Does Size Matter? The Size of the Band, I Mean.

So you’ve picked your wedding band.  Seems like the hard part should be over.  But now you’re being asked more questions.  How many singers do you want?  Would you like horns?  Most bands will give you the flexibility of adding or subtracting members from their standard lineup, and perhaps you’re wondering if those details even matter.  And if that’s the case, and they’re insignificant, why not go with a smaller band that costs a bit less money?

If you want an unbiased opinion, you probably shouldn’t ask a musician.  Ask any musician, however, and they’ll tell you that the bigger the band, the better.  It’s less about up-selling and more about the overall effect.  Which would you rather watch, one person doing the Thriller dance or an entire flash mob?  A solo violinist playing Beethoven, or an entire orchestra?  A two-on-two football game, or Ohio State versus Michigan?  The more bodies, the more energy; the more energy, the more your guests dance; and the more your guests dance, the more awesome your wedding is.

A base-model band will have at least one male and one female vocalist.  And yes, that will get the job done.  But when you start adding a third and fourth vocalist, you start to get that gospel choir effect – there really is no substitute for the sound of four voices singing together, and most non-musicians don’t realize how much harmony exists in most of the songs they love to listen to.  Gladys Knight wouldn’t have sounded like much without her Pips, and so Midnight Train to Georgia falls flat with one lead vocalist and just one backup singer.  Same with ‘Shout’, ‘Proud Mary’, ‘I Want You Back’, and an unending stream of everybody’s favorite classic dance tunes.  Furthermore, lead vocalists also tend to look pretty good.  Don’t you want the front of the stage to be lined with hip, hot, young performers, coordinating moves like the Four Tops?  They dance, you dance, we all dance.

Then there’s the question of horns.  Do you want a saxophone, or a sax and a trumpet, or for a full mini-section, sax, trumpet and trombone?  As with backing vocals, lots of your favorite songs have horns, and not just oldies like Soul Man, or Disco classics like September, but great modern tunes like Crazy in Love and You Are the Best Thing.  And what about songs with no horns?  Most bands will have created horn parts for those songs, too, making them sound even more exciting than the original recordings.  Put it this way: if you haven’t watched a saxophonist emerge from the bandstand during the middle of a set, power slide to the center of the dance floor, play a ripping solo, and completely ignite the crowd, it’s a bit like carrying your large duffel bag through airports for years, unaware of the invention of the rolling suitcase.

Sometimes a band will offer to add other extra musicians: a second guitarist, keyboardist, or percussionist, for example, and admittedly, that might be a bit gratuitous.  But rarely, if ever, is it not substantially worthwhile to add as many vocalists and as many horns as possible – each one will elevate the overall sound and look of the band.  So there you have it: when it comes to your wedding band, size does matter.  Do us a favor and hire a lot of us, and as a collective whole, we’ll turn your reception into the super-fun, non-stop party you’ve got in mind.