Wedding Music Tip #5

Every contractor's nightmare is the No-Show. Out of roughly five million successful weddings (or thereabouts, a mere estimate), I have only had this happen twice--both times involving violinists. What's up with violinists? Anyway, the first offense was committed by a musician I hired for a wedding at the New York Seamen's Museum by South Street Seaport.

The ensemble booked for this wedding was a classical guitar, violin & cello trio, which ended up being a duo when the violinist got stuck in Saturday afternoon traffic and completely missed the ceremony. The guitarist and I had to think on our feet and change the music around a bit, but it worked in the end, and the couple--so distracted by everything else going on around them--had not actually noticed the missing musician until I found them afterwards to explain. I planned to fall on my knees, beg their forgiveness, pray to the gods of matrimony and promise to do whatever they wished, so long as they didn't have a Hissy Fit, and please let them still pay the two of us who showed up...The bridal couple did pay us, complimenting the music, and I gave them back the violinist's portion, seeing as how she let us all down. I thanked them profusely for being so, well, cool--they were awfully good about it.

The second offense was committed by a different musician, although also a violinist. The configuration for this event was a string trio consisting of two violins + cello. The wedding was to take place at Chelsea Piers, and I emailed directions and a map to the two violinists a week before the event. The sending of the map-containing email is the salient point here, as the second violinist (we designated him second when he didn't actually show up) claimed he did not receive directions. Apparently there was another wedding going on at roughly the same time in another event space at Chelsea Piers, and he unpacked and was about to join the wrong string ensemble, like some sort of bizarre wedding-crashing ceremony musician, when it dawned on him he wasn't in the right place. Meanwhile, the first violinist (you can claim the role of first when you turn up on time) and I played the entire ceremony as a duo. We also had to play the cocktail hour. As a duo. Luckily, the *first* violinist was a great player and a had a huge sound, so the wedding party seemed to be pleased with the result, and got to keep some of their cash, owing to the fact there only being two of us to pay. Once again, I was prepared to offer them a kidney--or anything else they might need--but the bride and groom seemed unphased and praised the music nonetheless.

Wedding Tip #5: Inquire with the wedding musicians about their strategy in the event of a no-show player. If there is enough time, the musicians should be prepared to call a substitute. If there is not enough time to get a replacement, ask if they'll be able to arrange things so the show can go on, even with a player missing.

Experienced musicians should be able to pull the music together so that even the bride and groom do not notice a missing player--only the beautiful music.

Until the next wedding,

Alice Hamlet, Director
www.tenstringsmusicstudio.com