We played a Thursday wedding at Llanerch Vineyard and came off stage at 10pm. Llanerch’s sound limiter steps down at ten, so that’s where the live music finishes here. The venue is upfront about it and the evening gets built around it. The dancefloor filled on the first song and stayed full.
Building the night around a 10pm finish
Our usual wedding shape is a relaxed half hour with the first dance in it, then two fifty-minute sets. We run songs into each other whatever time we finish - a gap between songs is where a dancefloor empties - so a 10pm finish changes none of the music. The whole evening just sits earlier in the day.
That suits a lot of weddings. The speeches and the wedding breakfast run to their times, the first dance happens while everyone is still in the room, and the party gets going earlier than it does at a venue playing to midnight. We set the timings with the couple and the venue weeks out.
When the room sings over the band
Llanerch runs an SG Audio 10EaZy limiter, and there’s more on how it behaves on our Llanerch Vineyard wedding band page. It measures the room, not the stage.
So when ten guys are stood in the middle of the dancefloor giving a chorus everything they’ve got, that’s in the measurement too. The system reads the room getting louder and eases the level down, and some of what comes down is us.
It only happens when a room has properly gone, and the result is that guests can hear each other singing over the top of the band. Our job is to see it coming - watch where the level’s sitting, keep the low end tidy, let the room have the chorus and take the energy back on the next one. The readout sits on a screen we can see from the stage, so it’s easy to stay ahead of.
Disco and karaoke to midnight
Coming off at ten left two full hours, which is more to play with than a late band finish gives you. We ran the disco straight after, then put the mics out for karaoke and let the room have it until midnight.
Karaoke at a wedding can go either way. This one went well because the crowd had already spent two hours singing and had no shyness left in them. The people who were loudest on the dancefloor are the ones who want a go, so the room stays in the marquee instead of drifting out to the bar.
If your band finishes early, that time is worth planning properly rather than leaving to a phone on the aux.
Midweek weddings
Nothing about this one was smaller than a Saturday - same room, same hundred-odd guests, most of whom had booked the Friday off and behaved accordingly.
We play midweek dates, and they’re worth a look if your venue or your budget is fighting you on a Saturday. Venues have more Thursdays free, so you get more choice of date and room, and the team aren’t turning round three weddings in a weekend. Tell us your date early and we’ll get the lineup booked in - the diary is the only part of a midweek wedding that takes any extra thought, and that’s our end of it rather than yours.
What we’d tell you before booking
Set the timeline backwards from the finish time. Put the first dance and the big moments inside the live set, and book a DJ, a disco or a decent playlist for afterwards. That’s the whole of the extra planning.
The installed PA covers the Woodland Marquee evenly front to back, and the Llanerch team run the night well. It’s one of the venues we play most often as a Cardiff wedding band.
The Brotherhood are South Wales’ premier wedding and corporate band, based in Newport and available any day of the week. Our page on South Wales wedding bands covers the rest of the region and the venues we play. Check our availability for your date.
