a Dj-less wedding

Hi Candace, My son DJs at Weddings (several friends from JMU, etc.), Professional parties, etc. He is inexpensive and not close to $600.


With that said you are about to get married and please, please reach an agreement on cost for a DJ. Good luck!

Maybe instead of a full open bar you could do just beer, wine and 2 signature drinks to save money there to put towards a DJ?

View Quoted Comment I’m terrified of public speaking! Darin on the other hand is not... but we would have to be circulating the room so unfortunately he wouldn’t be able to do too many announcements either. I think we’re leaning towards the DJ after I gave him these reasons why it would be beneficial

Do you have a friend or relative who may enjoy being responsible for the playlist? We had a playlist for our 100 person wedding. Ended up going rogue from it about 15 minutes in haha, because you need to read the room to figure out what song would be best to play. My husband’s best man was “in charge” of the playlist but multiple times I ended up running over and choosing a song myself because it was actually kind of fun 😂 but as long as the best man was in charge it didn’t feel like a stressor or a responsibility because I knew he’d take care of it if I got absorbed in other things.

I would spend the $600

I plan on putting a post on Craigslist or Facebook to hire a DJ for 4 hours. I'll offer $25 an hour and then I'll have whoever I hire be in charge of playing the playlist that I give them while also making whatever announcements. I'm just going to give that person a timeline beforehand of when I want each dance, etc announced.

Because I've been in a wedding where I was in charge of the playlist and announcements. I wasn't even the bride, I was just a bridesmaid, and I found the process VERY stressful. Even with a pre-made playlist, you'll have to pay a lot of attention to it.

If you have friend that's willing to do it for a lower price or no cost at all. You guys can just get Spotify play the music and your friend or family member can do the announcements as needed.

$600 is cheap for a DJ. Another suggestion is to have an acquaintance handle the playlist you created and do announcements. I fee that if you don’t have anyone in charge of that your wedding day won’t run as smoothly as you’d like it too and it will become stressful for yourself. I hired a family friend, although he is a professional DJ, but we’re getting together to create a playlist and he will just play that at the wedding. It’s good to be cheap and save money, but you also want a smooth day!

We didn’t have a dj and made a playlist and one of the groomsmen was our MC for the night and would just make announcements and jokes and such but still had plenty of time to eat and be apart of the wedding! It depends on your crowd though, our guests still had a great time and are just so sociable and wanted to make friends lol. We also didn’t have alcohol at all.

View Quoted Comment I personally wouldn’t have someone that is a part of the wedding party play the role of DJ but that’s just me! My FH wanted his groomsman to do it but I just want his groomsman to be able to enjoy his night and I feel like it’s a bigger risk just because they have a lot of other stuff going on!

My fiance and I just bought a sound system (~$300, look up PA speaker system) to do our own dj-ing. We are planning on making the playlist ahead of time and have a friend on backup if something goes wrong. As far as announcements, we are going to do a mixture of doing them ourselves and letting our party have fun with it as well.

My wedding last weekend was about 100 people and while we did hire a dj, I was so so disappointed. The timing was off, he didn't engage the crowd or seem to be able to read the crowd. If you use a dj company, you will want to make sure to speak with the dj-how many wedding has s/he done recently? Can you speak to any of the recent couples? Do they have an instagram page so you can get a feel for how crowds respond to them?

If you are using a wedding coordinator-you could see if s/he can assist with the announcements as they likely have a feel for how to best guide the flow? If you end up doing both wedding coordinator + dj, definitely tell them you want to have a few minutes with them PRIOR to your grand entrance. This will help you to review the game plan (entrance song, where you guys will walk to/stand, how you want the crowd to be hyped up prior to your entrance, who you will hand off your bouquet to once you ease into your first dance, etc.). Unfortunately, my dj did NOT do this (ughhhhh) and caused my fiance + I to rush to get in place so we could enter along with our entrance song.

If you DO NOT use a dj, maybe you can ask guests to submit song requests that they will dance to? Could be a fun way of engaging the crowd. If relying on someone else to make announcements for you (I suggest it because who knows how sleep deprived you may be come your wedding day...I had about an hour of sleep in me), are there youtube videos or suggested timelines/templates they could use? Best wishes to you on a smooth, stressfree day!

I, personally, think you need a DJ. Weddings without them tend to be boring and end pretty early. So if you are looking to have a more low key wedding, you may not need one. But a DJ will make your reception more fun and, as you said, take stress off of you when it comes to announcements. I would fine somewhere else to cut back on the budget.

On your wedding day, you should not have to keep track of what time it is and what should be happening when. That needs to be left to the wedding planner and DJ to coordinate. And you definitely don’t want to be the one making announcements at your own wedding. As the B&G, I can’t imagine saying, “Now we will do our first dance“… “Now we will have toasts from our bridal party“… “In five minutes we will be cutting the cake“.... etc. That’s kinda odd.


So, I 100% support a DJ at a wedding (more specifically a WEDDING dj). When you have a playlist, it just plays the music that you plugged in. But a DJ reads the crowd and switches up the songs based on the crowd and how they’re responding. They are the MC for the night and keep Guests up-to-date about what’s occurring soon and they verbally keep the evening’s events flowing.

Honestly shop around for a DJ, maybe you can get one at a reasonable price. I know my fiancé and I have a friend who DJ’s so we are trying to book him for our wedding. I couldn’t imagine having a reception without having a DJ.

My suggestion would be to have a close friend or someone do the songs from the playlist. No need to have a DJ. It does not make sense to announce and do the DJ’ if yourself. You’ll be the center of the spotlight so it will not be possible for you both do to the dj’ing and announcements. My husband and I had a friend play songs from our list. We used a wedding day of schedule from online and put in everything and tasks for those of dj’ing, announcements, etc. logistically you and your husband can not do that. Trust me. Your going to have to explain to your fiancé this. You can’t announce wedding cake time if your suppose to be at the table with the cake, or announce father daughter dance or bride and groom dance if your suppose to be in the middle of the floor at that time. It just won’t work. You will have a friend or family that can do that stuff :-)

Dj Kasino is good and great prices.

I would go with a DJ. You as the bride will have enough to be concerned with. Announcing and worrying about the order of events on your day...noooooo mam🥰

Hi! So we are skipping the DJ as well - but definitely having someone or a few people in charge of the music/making announcements is great. Maybe someone in your family or friend group who is outgoing and would love to help on your special day!

Personally, I'd get the DJ. I went to a high school friends wedding and on my 3 hr drive there, they texted me and asked me to announce them and the wedding party into the reception... They used the playlist option and it felt super middle school danceish. It was also BYOB so there was that too.