‘Please not another article about pricing!’ I hear you all cry. But don’t worry, this one isn’t a rant telling you that unless you are all charging a minimum of (insert any price here) then you are too cheap and not being true to your DJ brothers and sisters! It’s also not a moan that if you are charging more than (insert any price here) you are over charging and ripping people off. I DON'T CARE how much you charge!

This article is about the current trend in our profession for Full Day Wedding services, and on the face of it, what a great idea. You spend a few more hours and potentially double your income for the booking… or do you? My aim in writing this isn’t to tell you what to charge, but to make you think about how much time you spend on these all-day gigs, and how that compares to other types of bookings.

For years, ever since the invention of the two turntable double deck system, DJs would rock up at a wedding venue and, after the toasts and speeches, set up their equipment and entertain the guests until the last dance. But, in recent years there has been a trend for DJs to offer more: The Full Day Wedding.

For those that don’t currently offer this service, the DJ’s role when working across the full day at a wedding celebration usually looks something like this:

• Seat the guests for the ceremony
• Play ceremony music
• Maybe assist the photographer with crowd control
• Organise the receiving line
• Seat the guests for the wedding introductions
• Host the Grand Entrance
• Introduce toasts and speeches
• Maybe a Love Story
• Possibly Advice Cards
• Introduce the Cake Cutting

In addition to all of the above we set up our DJ kit, introduce the 1st Dance, and deliver an amazing party with the floor full all night.

So what do I mean when I say ‘Don't be fooled by the full day’ (thanks to my friend Fabio Capozzi for this great title)? Well, like many of you, I have a busy life, and sometimes struggle with time management, trying to balance my work vs. family time was proving to be difficult. In a previous life I trained to be an accountant, so I wanted to work out my hourly rate of pay. “Oh, that's easy,” I hear you say, “for a 5 hour booking, I just divide my fee by 5 hours, that's my hourly fee”. But that would not give me the true hourly rate, before I can work that out I need to know exactly how many hours I actually spent on a booking, not just the time I am actually playing music.