dj less reception

I've been thinking this too. My only concern is what do we do to start and stop music when walking up and down the aisle. I'm nervous about awkward transitions. What is your plan for that?

View Quoted Comment

It was suggested by the venue coordinator, because we don't have a group of people who are going to dance (most of the guests are older and retired). We will do the traditional first dance, etc then let the music just play. I am assuming off an iPod or something of that nature. I was thinking of asking a family member to press start and stop. Or I was told worse case, someone at the event could do it. I am also nervous about the awkward transitions. I also, was going to use my spotify account, but if I do this from my phone, any text or call I receive will interrupt the music. I think. I guess I am looking for someone who has actually done it before to offer advice lol let me know if you get any more insight.

So we’re trying to keep our budget down and have been considering just making our own playlists for the ceremony and the reception. There are lots of music tips on tiktok (my sis turned me onto this for wedding planning and there is a TON of great advice even from wedding professionals). Anyway, I have the premium spotify account and we are thinking of making our playlists on there. For the ceremony we might have a coordinator for the day of or we might just ask a family member or friend who is attending but isn’t in the wedding to run the music during the ceremony. For the reception we are planning to set the queue up for our timeline. Otherwise, just letting it play through. Definitely not going to have this playing from the phone though. I have an iPad that Spotify is on and will download the playlists prior to the day then keep the iPad plugged in and charging plus in airplane mode so no notifications or anything interrupts the music. You can totally do it and not make it awkward at all!!

I had a small wedding of about 20 people, most of which do not dance, so I did not have a DJ. Instead I created playlists using Spotify premium (approximately $10 a month) for each segment of the wedding – prelude, processional, recessional, cocktail hour, grand entrance, cake cutting, dinner, and some line dances. Using the premium service cut out the commercials and has a transition feature that eliminates the choppy transitions - you’ll want to listen to the playlists to make sure you are okay with the transitions. I did have to play around with some of my song sequences in the playlists to get the transitions like I wanted them within the playlists. I stored the playlists on an old iPhone that had wifi capabilities and my day of coordinator was responsible for the music. I met with her to go over the plan and to give her the phone a few days before the wedding. It turned out great!!

View Quoted Comment This is great to know! Thank you so much! And congrats on your wedding

We skipped a DJ for our wedding and did playlists for the happy hour and dinner part of the reception so that we could control volume/songs/etc. we had picked out songs/created a list of songs pretty much the whole time we were engaged and the week of the wedding we got a Spotify premium free trial and did it that way. We downloaded the playlist through Spotify premium on the app so that WiFi connectivity couldn’t mess up the playlist. We used a computer to hook it up to the venue’s sound system to avoid any risk of an alert/notification coming through the sound system. It worked like a dream.


There are several posts for ceremony music—we used Debussy Clair de lune and reverie for walking in and something else I don’t even remember for walking out. I honestly don’t even remember very much what the ceremony music was. 🤣

View Quoted Comment Thank you! I imagine others might remember the music more then me lol my MIL thinks we need a formal expensive wedding. My fiancé and I are totally against this, unless of course someone else is paying 😂 I have to look up music to walk down the aisle to, etc thank you for the recommendation!