Self Dj/mc

Please don't.... Hire a DJ.
I went a my FH cousin's wedding reception and they didn't get a DJ and just had speakers and played music from their phone playlist.

We had a violinist for our ceremony, an accordionist for cocktail hour and a playlist as background music during dinner. However, we had no wedding party (we told our accordionist ahead of time when we entered cocktail stop playing until after our welcome speech), and my hubby discretely turned on the playlist as guests were gathering for dinner. We had no announcements and no dancing.


Someone needs to be in charge of the music if you’re only doing a playlist for the ceremony. If you want dancing or a party vibe, I highly recommend a DJ.

I think this depends very much on the vibe you're hoping for. A relative had a string quartet for the ceremony/cocktail hour/dinner, and then planned to have a relative run their playlist for the dancing/reception. Honestly? It didn't go well. The bride really expected to have a fun dance party and it did not happen. The first dance songs weren't played in the right order, so at one point they were awkwarding switching from the expected dance for B&FOB to the G&MOG, because that was the song that began. Also, they never considered shortening the songs for the spotlight dances; OMG 3-4 minutes is a painfully long time to watch one couple at a time dance.... To make things worse, they did four spotlight dances in a row, so the guests stood around for at least 12 minutes watching one awkward dance after another. The "dancing" went downhill from there. The bride kept trying to get people up dancing, but it didn't work. The playlist was okay for background music, so if that's what you're going for it will probably work okay. If you want a dance party-type reception, I'd keep looking for a DJ you can fit into your budget. Good luck!

We're not having a DJ but we are having a friend sing and play guitar for part of the evening and playlists for the rest of the evening. The friend that we are borrowing the sound equipment from is going to run it for us so we will still have an emcee of sorts. Do what is going to be best for you and your situation. Do not let people force you into hiring vendors you don't need/want. We originally looked at DJs but I am very particular (we are big music people) in the music we want played or more importantly don't want played and all the DJs we spoke to said they will take ideas from our must play and must never play lists and try to stay within what we like but they couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't play stuff from our do not play list or play all of our must play songs. If I'm shelling out a crap ton of money for their services then I expect to get what I want. Since none of them would guarantee that, we went the no DJ route. I've been to weddings with no DJ before...some were good, some not so much. It really just depends on the effort you're willing to put into it and the skills/abilities and equipment you have available. I've spent nearly 70 hours so far just compiling our list of potential songs (we currently have over 800 songs on our list). Then we have to go through and decide yes or no and categorize them. I have individual playlists for pre-ceremony, processional, recessional, cocktail hour music, a couple of spotlight dances (songs will be edited for length because lets face it no one wants to watch a couple dance for 4 min), dinner music, and Dance party music. That way whoever is doing the playlists knows which set of songs gets played when. Within the playlists I will have everything in order of how I want it to be played so all we have to do is push play and make sure random is off.

View Quoted Comment We want a laid back wedding. I Want it to feel like about crazy family BBQ. But me in a wedding dress. 😂 i don't particularly care to do the fob/mog dances or a first dance with my FH. And my fiance also doesn't really want to dance. We want a very casual wedding, I don't want to force anyone to dance, play yard games, etc but also don't want everyone confused and it be awkward. A MC could help with this but like you, I dont want to be paying someone a lot of money for them not to execute exactly what I want. I just want to put on the music and let the music we chose create the vibe for our guests. We have very minimal slow songs on our reception playlist.