In this episode, Jared breaks down why wedding gigs are more than just love songs and aisle walks—they're bootcamp for high-end corporate events. He challenges the misconception that weddings are beneath serious musicians and makes a bold case that mastering weddings is essential if you want to book—and keep booking—lucrative corporate gigs. He shares how professionalism, gear standards, collaboration, and performance versatility all overlap between the two event types, and how saying “no” to weddings might actually be costing you corporate opportunities

"If you are unwilling or unable to play for any part of a wedding, that probably means you're not ready to play a corporate event"

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What's up, gigging musicians? This is Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast.

I kind of have something controversial to say today, which is if you are unwilling or unable to play for any part of a wedding, that probably means that you're not ready to play a corporate event.

It tells you to be controversial. So you might be wondering, what the heck are you talking about? You know, a corporate event is not nearly as complicated as a wedding. And that's kind of true.

But here's the thing, because, you know, I've played probably hundreds of corporate events and at this point, close to a thousand weddings.

And I will say, like, the level of professionalism expected at most corporate events is just as high, if not higher than some weddings. And so weddings are actually great practice for corporate events.

Here are a couple things. Why corporate events? Oftentimes you have to dress in business casual or even business formal, not suit and tie. Well, sometimes suit and tie, but you do have to dress professionally, right?

Shorts and a cargo or cargo shorts and a T shirt will not cut it at a corporate event. The same is true at weddings. Second, equipment standards are very high for corporate events.

Oftentimes they'll be providing a sound engineer, which means you need to know how to work with a sound engineer, which is actually a little bit different than at weddings because weddings don't often provide a sound engineer.

You're providing PA system yourself. So you do have to already collaborate with people and you have to do it quick because these corporate events are run on a tight schedule.

And so oftentimes there's a bit of pre planning that happens with their sound engineer over email.

Figure out what kind of inputs you need, any kind of sound check, things like that, or if you're not provided a sound engineer, you have to provide your own PA system and that has to be in good condition.

I did an interview once with a destination management company representative, corporate planner, and he was telling me, yet if your PA system looks like it's been used at bars and is beat up, things like that, well, those are strikes against you.

Cool. And so for weddings, it's also very similar. Like you need to have good, well maintained PA equipment that works reliably 100% of the time, or if you're collaborating with a DJ or something like that, then you need to again, collaborate with somebody who runs their own sound.

They have their own mixing board. They may only have one XLR input for you. And then you'll have to figure out, okay, am I submixing the entire band and running it through the DJ or are we providing our own PA system?

So very similar skills. And so, yeah, the other thing is there is so much overlap in the event staff like the event planners, the venue managers, the caterers, the bartenders, the photographers, videographers, lighting people that they, if they do corporate events, they most likely also do weddings.

And so if they see that you don't do weddings, they're probably not going to like treat you the same as a musician that they see doing both corporate events and weddings. Right.

They, it's just kind of a weird thing about how much overlap there is. And if you're unwilling to participate in that overlap, well, they'll be more comfortable with those who do.

And so the thing though is weddings are not nearly as like complicated as people make them out to be because at the end of the day it is an event that needs music at specific timings and that music needs to, you know, be comfortable both in terms of what songs people want played and also volume and all the other good musical things like balance and sound quality, things like that.

So they're, they're just like nuances about weddings that I think people turn, get turned off on. One of which is the term Bridezilla. You know, I see a lot of musicians who like, I'm never playing for weddings because Bridezillas are just crazy.

And you know, that's kind of true. The thing is though, if you're a high end musician, the more money you charge, the fewer problem customers you have to deal with.

And so you're dealing with a high end client, you're charging premium prices that most likely will weed out people who would cause problems anyway. And so bridezillas.

I haven't dealt with, you know, a Bridezilla since probably the first year I did this. And I've been in this game just about 10 years at this point. So it's, it's not that hard to weed them out.

You just have to have a process in place that weeds them out. Which is why if you are just sending your quotes over email and you know, transacting without talking to them face to face, well, you're probably setting yourself up for failure because you can't weed people out based on their personalities.

And the other cool thing about corporate events, and if you treat them with as much seriousness and rigor as you do a wedding, then if you do a good job. The hardest part of a corporate event is making the first sale.

Once you've made the first sale, you got your first corporate event client who has hired you to do their event? If you knock it out of the park, all future sales are so much easier because they already know the kind of job that you can do at the event and so there's no need for that back and forth anymore.

From my experience, you know, I've played corporate events for many planners and after I do the first one, the next one, they just emailed me, hey, our clients had such a great time with you last November or whatever.

We're having another event coming up this, this April. Are you available? How much would it cost? And that's the point where I do reply just with, you know, quotes in my email and I oftentimes just send a contract over.

And so yeah, weddings are like excellent practice for corporate events because yeah, if you can, if you can do a wedding, you can do a corporate event and if you can do a corporate event, you can do a wedding.

So hopefully I've articulated my thoughts clearly. If you were turned off of doing weddings, I'd say open your mind back up because there's just so many opportunities that are available to you once you do a wedding that you know, corporate event planners will start to hear about you too.

And so yeah, for, for weddings there are three really performance opportunities that are available to you. One is the ceremony.

Actually I'm going to formally expand this to 4 because I've been booked a lot recently for like rehearsal dinners slash welcome receptions which often happen the night before where the the wedding they will rent out the private event room in a restaurant and then you the musician just play for 3 hours ish, but get paid 10x what you do at a, at a regular restaurant gig.

So rehearsal, welcome dinner, that's performance Opportunity one ceremony if you're willing to walk people down the aisle.

Opportunity three is the cocktail hour at the wedding, closest thing to a bar gig we have at a wedding. And then four is the reception which is dinner and dancing. So if you can get people dancing, you can do receptions. Right.

So that is all I've got for y' all today. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. By the way, did you know you can get a free 30 day trial of BookLive to help you book more gigs?

It's an app that we've created where you can find the high end event planners, send them emails, book gigs, manage your musicians, get a free 30 day trial at booklive.com and thanks for tuning into another episode.

Remember, "Your music will not market itself!"

Bye everybody.