Brisbane Wedding MC - Hire a Professional for your Wedding
with Brisbane Wedding MC: G&M Event Group
When selecting a great Wedding MC, it can often be a challenging task to find the right choice for your special day.
ABIA had the opportunity to interview the owner of Brisbane's Multi-ABIA Award Winning G&M Event Group, Glenn Mackay on the importance of hiring a professional wedding MC and all the common MC Myths.
One of the biggest wedding trends that we’ve seen recently is the huge increase in demand for hiring a Professional Wedding MC.
There are so many questions & myths around who should be the MC at your wedding. So lets examine the role of a Wedding MC and address some of the common myths. Plus, we’ll give you a list of questions to ask your perspective wedding MC, so that you can make the most informed decision.
What does an experienced Wedding MC actually do?
Most people think an MC simply makes announcements over the microphone, so couples generally select someone who is “funny” or “the life of the party” or a “good speaker”. Which at times can lead to many cringe worthy moments for the guests and even worse, for the couple getting married.
An experienced Wedding MC will know everything about your wedding celebration, just as much as you do or even more. In fact, with such experience, they will be your wealth of knowledge and go-to-person when it comes to planing your wedding day.
In the lead-up to your wedding, you should be meeting with your MC to discuss the best ways of personalising every aspect of your wedding celebration. If an MC says they don't need to meet with you, that's a huge red flag.
What to discuss with your Wedding MC?
The two top points to discuss is your Personalisation & Wedding Timeline.
Personalisation
Your Wedding MC should have an endless amount of ideas to make your wedding fun, unique and memorable. Most importantly, they should have lots of ideas to help you create a wedding that is customised to suit what you want.
A good wedding MC will take your ideas on board and probably dig a little deeper to find out more.
Your experienced wedding MC will check the most basic details. It’s amazing how many horror stories we've heard about a family member, friend or even a “pro MC”, getting someone’s name wrong, or introducing someone with the wrong title.
We once heard of a so-called professional MC introducing the Father of the Bride for his speech, only to have the Mother of the Bride make her way up and explain to the MC that the Father of the Bride, her husband, was deceased and that she would be making a speech instead. Can you imagine how that bride felt?
Wedding Timeline
Part of that pre-event planning will also be helping you create unique moments. Rather than going through the “formalities” at a wedding, an experienced wedding MC will be able to share lots of ways to create unique moments that guests can be involved in etc. Something unique will make guests ooh and aah with amazement and then tell all their friends about it for weeks to come. If your wedding MC can’t share something unique with you that’s impressive, then that’s another red flag.
Now that we’ve covered a lot of things related to the pre-wedding planning.
G&M Event Group accepting their Award as Australia's No.1 Wedding MC at the 2018 ABIA National Designer of Dreams Awards.
Photo by Yokos Photography
Why a professional Wedding MC is so valuable
Let’s start by establishing that a wedding reception is a celebration. It’s the celebration of a couple getting married earlier that day. This is the fun part where everyone gets to eat, drink and be merry.
Avoid a boozy MC.
This is where we should cover the first advantage to having a professional wedding MC…they won’t be drinking. Oh the horror stories we’ve heard!
They'll be your host.
Your Wedding MC will essentially be the host of your event. They often greet guests as they come in and help guide them to their seats.
A professional Wedding MC will also welcome guests more formally on the microphone. Now keep in mind when I say “formal” I don’t mean stuffy. Your wedding MC should be able to perform their duties to create just the right vibe for your wedding.
Glenn Mackay - owner of G&M Event Group.
Confidence is key.
Your MC needs to be a confident communicator. They will be the person who directs, informs and guides your guests through your wedding reception. The MC is the person they will look to for guidance on how to act, when to do things and if they need anything throughout the night. Your MC will know how to engage with guests both on the microphone and off the microphone. From ABIA's point of view, this is such an advantage!
Your Father-Daughter Dance won't be missed!
One of the many unseen roles of a Wedding MC is how they bring together all of your other wedding suppliers to ensure there's synergy.
Why is this important?
Imagine your MC announces your father/daughter dance, but the photographer and videographer were still outside the room eating their meal or relaxing? A moment that every dad dreams of from the moment their daughter is born, not captured because the MC didn’t think past just the immediate timeline.
A wedding MC should know how important that timeline is, but will also keep in mind that all the other reception suppliers need to be involved (Photographer, Videographer, DJ, Venue Coordinator etc).
And it’s not just the other suppliers who are important, I can imagine that the Mother of the Bride wouldn’t miss this moment for the world, so we want to make sure she has the best seat in house to view it. A truly amazing MC will also ensure the photographer knows where she’s sitting as it can sometimes be an amazing image with a tear gently falling down her cheek as she watches on.
When something goes wrong?
Another vital skill of a professional wedding MC is that they know what to do when things go wrong.
In most cases, they will be able to predict when something is about to go wrong, long before anyone else. This is why they will always have a solution and in many cases will solve the issue before it actually becomes one.
In 99% of cases, the couple will never know there was even a hiccup. Personally (Glenn Mackay), I can recall a wedding where we lost power to the venue, causing all sorts of commotion out the back. But the lights stayed on, so the guests only noticed that the DJ's music stopped.
As the MC, I was the person who everyone immediately looked at, as that’s what the guests are used to when the music stops. Without skipping a beat I asked people to work together at their tables on a “sing-a-long” song.
Each table had 10 seconds to come up with a love song that everyone at that table had to sing together for the newly married couple. Within that 10 seconds the DJ signalled at me that he was resolving the power situation. We then had the couple select a table to sing their song. The singing was so bad, that everyone in the room joined in and it became quite a moment.
As the song neared it’s end, the DJ signalled me that the power was back on. The rest of the reception moved on without anyone knowing anything went wrong. In fact, the couple even mentioned how amazing this moment was for them and loved that it was impromptu and not something we discussed in our planning meeting. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!
Common MC Myths
Here are the most common myths I hear regarding a Wedding MC's role.
1. A family member will know the family better than a hired MC.
It is absolutely true that a member of the family will know the family better than a hired MC. The trouble is, that they will most likely only know the family on one side of the wedding. If the family member is related to both sides of the wedding, then someone’s got some explaining to do.
One of the most common things guests will say to me, as a professional MC is
1. Where can I charge my phone and
2. How do you know the couple so well, as I can’t seem to place where you fit into the family/friends?
Because of the pre-planning that is done, a professional MC will always represent the couple and both families in the most positive way.
2. I have a friend who is very funny, they will make a great MC.
A wedding MC does not need to be funny. A quality MC will skilfully move the focus off themselves and make others look good and enjoy the limelight. A comedian MC just puts the focus on themselves and I’m confident that a wedding celebration is certainly not about the MC.
3. A Professional MC will be cheesy
Unfortunately, many people have seen this in the past.
In most cases, this is a instance of someone taking on the MC duties without any training in actually how to do it.
While there are many amazing DJs who can also MC, most haven’t been trained in how to MC, they just picked it up along the way from seeing lots of cheesy MCs pulling the same corny jokes that someone else Googled a week earlier and heard 100 times.
The easiest way to spot an untrained MC is to watch video of them in action and if you see them asking for an applause (“let’s hear it for” or “put your hands together for” or other similar statements) then you’ve just spotted another red flag. A trained MC knows how to make people clap without asking for it, just ask them and they can show you. It’s a secret skill and they’ll happily show you.
4. The MC just introduces speeches
I’m confident that by now you know enough about the role of the MC that this statement seems crazy to you. But just in case, let’s quickly cover the range of announcements that the MC will cover:
- Welcoming the guests
- Introducing the wedding party
- Introducing the married couple
- Housekeeping
- Cake cutting,
- Introduce speechmakers
- Introduce couples first dance
- I ntroduce any family dances
- Garter & bouquet toss
- Farewell arch/circle
- Last dance
- Possibly much more depending on what the couple want.
5. Can’t the DJ just do it?
This is a comment that I hear often, especially as the owner of a company that provides DJ and MC services. G&M Event Group offers both services as a 2 person package, with each person focusing on their individual role as DJ or MC.
This is because we see the value in having a person dedicated to each role to create the best end result.
Having a separate DJ and MC allows us to create moments for couples that are simply impossible to do with just 1 person. With that being said, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many amazing DJ/MC “soloists” who perform both roles successfully and have many happy couples to prove they can do it.
As always, this is why it’s so important to meet with your entertainment provider and ask questions.
6. Questions to ask your perspective MC
The cool part of this list of questions is that you can apply it to almost any wedding supplier you’re on the hunt for:
- Are you available on my wedding date?
- Have you worked at my reception venue before?
- How many weddings have you been the MC for?
- Tell me about the last couple you worked with and their wedding?
- How can you make my wedding unique?
- What training have you had?
- Are you a part of any industry groups (eg. ABIA, DJAA etc)?
- Have you won any industry awards?
- Do you have any online reviews?
- How many planning meetings will we have before the wedding?
- Will you be at the reception from start to finish?
- What fees are involved?
- What do your fees include?
Make sure you Research!
Like any wedding supplier, you want to do as much research as possible. You want to be all over their website, stalk them on Facebook, Instagram and as many other platforms as possible.
Meeting with your MC will be hugely beneficial. Are they nervous? Are they excited for your wedding? Do you connect with them? Do they give you a strange feeling? Trust your guy or girl!
If you only base your decision on price, you’ll probably just end up with the cheapest MC available. And rarely do we find a couple wanting to put together the cheapest wedding possible.
If the answers to the earlier questions don’t resonate with you, then the price is irrelevant. Any MC you’re looking at hiring should be great value if they can deliver you the kind of wedding celebration that you want.
A high quality MC, like any wedding supplier, is probably going to cost more than you initially think, but hopefully by doing your research, asking lots of questions and reading reviews from past couples, you’ll easily be able to establish if they are a good fit for your wedding celebration.
The best wedding MC for you is the one that will make your wedding reception stress free and also create the kind of wedding that you’ll be proud of.
Glenn Mackay
Wedding Entertainment Director®
G&M Event Group
