put in here final? And the answer is some of it yes, some of it no. Those music selections, once you lock in, here's the song I want to walk down the aisle to at my ceremony. And you have live musicians. We really need that to be final for all the reasons Mike just stated.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: The reception song that you walk into and we play 15 seconds on a DJ controller. That can change week of.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So makes sense.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: And. And then I guess we should skip to the last one because we are doing five points today.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: It's.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Don't overthink it. Right. You invested in us to curate an individual's event for you, so allow us to do our job. And I'm saying that with not talking at you, but it's why you invested, right? Otherwise, just have Spotify do it. You would have saved a whole bunch of money doing it that way, Right. I'm not saying the collaborations shouldn't be there. What I'm saying is don't take it too far. Don't drive yourself crazy because you have to have every little detail figured out right now.
I know we need most of those important moments filled out, but we just need to know, like, are you doing a dance with your mother? Are you doing a dance with your dad? You don't need the exact song right away, but those Things that we do, we just need to know up front.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I take this more like to your point in the general dancing stuff. I can tell by how a couple has filled that out if they're gonna have a good party or not. And I don't mean specific songs. I mean like literally amount. If I come in and I see a couple has put in 15 or 20 songs, I know they're gonna have a good party because that puts them in a frame of mind where they're open. Right. The do your thing, band leader or dj, read the room, throw me a great party. Here's some genres I like. If I come in and I see a couple has selected 100 songs and 60 of them are a must play and they're gonna kind of white knuckle, I can tell you, you're not gonna have a good party.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So the amount of songs in the open dancing list can go up to 100. A lot of our DJs like the amount of that. But the must play thing, that is the big thing you want to. We, we have to keep in mind of no more than 10. I mean that even 10 is, is a lot. That's, that's about 20% of the evening. Yeah, I mean that, that's how much. Because remember, your must plays are the songs that absolutely need to be played. If you have too many of those, then all of a sudden we have to play all of the songs. That's impossible, right? Yeah, that's really, really not possible. To make sure that you do have a good party.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Now here's another tip. This is sort of the third thing that you're going to want to do coming into your finals meeting with us or with any of your vendors. I would do a little pre homework and confirm your timeline with the venue.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Yes, very important.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Or with the with site ceremony spot. Make sure that you're locked in because when you book, you know, you booked everyone 15 months ago, you may have said, yeah, we're getting married 7 to 11. And that may now have shifted 7:30 to 11:30. So lock those things in prior. And also at this time, this actually leads to the fourth point, which is you might want to start thinking about additions like additional time or services.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So the timeline I think is so important because by that, by your 60 day mark, the time should be already finalized because you've sent out your invitations.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Right. Those invitations have gone out four, six months out. Right. We talked about in our last episode. So whatever the finalized timeline is, we have to know because that Affects what time we're arriving. So if we are never communicated that your ceremony or your timeline is starting a half hour earlier and we were never notified, we're going to show up a half hour late.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Correct?
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Right. And we don't want that right now our call times are still before anything starts. But we wanna make sure that we leave an abundance of time so that everything goes smoothly. Same thing with backup plans. Right. That's the fourth point right there too. Because especially for weddings that are late fall winter and late like early spring. Right. Cause it's very dicey. We know that, you know the cold is important. Right. It's 50 degrees. Right. Anything less than 50 degrees, we really cannot have any sort of instrument outside.
Right. And so that's an important point where we cannot play outside if it's 50 degrees or less. But what we can do is we can prepare for, hey, what if we are inside or where is the other location? We need to know that because many times if the ceremony is happening inside, it's in your reception space. What that means for us is that it's a room flip.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Right?
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Right. And so what a room flip is, is that they're literally taking it from ceremony set up to a reception set up with all the tables and they're flipping the room within that one hour or 90 minute cocktail hour. That doesn't really affect us too much because we're like we're machines now.
We have process for that. But knowing that we don't need to arrive two hours prior to the ceremony, now we need to know our staff can arrive when the room flip's gonna happen. So those are little things that we want to be able to have finalized there. And the last point, that fifth point is additions.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Right. So the time time additions happen typically around here if you're going to extend your reception after party, that sort of thing. So in that mindset, think about add ons from an entertainment perspective. That could mean things like lighting, photo booths and additional reception. Musician. The finals meeting is really. And the one to three month out timeframe is the time that you want to start thinking about those things. It's also when we start to see those items sort of flying off the shelf, so to speak, and we run out of inventory on them. So as a pro, tip or tip of the week is if you're considering an addition, like, you know what, at the time of booking, I didn't add the photo booth and I think I want to do it.
You'd be best to do it actually prior to the one to three month out Mark. To, to guarantee availability.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Because it gets a little tight around this time.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Well, a lot of the times where, you know, you're, you're. We couples that are, that are planning their weddings tend to find money later in the process. Right. Meaning that they, they shift. Right. They spent less in a lot of areas where maybe they want to allocate a little bit more towards that. We, we always have a rule of thumb of just being two months out if it's available. Right?
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: And with musicians that the two month, that's the big thing because we can definitely curate that in our roster. We're not picking people from up from the street here. That addition, like whether, like, hey, we want to do the digital seating chart now or we were thinking about the photo booth. We weren't really sure, but now we're definitely sure we want to see if it's available. That one to three months, really, that two month is where you want to start adding those things? This is the time to thinking about it.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: So in sort of summation here, and I'm going to say the order that you should focus on these, not the order that we actually did them in, is confirm your timeline with the venue. Right. Make sure that you're ready to go as you start to prep for your finals meeting.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: And communicate it.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah, communicate it to us as you prep for the finals meeting. Don't overthink the music. Right. Just, we're happy to guide you. Just let us know what your hard lines are. I got to hear this. I don't want to hear that. And let us kind of color in the rest.
You want to start to, you know, decide on any additions or enhancements and then chat through some of those contingency plans, like I'm getting married in late April ceremonies outside. What are the backup contingencies if there's rain and we have to move inside.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. So that's your one to three month guide here. And then we're going to get ready. We're coming to the crunch time here. We're ready to celebrate and we'll see you on the week of.
You can find us@elegant Musicgroup.com or on Instagram at Elegant Music Group.
Sam.
