FAQs

4 Piece band – 4m x 2m5 or 

6 Piece band – 5m x 2m or 4m x 3m7 or 

8 Piece band – 6m x 2m or 5m x 3m

Yes – our Band Manager is a registered PAT tester and all our equipment is tested annually. Copies of certificates and schedules will be sent to your venue upon request.

Yes, we do! We provide all sound equipment and lighting to cover the band and dance floor (depending on the size of the floor).

For our full day package, we will require 2 hours before your ceremony to set up at each location for live music.  

For our evening entertainment, ideally, the band would need 90 minutes to set up and thoroughly soundcheck. This enables us to give you the best possible performance and greatly reduces the risk of poor sound quality and feedback issues during our performance. However, we do understand that weddings can run to a tight schedule and there isn’t always the scope to allow this. If necessary, we can minimise our set up time to an hour providing everything runs smoothly.  

Please bear this in mind when planning the timings for your day. It is definitely in your interests to allow us to have a decent set up (especially when we’ve got first dances to get right) so please don’t rush us! Happy band = Happy guests = Happy couple! 🙂  

If you would like us to arrive earlier to set up this is usually possible but may involve an additional fee. If you want to chat about your options for set up, feel free to get in touch!

Don’t panic! Read on… 

A sound limiter is a device used in venues to measure ‘loudness’ of music. The decibel (unit of measurement for ‘loudness’) level we are allowed to play to will be decided by each venue and can vary widely. If the music exceeds the pre-defined sound limit for more than a pre-defined time (usually 5-10 seconds), the limiter will usually cut the electrical supply to our musical equipment. It can take up to 30 seconds for the electricity to come back on again.  

This can obviously be a real vibe killer, and can cause damage to our equipment which can be very expensive to repair or replace. With this in mind, we generally recommend that where possible you book a venue without a sound limiter if you are planning on having live music at your wedding.  

However, if you’re reading this and thinking ‘it’s too late, we’ve already booked it’ you can rest at ease knowing that The Distractions Band has played at many venues with these restrictions. A skilled band (that’s us!) will have no problem working to a limiter and still produce quality live music to get your guests up and dancing. Simply be prepared for an adjusted level of sound.  

We are always happy to liaise with a venue on your behalf if it would help. Believe us when we say that we will do everything we can to make sure that your sound limiter does not become an issue on your wedding day!

Yes! We advertise The Distractions Band at the National Wedding Show in the NEC Birmingham in March and October every year. This is a chance for you to come and see us perform but bear in mind sound levels are restricted to a much lower level to be considerate to our neighboring exhibitors. 

Sadly, the rest of the year we are busy with private events and are unable to invite guests to see us perform at these.  

However, our current online videos have been recorded live during one of our big events and are an accurate representation of how we will sound at your wedding (allowing for differences in band size).

From our experience, we have discovered that lots of our favourite songs don’t work as well as others in a live situation and there are certain songs that frequently crop up as requests from our clients which can actually be dance floor clearers as well! Likewise we have found that there are songs which work almost every time and are solid dance floor ‘vibers’. 

We have also found that it works best to put certain songs in certain places. With all of this in mind, we use songs that consistently fill the dance floor, and have spent a lot of time arranging them into unique medleys which can be up to 20 minutes long! Medleys are great for keeping a high energy throughout but this does make it difficult to choose the setlist song by song.  

Once you have booked in, this is what you can do: go through our entire repertoire and tell us which songs you hate, songs you’re not sure about and which songs you love using our ‘traffic light’ system. This will give us a good picture of your music tastes as a whole and we can then design our set lists around your favourites (green), miss out the ones you don’t like (red) and suggest some good ones you may have overlooked from the amber section.

The Distractions Band is made up of a carefully selected group of quality musicians and singers from right across the UK. We also work closely with a number of official, rehearsed ‘deps’ or understudies who are ready to stand in at the last minute should an emergency occur, and we can guarantee that the high standard of the band will not be compromised.  

The Distractions are a ‘working band’ and a professional business. This means the band cannot really ‘split up’ in the way that conventional bands may. We are proud to say we have never had to cancel an event before!  

For further information, please read our terms and conditions.

Not at all! We provide an iPad music service before and after our live sets. You can leave this to us to organise, or should you wish to, you can send us a list of artists and songs you like. We will download these setlists prior to your event and use a crossfade feature to ensure smooth transitions between songs.

For the evening, you can choose 3 song requests that are not already included in our repertoire (providing they are compatible with your size of band). This may include your first dance.  

For full day weddings The Distractions will learn all ceremony songs by request, and as above, you can choose 3 songs for the evening.

Your date is automatically pencilled in our diary for 1 week from the time of our first reply (unless we aren’t available). You will then be able to chat to one of our representatives via email or phone about what exactly you would like for your wedding and how everything will work.

After chatting through what you would like with us, a formal quotation will be sent to you for approval.

Once you have approved the quotation, we will set you up an online account with specific passwords to ensure that only you can access it.

On the account, you will be able to fill in your booking form and agree to the terms and conditions of our service (www.thedistractionsband.co.uk/terms).

Once this has been completed, your account will automatically direct you to pay a 20% deposit to secure your booking. This deposit will be secured by Paypal, and you can either pay with a Paypal account or any valid debit/credit card.

After you have completed these actions, your online account will allow you access to the other features (Requests, Traffic Light Song Preferences, iPad Music Service, Timings etc.) which all need to be completed by 3 weeks before your wedding date at the latest. Automated emails will remind you of keys dates just in case you forget.

There is a message tab on the account which you can use to contact us with any questions or queries. This allows us to keep track of communications and ensure that we get all the details right for your BIG day.

Your final balance can be paid online. A due date and payment button will be signposted on your account. We ask for the full balance to be paid 2 months before your wedding date.

For our full day packages we will arrive at 10am and begin packing down at 12am (midnight). For evening packages we will arrive at 6pm and pack down will start at 12am (midnight).

If you would like us to arrive earlier to set up or stay later this is usually possible but may involve an additional fee. If you want to chat about your options for set up, feel free to get in touch!

Requesting singers or specific band members can make things very complicated for us, especially when some bookings are far in advance, so we do not offer an option to pick and choose certain individuals.

The Distractions perform at over 100 weddings per year and with everyone needing time off for holiday or other projects it’s all down to availability on the date which we often don’t know until much nearer the time.

The Distractions are a collective, and with each member having been carefully selected for their talent, each one is as important to the workings of the group as the other. If you have a certain request, you can by all means raise this with us during the booking process but as with any show, we cannot guarantee individual band members availability 100%. As a general rule, guaranteeing individuals far in advance would be a poor reflection of their quality as an artist.  Unless circumstances beyond our control occur, our singers showcased on our videos are the artists that are currently working with the band the most and generally will perform at 90% of our events. Should they need to be replaced, we have a roster of top quality stand-ins who work regularly as featured vocalists with the band.

You may find that not many other bands will be as up-front with you about this issue in fear of losing your booking, but it is important for us to make this clear to all our prospective clients because we believe in building a business with integrity. All function bands of our standard are on the same playing field with this, so if somebody else is saying they can guarantee you otherwise, we would warn you to be cautious about their quality.

We can, however, guarantee that The Distractions – a collective of exciting and incredibly talented musicians and singers from across the UK –  will perform at your event, and you will not be disappointed! 

Yes please! None of us are divas so we are not expecting a three course meal! We just ask that you consider the journey time we have taken to get to you, and the fact that once we arrive it’s all systems go with set up, soundcheck and our performance.

We work long days and late nights at venues where ‘fast food’ (especially the nutritious kind!) isn’t an option, so we do appreciate some refreshment that we ask our clients to provide.

We have found clients are often happy to invite us to join them for the evening buffet in between our sets. Or, when we do full day weddings, we are happy to eat separately and after all the guests have been served first. Anything from sandwiches to whatever you choose to eat on the day will go down a treat.

We don’t drink alcohol on the job, so soft drinks and/or water is just perfect.

A happy and well looked after band will always result in the best possible performance.