Wedding bands Gloucestershire
HARD TO HANDLE are a ridiculously entertaining live wedding band available throughout Gloucestershire. With 2 hours of killer non-cheesy indie, rock, pop, soul and more + live DJ, it’s no wonder that 1500+ brides and grooms choose us to bring the “wow” factor to weddings. More cost effective than large events bands, our comprehensive service features:
- A superb live wedding band performing for up to two hours spread throughout the night
- 350+ song band playlist
- Choose your favourite music for us to learn and play including your first dance song
- PA system and lighting equipment
- Live DJ playing sets before and after the band
- No entertainment agency fees or commission
- Public liability insurance
- Dedicated management
- A full dance floor!
We are a fully self contained wedding band. This means that when you hire HARD TO HANDLE BAND, you don’t need to hire a sound system, lights or even a DJ! You can relax in the knowledge that your whole evenings’ entertainment is taken care of. We perform up to two hours of instantly recognisable live music and also provide DJ-style music at no extra cost. And our dedicated management ensures that all your requirements are taken care of in advance. Concerned about the choice of music wedding bands play? Talk to us. Of course, as experienced musicians we have a good idea of the type music that will get you and your guests dancing. But we also value your input, and we can tailor our setlists to suit your tastes (If you’re a bride and groom, we can even learn your first dance).
Each year HARD TO HANDLE BAND perform up to 200 bookings, including wedding receptions, birthday parties and business events. At each event we play, we will have liaised with both yourself and the venue managers to ensure the evening runs smoothly. Our compact set up means that we can fit into almost any available space and our boundless onstage energy is so infectious that your guests will be dancing all night! We can say this because we have proof – head over to our Reviews page. There you’ll find over 100 video testimonials where brides, groom and other party planners review our performances and tell you just what it’s like to hire one of the best Gloucestershire bands around.
Get in touch! Call us on 0796 433 5657, use our Contact page here or keep reading for more information on HARD TO HANDLE BAND or visit our website here for more videos, music and reviews.
Live Gloucestershire wedding band - lots of experience, lots of fun!
If you have been trawling the web for “Gloucestershire wedding bands” to create a full dance floor then look no further! Alternatively, if you are looking for the perfect live band to create an unforgettable feature for your event, here we are! HARD TO HANDLE BAND are perfect for small to midsized weddings and functions throughout Gloucester and the South West, so if you are planning a formal evening wedding reception and or an informal wedding celebration you can rely on us to get your guests on the dance floor.
Because we are one more the most popular wedding bands, we have performed at just about all the Gloucestershire wedding venues you’ll come across on a wedding venue search. When you hire us direct from this website you’ll find that we are more cost effective than hiring wedding bands through an entertainment agency.
Since 2007, HARD TO HANDLE BAND have performed superb live covers music to over 1500 brides, grooms and other clients, earning us the title of the hardest working Gloucestershire wedding band! OK, so we may have bestowed that title on ourselves, but we think it’s appropriate: take a look at our playlist – we have worked hard to ensure our multi-genre 350+ song repertoire is both expansive and exhaustive, with classic rock, modern pop, timeless soul, indie anthems and much, much more than most wedding bands play.
Take a look at our videos – we’re not just talented musicians, highly experienced entertainers who know that having really onstage charisma is another key ingredient in getting your evening guests dancing. And as the best wedding bands will tell you, being able to work the room, spice things up, take requests and change the playlist to accommodate the music tastes of your guests by playing their favourite songs is just as important in creating that packed dance floor. This is something brides and grooms tell us we excel at. How do we know? Watch our video reviews here!
As you might expect from one of Gloucestershires’ best wedding bands, we have performed at wedding venues such as:
- Berkeley Castle
- Elmore Court
- Gore Barn
- Cripps Barn
- Manor by the lake
- Kingscote Barn
- Matara Centre
- Clearwell Castle
- Bishop’s Cleeve Tithe Barn
- Ellenborough Park
- Charingworth Manor
- Hatton Court Hotel
- Eastwood Park
- Egypt Mill
- Eastington Park
- Hatherley Manor
- Tortworth Court
How much does a wedding band cost?
How much should you pay for the kind of service Gloucestershire wedding bands cover? Like most brides and grooms you probably aren’t someone has needed to hire Gloucestershire bands previously. It might surprise you that hiring the very best wedding bands doesn’t have to blow your budget. The problem is that if you are to believe what many entertainment agencies say, you should be prepared to pay thousands and thousands for the best wedding bands. This is all a matter of taste of course, and you may find that a band such as HARD TO HANDLE cost a lot less to hire than many bands. But when it comes down to it, the best way to find out much a wedding band should cost is to get a range of quotes from various live wedding music bands.
Our advice is to not make your search too broad – ie. don’t just search for wedding entertainment or professional musicians as you won’t be able to compare like with like. Similarly, don’t just look for an act which plays just one type of music, ie. soul bands, Motown bands or indie rock bands because after a while you guests might want to hear something different than soul or indie classics, or an acoustic duo who may not be able to hold the attention of your guests all night. On the whole, Gloucestershire wedding musicians offer 2 hours of live music. Some also offer DJ music but may charge you extra for this. By the way, when you enquire about bands who offer a DJ music, be sure to ask what that means – do the band you are interested in hiring provide a live DJ mixing music and playing dance floor fillers when the band isn’t playing and taking song requests or is it just going to be a preloaded unattended Spotify playlist of background music?
How do I hire a wedding band?
Clearly, the perfect Gloucestershire wedding band will offer a wide mix of music but will crucially sit within your budget. When it comes wedding bands Gloucestershire does seem to have more than its’ fair share. But look a little closer and you will probably notice that there appear to be quite a few Gloucestershire wedding bands who look and sound suspiciously similar – so similar in fact that you could be forgiven for thinking that there is a Gloucestershire wedding musicians factory somewhere in the South West, churning out identical bands on an assembly line specifically for weddings. They might advertise themselves as a soul band, rock band or pop band but they all look and sound the same. Selecting the right band can make or break your big day, but with so much at stake, being faced with so many bands doing the same thing, it makes the choosing the right band for your big day that much more confusing.
If the wedding bands you’re looking at are all playing the same kind of music (where the so-called eclectic mix old school hits rock, through modern pop covers, classic funk, indie etc all ends up sounding one continuous bland and indistinguishable medley) and are fronted by a single female or male vocalist overcompensating for largely anonymous wedding musicians, then you have to ask the question – why is this type of wedding band so popular? Are these really the best wedding bands that the south west has to offer?
Why do wedding bands perform through entertainment agencies?
Here’s what’s happening – entertainment agencies dominate the Gloucestershire wedding bands landscape. The first port of call for most brides and grooms throughout the South West looking to hire a band will be to Google search a phrase like “Gloucestershire wedding band”, “entertainment for weddings” or something similar, and as you have probably discovered, the first couple of pages display entertainment agency results. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with hiring Gloucestershire wedding bands through an agency, but let us dispel a couple of myths regarding these websites.
Firstly, you may be tempted to think that they are similar to price comparison sites, the type of services one uses when looking for car insurance, etc. Whereas price comparison sites typically don’t charge the end user (you) for the privilege of using its’ service, entertainment agencies certainly do. Whether this is presented to you as a commission (transparent) or a “booking fee” (sneaky), it all amounts to the same thing – you are spending more than if you hired the band direct. Ther may even be other hidden fees such as a charge for band members learning your first dance song. If you are happy to do this in order to secure the services of the best wedding music bands, that’s OK, but it doesn’t have to be that way!
Let’s get back to why so many Gloucestershire wedding bands look and sound the same. It’s really down to a question of economies of scale, by which we mean that many professional wedding bands learning, solo artistes and entertainment agencies and even wedding venues are also vying to sell their services to corporate organisations – large businesses in the South West who hold parties and events several times a year to either thank their staff or wine and dine customers and want to hire large function bands.
Why? Because what they are prepared to spend will far exceed the budgets of most bride and grooms planning weddings (even those fancy pants people who hire luxury wedding venues). To this end, entertainment agencies know that they will be able to sell large expensive events bands to these organisations, which is why there are so many of them. It’s also why all the music the wedding bands perform sounds the same – it’s based on the expectation that as long as the band don’t sound or look too interesting, everyone can kind of enjoy themselves without really letting their hair down.
But of course, there aren’t enough of these large swanky events to go around in the Gloucestershire and the South West, which is why entertainment agencies need to advertise their acts for weddings as the “perfect Gloucestershire wedding bands” or the “most wedding band in the South West”. So like other brides and grooms looking to hire wedding bands, faced with a plethora of bands like these that are too big, too bland and far too expensive, our question to you is – what are you going to do?
While you are thinking about that, here’s something else to consider: you’ve booked one of the more intimate Gloucestershire wedding venues for your wedding day. Then your function room manager shows you the band performance space and you start to worry that your venue isn’t large enough to host live wedding bands. Will you wedding band play there? Should you have hired one of the areas’ larger wedding venues? No! HARD TO HANDLE BAND are perfect for small to midsized wedding venues that can’t accommodate bands with five or more members.
Hire HARD TO HANDLE BAND!
So you could blow your budget, lower your expectations, hire the large so-called best Gloucestershire wedding bands for your wedding day, watch them trying to cram into the performance space, watch your guests start to drift off to the bar as the band play yet another funk/soul medley, a deafeningly loud hard rock song or cheesy takes on chart music (dependent on whether they are an old fashioned soul band, an over the top rock band or a saccharine pop band), and suffer from the niggling feeling that your wedding day entertainment could have been more memorable, widen your net to look at other non-local wedding bands or function bands in South West England or the West Midlands…or you could hire HARD TO HANDLE BAND! Stunning vocals and superb professional musicianship combine with a very broad song list, featuring classic and modern hits, all designed to keep you and your guests dancing all night.
We are a fully self contained band. This means that when you hire HARD TO HANDLE BAND, you don’t need to hire a sound system, lights or even a DJ! Our own PA system and lights are both top of the range and you can relax in the knowledge that your whole evenings’ entertainment is taken care of, which is more than what most wedding bands offer. We perform up to two hours of instantly recognisable live music and also provide DJ-style music at no extra cost. And our dedicated management ensures that all your requirements are taken care of in advance.
Concerned about the choice of music? Talk to us. Of course, as experienced musicians we have a good idea of the type music that will get you and your guests dancing. But we also value your input, and we can tailor our setlists to include your favourite songs (If you’re a bride and groom, we can even learn your first dance). Hopefully we have provided you with information you need in order to make an informed decision about the type of wedding reception entertainment that’s going to get your guests on the dance floor. We’d love to hear from you! Call us on 0796 433 5657 or use our Contact page here.
Hire Hard to Handle band in Gloucestershire
Get in touch! For enquiries or just to find out more about Hard to Handle band, fill in the form below. We aim to respond within 24 hours. If you haven’t heard from us by then, we may not have received your enquiry so please call us direct on 0796 433 5657.