3 Tips to Help Your Band Book Weddings, Corporate Gigs & More

This is a guest post by Drew Stoga from GigMasters, an event booking service that guides party planners and hosts to the right entertainment and party vendors for events. In this post, they offer 3 tips for helping you to book more corporate gigs and weddings:

For bands used to playing open mic nights and sticky dives for free drink tickets, I know there’s some stigma around doing private parties, corporate gigs and, worst of all, weddings. Who would want a high-paying wedding gig anyway? What with their packed dance floors and free food…

I’m laying the sarcasm on a little thick but I think you see where I’m going with this. If you’re an independent band or musician looking to get more stage time and more money, you could do a lot worse than picking up some private gigs on the side. Last year our highest grossing band earned over $88,000 off of GigMasters bookings alone.

Bottom line: weddings and private gigs pay good money.

But how are you supposed to go about booking private, corporate and wedding gigs? You can’t mail your demo to every bride-to-be in town. So what’s a band to do?

Here are three helpful tips to help you get booked for weddings, corporate gigs, private parties and more:

1. Create (At Least) One Great Video

Unlike a club booker who might (and I stress, might) hire your band after only hearing a demo, event planners and engaged couples want to see you in action. Even one decent performance video will go a long way. For clients, it’s the next best thing to getting to see you live.

A word to the wise: If you’re looking to pick up weddings and high-end corporate gigs, make sure you dress the part in your video. Your look absolutely matters.

Check out our 5 Ways to make a Low-Budget Video for more.

2. Build a Song List (of Songs Clients Want to Hear)

Let’s face it, most private clients probably don’t want to hear too many of your originals at their events. That could be a bit of a bummer but it also doesn’t mean you’ll be expected to play Y.M.C.A. or the Chicken Dance (in fact, those songs are more likely to end up on the ‘DO NOT Play List’).

To help attract the right clients for your act, build a repertoire of covers that you love to play. Think Rolling Stones. Think Motown. Think Tom Petty. Think whatever it is you like to hear at your own parties.

Not convinced that wedding bands can be cool? Read this New York Times article.

3. Reviews Are worth a Thousand (of your) Words

No one in the history of the world has ever booked a band based solely on their bio. No matter how great of a writer you are, client reviews say so much more about your band than anything you could write.

A recent study found that 1 out of 3 online reviews are fake. At GigMasters we make sure that 100% of our reviews are legit by only allowing reviews from actual clients who book with us.

Turn great gigs into great reviews with our 5 Tips for Scoring 5-Star Reviews.

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