”How Many Songs Should We Select?”

That’s a common question we often hear from couples who are planning their weddings –so if it’s a thought that has popped into your mind, fear not. We’ve got a simple answer for you and then a more complex answer.

The simple answer is: Whatever you are comfortable with.

Seriously, through the years we’ve worked with both ends of the spectrum: couples who give us 1 request (their wedding song) and brides and grooms who give us 200 songs (or the equivalent of over 10 hours of music). And we’ve made both request lists work (and everything in between). So if you want to give us 1 song, or a list of 50, or a spread sheet with 200 selections broken down by genre and artist, you can. We’ll make it work. Whatever you are comfortable with.

The more complex answer is this: In a 5 hour wedding there is time for approximately 70-90 songs.

There’s no way to be more exact than that since every song has a different length and we (as DJs) don’t always play a song all the way through. For example, during the upbeat dancing we may mix out of a song after 2 or 2 and half minutes to keep the energy level high on the dance floor. On the opposite end, if we’re asked to play a song like “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights” (which clocks in at over 8 minutes) or Bruce’s “Rosalita” (almost 7 minutes) it’s the equivalent of playing 2 or 3 songs with 1 selection.

So if you are determined to select every song that is played at your wedding you should break it down like this:

7-10 Spotlight songs (1st dance, parents dance, cake cutting songs etc)
12-15 cocktail hour songs
10-12 dinner songs
5-10 slow dance songs
40-50 fast dance songs

But assuming you don’t want to do all that work, we suggest giving us your favorites as well as your preferred songs. In fact, our online planner is set up in such a way that you can designate your requests just like that: Must Play, Play if Possible (and, of course, Do Not Play which is very important for us to know.) So we would highly recommend that you give us your top ten to twenty requests as “Must Plays” and then as many as you want as “Play if Possible.” This way you are guaranteed to hear all of your Must Plays and will hear a lot of your Possibles.

And if you are on the other end of the spectrum and don’t have strong opinions about music or specific songs and artists, that’s fine too. It’s just one of the great reasons to hire a professional DJ. We may ask a few questions about the demographics at your wedding (number of guests and age range) and maybe try to narrow down your own musical tastes by asking things like “what radio station do you listen to?” but we are totally fine with doing all the programming (ie – selecting every song played) at any wedding.

So there’s the more complex answer which brings us right back to the simpler one. How many song should you select for your wedding? When you work with Elite Entertainment, Whatever you are comfortable with.