Scone Wedding – Apr 12th, 2021

Country Weddings!
This was a Monday night wedding gig way out North West of Newcastle NSW.
It had been postponed twice already due to covid and this time it was on a Monday night.
It was a 3 hour drive for me from home ( Hornsby in Sydney) to Scone Race Club…..and I had some car trouble, the first time ever on the way to a gig, a slow water leak that I wasn’t aware of became very obvious about 1 hour away from the gig.
I stopped on the roadside right near Huntlee to add some water. A cool local hipster guy called Bill Lind stopped to help me and he drove me to the servo where I bought a supply of water and was soon on my way.
How cool is old fashioned road side help from a local stranger!

Country Weddings

Country Weddings I often do in the Hunter Valley and the South Coast. Of Course they are favoured destinations for Sydney Siders and city folk in general. The vast expansive space is so calming and the scenery is georgeous.
I’m kind of spoilt from the years of driving up there to these amazing locations and performing at so many different venues, that I actually forget to appreciate it all. The country side is wondrous and simple and vast and calming.

Live acoustic & DJ

Tonights country wedding was a combination of live sets and and DJ sets.
I’m very used to the live sets and very experienced having done this for a long time now.
The DJ thing is relatively new to me and a service i offer which evidently saves the Bride & Groom $600-$1000 dollars if I do the DJ sets form my gear as opposes to them hiring in a seperate DJ.
By far the best approach so far i’ve found is to keep the DJ requests stacked up a few songs in advance. By Approaching the wildest most cheerful dancers…..saying “…..pssst, have you got a request for the DJ…” – I usually get the exact right tunes very specific to them and their friends. Tunes that they can specifically relate to that really bring back memories and make the night one big nostalgia fest.

Wedding MC

I always offer to MC weddings as to be honest now from the experience of multiple weddings over the years, I’ve learned a few hot MC tips.
Some from seeing others MC really well. Some from seeing drunk Uncles (Drunkles) MC really badly and some from googling great MC tips!

I can absolutely say with confidence i’m a better MC than the ‘average drunkle’
Also one great advantage in being the musician and the MC is that as the MC I get to ensure I get to deliver my product properly as a musician – ie. I get to play enough to impress guests and warrant a rebooking.

You see weddings very often run late and sometimes the amount of dance and party time at the end suffers – and can be really reduced down in time to say only 30 mins of dancing, due to all the formalities running super late.

As the MC I can hurry things along as I’m aware of the time traps that can happen at a wedding – like speakers waffling on too long and too many gaps between formalities that drag the night on.
Every wedding should have at least 2 hour party time at the back end before lights on and farewell circles.

Its not quite a home party with no time limits – there are strict venue room hire times to be aware of.

This was a fabulous night at the Scone Race Club for Hannah and Matthew Collier.
I feel blessed to be a wedding singer to get to enjoy so many beautiful functions in exquisite locations.
Country weddings really take the cake so far as location and scenery ……so long as the drive is not too far 🙂