How to Quote a Wedding as a Musician or Band: A Complete Guide
Wedding gigs are high stakes and high value. Here's everything you need to include in a wedding quote — and how to price yourself correctly for the day.
Weddings are some of the most valuable bookings a musician or band can secure. They're also high-pressure, logistically complex, and require a level of preparation and reliability that justifies a significant premium over a standard pub gig. Your quote should reflect that.
What to Include in a Wedding Music Quote
A wedding music quote typically covers: ceremony music (ceremony entry, signing, recessional), cocktail hour, reception dinner, and reception dancing. Each of these is a different performance context — different repertoire, different energy, different duration — and each should be priced accordingly.
If you're quoting the full day, break it into phases: ceremony, cocktail, dinner, dancing. Quote each phase as a separate line item with its own duration and fee. This gives the client flexibility to book some but not all phases, and gives you a clear record of exactly what you've committed to.
Add-Ons and Extras to Include
The extras that add up for wedding gigs include: travel to an out-of-area venue, PA provision (you're often supplying audio for the ceremony and cocktail hour), lighting, an MC service, and additional musicians. Some bands also charge for song learning requests — if the couple wants a specific first dance song you don't have in your repertoire, that's preparation time worth billing for.
None of these should be absorbed into your base fee. Quote them as named line items. Most couples expect add-ons; what they don't expect is discovering them in a revised quote after they've already said yes.
Pricing a Wedding vs a Corporate vs a Pub Gig
Weddings should be priced above corporate and well above pub rates. The reason is simple: a wedding has one chance. If something goes wrong, there's no "same time next week." The stakes demand a higher level of preparation, reliability, and communication — and that premium is standard in the industry.
Work out your total time commitment (travel, load-in, performance, pack-down) and divide your quote by that number to gut-check your effective hourly rate. If it's lower than a corporate gig, your wedding quote is too low.
Sending and Confirming the Quote
Use Dashplan's Quote Helper to build the wedding quote with all phases and add-ons itemised. The GST calculation is automatic, so your ex-GST and inc-GST totals are always correct. Once confirmed, push the quote to the Gig Manager to generate the invoice and track payment through to the event date. Read more on invoicing clients as a band.
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