How Do I DJ A Wedding Reception? (Top Tips)

Regardless of whether you’ve just started in your DJing career or you’ve been doing gigs for years, DJing a wedding reception can be a nerve-racking experience – especially if you have the responsibility of supplying crowd-pleasing music!

Besides being one of the biggest, most important days of many people’s lives – weddings are a huge celebration filled with family, friends, and other guests, so it’s essential to make sure that your DJ gig goes as flawlessly as possible. 

Needless to say, if you’re currently planning on DJing a wedding reception for the very first time, it only makes sense that you should be wondering about how to go about ensuring that the entire evening goes down a hit.

Below, check out some of the best ways that you can be the best DJ that you can be while also ensuring that the gig is a success: 

Make Sure That You Remain Professional Throughout The Evening

First, one of the most important things that you should remember before DJing a wedding reception is that you’ll need to make sure that you remain professional.

To make sure that you can be the best DJ that you can be, we strongly recommend that you make sure to have your very own website full of testimonials and examples of your DJing ability and have an area of your website that provides a sample of your rates.

In addition to that, during the wedding reception party, you should be sure to maintain your professionalism and leave the partying to the guests.

Make sure that you arrive promptly so that you have time to set everything up and maintain consistent and clear communication with the wedding couple so that they are up to speed on everything.

Plus, you should also be sure to consider the preferences of your clients and make sure that you are playing music in line with the wedding.

Organize And Go Through All Of The Details Of The Party Prior To The Reception

One of the most important aspects of making sure that you can successfully DJ a wedding reception is to make sure that you have taken the time to thoroughly go through all of the details of the party before actually DJing the wedding reception party.

We strongly recommend that you take the time to find out whether or not you will need to bring all of your own equipment, whether or not a microphone is required, what time you will need to arrive, as well as whether or not a set playlist is needed or whether you can play whatever music you deem to be appropriate. 

In addition to this, we also recommend that you take the time to discover whether or not you are allowed to play explicit music, as well as any other considerations that you will need to keep in mind while curating a wedding reception party playlist. 

Make Sure That You Stay Calm And Collected During The Reception

If you’re going to DJing a wedding reception party, it only makes sense that you should expect some of the wedding party guests to interact with you throughout the evening.

Most of the interactions will likely be single requests for the most part. However, you should be aware that you might need to deal with drunken party guests at some point or another, so it’s important to make sure that you are remaining polite and professional at all times.

Try your best to remain personable and relaxed, and if you happen to encounter a drunken guest causing a little bit of trouble, you should calmly ask them to step back from your DJing gear so that you can continue the gig.

Arrive Early

In addition to the above, we also recommend that you take the time to organize your DJ set-up by arriving early to ensure that you’re ready to go as soon as the evening wedding reception begins.

You’ll want to make sure that you’re able to DJ as smoothly as possible, especially given that wedding receptions can be pretty lively events and can often be quite distracting.

For this reason, we recommend considering a laptop stand that will allow you to use it more easily (while also lowering the chance of you experiencing backache), as well as headphones and a mic so that you can engage with the crowd.

If you’re going to be using an audio mixer, we also recommend packing an extra RCA cable – just in case you misplace the one you typically use; otherwise, you won’t be able to use the mixer. 

Don’t Be Afraid To Refuse Certain Song Requests

So, even though it is your job as a DJ to be a people pleaser, it’s also vital that you maintain your professionalism (like we touched upon above) and be able to make clear discernment over which song requests to accept and which ones to refuse.

As we have already mentioned above, if you do happen to get a single request that you deem inappropriate for the reception, you should do your best to politely and kindly decline the request.

Instead of being blunt and offending the wedding reception party guest, we recommend that you politely decline the request and ask them if they would like to make another one. 

On the other hand, to make things fair for everyone, why don’t you consider providing all wedding guests with song request cards?

That way, all of the guests will be able to write their song requests down and place them into a box, and you will then be able to go ahead and pick the different requests at random.

Not only will this make for an exciting and unique DJing experience, but it will also help to prevent anyone from feeling left out.

Read The Room!

The key to being a successful DJ is reading the room and making necessary changes – usually on the fly.

Sometimes the music you play might not be a hit, so it’s crucial that you can make quick changes to the type of music you are playing to raise the atmosphere in the room, fill the floor, and create an authentic party vibe!

We recommend opting for a variety of floor fillers interspersed with a variety of popular tunes across a variety of different genres to ensure that you are catering to everyone in the crowd.

Alongside the music that you play, another way to help raise the energy in the room is to make sure that you are utilizing the microphone.

Even though most of the wedding reception party will mainly consist of music, you can also occasionally hop on the mic for various reasons to help keep the guests entertained and engaged, such as announcing when the first dance is taking place.

You should also correctly wind down the party towards the end of the night, and it will typically be your responsibility to announce to the crowd that the party is ending and when the bar will be closing.