How long should the DJ play?

Most of the weddings I do are 4 or 5 hours. Since, many DJs' fees are hourly, you should plan your timeline to fit within your budget. If you're in a backyard, you don't need to worry about a venue fee. You could specify an overtime rate in your DJ contract, and keep the DJ longer if everyone wants to continue to dance. Keep in mind that many towns will enforce noise pollution laws and you may not be able to have music outdoors past say 10 PM or so.

Dan

Our dj is playing about 5 hours.

Unless you are in a very remote location it's doubtful the neighbors will let it go on all night with out a noise complaint or two (LOL!) Normally the DJ starts with the cocktail hour, provides quite background dinner music followed by a three to four hour reception.

But talk to the DJ's you are considering, some do have limits on how many hours they will play and others don't...the one I use almost exclusively contracts for the day whether that's 3 hours or 12 so if you want to go all night there are ones out there for you

Our DJ has a set schedule of 5 hours and then if we wish for him to play longer we can have him! Haven't yet decided for sure how long!

@heather, do you pay for the extra hours.

We've got ours for 5.5 hrs. More than that is OT. But that's plenty of time!

Weddings in Orlando are typically a 1 hour cocktail and then a 4 hour reception. This is a very nice amount of time with about 2.5 hours of dancing as well as some fluff time in case something takes a bit longer than expected. Keep in mind the average Orlando wedding is about 80-120 people. So 5 hours works very well for this size group.

Ours is from 6pm to midnight. Plus because it's a private villa, once he leaves we'll fire up the IPOD

I say depending on the wedding style/setup anywhere from 3 hours to 6 hours should be sufficient time.

I had baby shower on sunday, I played for about 12 hrs in panorama city, ca

On Sunday i had a baby shower and I play for 12 hrs,