Wedding FAQS

What times do you play?

Firstly, the times that we explain here are a guide, not set in stone. Every wedding is unique so therefore we adapt our timings to suit your day.

The best piece of advice that we can give to a couple getting married is to relax, enjoy the day and play it by ear on the night. That said, we know that everyone wants to work to some kind of framework so here’s our generic suggestion of what tends to work best for weddings.

As standard, we arrive at 6.30pm. You have us on site for 6 hours (We can arrive early/stay later for an additional cost) and we play live for 2 hours with disco before, between and after the live sets.

It takes us 40 minutes to get setup so as long as the space is clear when we arrive, we are ready to go and sounding great of 7.10pm. Normally at that point we’d put on some background music whilst your guests filter back in and the evening guests arrive. At 8.10pm, it’s normally time to cut the cake which is followed immediately by your first dance. We then kick into our first set, 45 minutes usually which takes us through to 9pm…normally when the evening food will be served.

The evening food normally takes about an hour and once that’s finished, it’s time for our second, longer set. Starting at 10.00pm, the 1hr 15m set is literally packed with floor fillers and given that by this time, everybody’s caught up and had a few glasses of wine or beer, this is where it usually goes off! We smash out over an hour of party anthems, chuck a couple of encores in and finish on a high with all your guests still there, about 11.15pm. At this point, a few will start to leave (trust us, this always happens) but of course the hardcore will remain firmly on the dance floor. We make sure that the party doesn’t end here! We fire up the disco which can be a playlist that you’ve chose, one that we think is right for the mood or even a combination of both. This runs until the end of the night when the lights come on and it’s time for everyone to head home or to their rooms….probably to prepare for the following day’s hangover!

As we said at the beginning, this is a rough guide, by no means set in stone!!!

Do you play in the afternoon of our wedding?

Our standard package is just for the evening of your wedding but we certainly do offer an afternoon package too. We have a fantastic acoustic set, 60 minutes in length that can be performed by our singer as a solo acoustic guitar/singer setup, as a duo or even as an acoustic trio. If there weather’s decent and there’s a suitable space and electric supply, we can do this outside if your venue’s license allows.

What songs do you play?

You’ll have no doubt taken a look at the repertoire page here on our site. On the night, we always pick our set based on the crown in front of us with the sole aim of making sure that your dance floor is as full as possible. That’s what you’re hiring us for after all. If you’ve a couple of favourites on our repertoire page, then let the guys in the office know in advance and we’ll do our best to include them on the night! We can’t learn requests unfortunately.

How do we pay you?

When you book, our manager will take care of all the finance side of things and explain the different options that you have. 90% of our clients choose to pay in instalments either monthly or on a four stage plan. This hopefully helps make having a professional band more affordable as you don’t have a massive outlay in one go either at the time of booking or on the day of the wedding. You can book using your credit card for added security or by bank transfer. It really is a case of whatever’s easiest for you.

Do you sing our first dance?

This depends entirely on what the song is or if you add a ‘Live First Dance’ to your booking with us. As standard, we perform the first dance live unless it’s a song from our existing repertoire as it’s impossible to learn new songs for every wedding. If you choose a song that we already know, we’d love to play it live for you, no problems! If you’re really keen to have a song live and we don’t already know it, reach out to the office and they’ll get you a price to have us learn it especially for you. If we’re not playing it live, don’t worry….we’ll make sure it’s downloaded and ready to go on our playback system so it isn’t something that you have to worry about on the night. 

Do you bring everything with you?

We absolutely do. You don’t need to worry about anything technical. We bring our own fab PA system as well as our own stage lighting. You just need to bring yourselves and your guests!

Do we have to get any licenses to have you play?

A few years ago, the government delicensed live music so in a word ‘No’. Your venue will almost certainly have a ‘PRS’ license but that isn’t something that you need to worry about. That’s their responsibility. You don’t need to worry about that.

Are you insured?
Like any professional band, we’re fully covered by our £5m Public Liability Insurance. In almost all instances, venues will ask for our paperwork and our PAT certification so we send that directly to their emails the month before the wedding to save you a job. That way, we’re sure they’ve got the most up to date policy and certificates and that nothing can go wrong on the day!!

Hopefully, that’s answered all your questions in relation to having us at your wedding but if it hasn’t please, please, please don’t hesitate to drop us a message at sayhello@theriptides.co.uk and we’ll get your questions answered straight away!