Nervous about Djs

The vendor I am most apprehensive about is the DJ. I’ve been to 3 weddings recently - 2 of those hired a DJ and one just had a playlist and their friend talking. The one with the playlist by far had the best music. The first DJ you could barely hear and the second DJ played elevator music for the first 3 hours and then played such bad music that the dance floor was basically empty. All in all, I just don’t think a DJ is worth the crazy price and I don’t trust that their going to do a good job even if they have good reviews. I mean my sisters was $3,000 and had hundreds of great reviews and like I said you couldn’t even hear him.


We were going to have FH’s friend DJ our wedding for very cheap but that ended up not working out. Now we’re kind of stuck between doing A playlist or doing a DJ. I would absolutely not get a DJ if my venue was just a rectangle with the dinner and dancing in the same room, but my venue is split up into different areas kind of like a U. The dinner is on one side and then there’s an old amazing library that you walk through to get to the bar and dance floor. The first dance and everything will take place in the dining room so that everyone can see it.
Because of the funky shape I feel like I need to get a DJ to kinda make it flow more if that makes sense? I also want to make my own playlist for the dinner portion to avoid the elevator music thing and idk if I can do that with a DJ. I heard the DJ is one of the vendors you need to book far in advance so I’d definitely need to start looking soon because my wedding is in 11 months. What do you guys think?