Guide · Marquee Weddings
A marquee is my favourite kind of wedding to DJ, and the trickiest to get right. It's a field with a roof on, not a room: the power comes off a generator, the canvas swallows sound, and there's usually a farmer or a neighbour within earshot. Here's what I've learned playing them, and what to sort before the day.
Everything else is fixable on the day. Power isn't. If your marquee runs off a generator, tell the hire company there's a DJ coming and ask for a supply near the dance floor end of the tent. My rig runs happily off a standard 13 amp feed, but it wants its own circuit rather than sharing with the catering ovens or the fridge trailer, because when the oven kicks in and the lights dip, the music dips with it. If the marquee is in a garden running off the house, the same rule applies: one extension run for the band or DJ, a separate one for everything else.
A stone-walled function room bounces sound back at the dance floor, which is why a small rig can feel big indoors. Canvas does the opposite. It soaks sound up and lets the rest drift out across the field, so a rig that filled your mate's village hall can sound thin in a marquee twice the size. The answer isn't turning it up until it distorts, it's bringing speakers sized for the space in the first place. When I quote for a marquee I'll ask the tent size and layout, then bring kit that covers the whole floor at a level people can still talk over at the edges.
If the speeches are happening in the tent, a wireless mic through the DJ rig beats a hired karaoke speaker in the corner every time. Guests at the back of a long marquee simply will not hear your best man off his phone voice alone. I set the mic up and sound-check it before guests sit down, and it's there all night for announcements, the first dance intro and anything else.
Marquees go up in beautiful places, and beautiful places have neighbours who get up early. Plenty of farms and estates around Huddersfield set a music curfew or a volume limit as part of the booking, and some use a limiter that cuts the power if the sound goes over it. None of that ruins a wedding if you know in advance. Ask the landowner two questions when you book: what time does music have to stop, and is there a volume limit. Tell your DJ both answers and the night gets planned around them, big singalongs earlier, last song timed to the curfew instead of cut off by it.
Yorkshire rain is part of the deal and a marquee handles it fine. For the DJ end of things, three details matter. The decks want a solid, level floor, not grass, so make sure the hard flooring reaches the corner where the DJ sets up. The kit and the cabling need to stay dry coming in from the van, which is my job, but a parking spot near the service entrance makes a difference to how early everything is ready. And once the sun goes down a marquee is properly dark, so the lighting rig stops being decoration and becomes the thing that makes the tent feel like a venue.
The best marquee layouts put the dance floor and the bar in the same tent, close enough that nobody has to choose between a drink and a dance. If the bar ends up in a separate tent or back at the house, the party splits in half and the floor suffers. Put the DJ tight to the dance floor, not behind the top table, and leave the quiet seating at the opposite end so the grandparents can chat without shouting.
Not extra so much as the right kit. A tent has no walls to bounce sound back, so the rig needs to be sized for the space rather than turned up louder. I bring speakers that cover the marquee properly and a wireless mic that cuts through for the speeches.
A standard 13 amp supply near the dance floor end is usually enough for my rig. The main thing is telling your marquee or generator company the DJ is coming, so the sound isn't sharing a circuit with the caterers' ovens.
Rain itself is fine, marquees are built for Yorkshire weather. What matters is that the kit stays dry on the way in and the power connections are protected, which is standard practice for me. Heavy rain on canvas is loud though, so a properly sized rig matters more than ever.
Often, yes. Farms, estates and gardens sit near neighbours, and some sites set a curfew or a volume limit as a booking condition. Ask the landowner when you book. It's much easier to plan the night around a known limit than to have it enforced at 10pm.
Written by DJ Musha, a Huddersfield mobile DJ with 213 events under his belt, a fair few of them under canvas.