Musicians attending wedding rehearsals

 Several brides that have hired our musicians for wedding ceremonies have asked (and occasionally insisted on) them to attend wedding rehearsals, hence arises the issue whether or not musicians need to show up for these.

As a rule,  hired wedding musicians do not attend wedding rehearsals simply because there is nothing for musicians to rehearse and go over.  The wedding music  in our repertoire have been performed by them for many years, eliminating the need to rehearse.

When a song is requested to be played at the wedding that is not in our repertoire – the client will usually mail us the music a few days prior to the wedding ceremony to give musicians a chance to look it over.

However, quite often wedding musicians encounter situations where unfamiliar music has to be performed on the spot, without having a chance to practice it before hand; such performance is referred to as “sight-reading” and most professional musicians (ours included) are trained in sight-reading during their education period.

If, despite our explanations, the client still insists on musicians attending a wedding rehearsal, the hourly fee will be charged for each musician, including not only the time spent at the wedding rehearsal, but traveling to and from as well. 

On a personal note as a business owner: I have seen many music agencies advising their clients that musicians SHOULD attend wedding rehearsals, since in their opining musicians ARE part of the wedding party, hence forcing their clients to spend more money on musicians; the manager ends up getting a larger cut of the fee, and the client – spends unnecessary money on musicians.