bride Archives » Angelina Egerton

The ultimate guide to booking a harpist for your wedding.

So you’re getting married? Congratulations! You’d like a harpist to play for your wedding? You obviously have excellent taste. I thought I’d write this guide for happy couples to try to answer some of the questions I get asked when being booked to play for a wedding.

The first thing to do is email me (my email address is angelinawarburton@gmail.com). I’m very friendly and would love to hear from you. We can chat about anything you like but it’s helpful if I have the following information:

1. The date and venue of your wedding

This is vital information to know from the start as I’ll be able to tell you immediately if I’m available. Knowing the venue from the start is great too as it means I can give you an accurate quote (see my page of standard fees). There may be a small extra charge if a change of venue is required (for example, if your ceremony is in a church but your reception is in a hotel).

2. Which part of the wedding would you like harp music for?

There’s lots of choice for you here. Most weddings have three main ingredients:

Ceremony
Drinks reception
Wedding breakfast

I am able to play for any combination of the above. When it comes to the ceremony, obviously the music is of utmost importance – let me know your choice of entrance and exit music as soon as you have decided, if you have a specific choice for the signing of the register, let me know that too and I’ll get practising!

p.s. ask me to email you my repertoire list too

Drinks reception and Wedding breakfast both simply require background music (up to two hours for drinks or three hours for breakfast).

3. Are there any special arrangements needed?

Aha… here’s the tricky bit.

A harp is worth anywhere between £16,000 right the way up to £50,000 and more, so we need to look after them very carefully.

Ideally, a venue will have the following:

A reserved car parking space near an accessible entrance – stairs are the enemy here. Think like a dalek. If there are a lot of stairs it’s not the end of the world, we may just need to make sure some staff are on hand to help me with any heavy lifting I may need to do. That’s what the best man is there for, right?
A place for the harp to be played that isn’t in anybody’s way but also isn’t too near a radiator/open fire

A little note about playing outside – it is possible, if the following are available:

Shelter from the sun/rain – lots of venues have parasols that can be put up – trees aren’t enough I’m afraid
Somewhere nearby to put covers and my trolley just in case the weather changes and I need to make a dash for it

Having said all this, if you have any questions, let me know and I’ll do my best to accommodate your wishes. I’m here to enhance your special day.

Ok, next. We’ve arranged the date, venue, any music requests and agreed on the fee, phew! Almost done, now we just need to make it official.

All harpists will have a different system here. But here’s mine:

I’ll email you a contract to confirm all the details of your wedding
A 50% deposit will be payable immediately
The remaining fee is due two weeks before the big day
The big day arrives, wonderful music happens, happiness ensues.

So there you have it! The ultimate guide to booking a harpist for your wedding. I really hope this helps, if you have any questions, just drop me an email – I’d love to talk through any queries you may have.

November Catch Up…

15 January 2015 1 Comment

This blog has been quiet for a while so I thought this week’s post should address that and get you all up to date with the last few months of 2014 – my favourite time of the year for a number of reasons.

For the first gig of November I was playing for a Vintage Wedding Exhibition at the Bowden Rooms in Altrincham with the lovely flautist Anna Rosa Mari.

We definitely kept it professional (profesh??) at all times:

Next on the agenda was Bonfire Night – a rather weird claim to fame I can make is that I went to the same school as Guy Fawkes. I think everyone who went to St. Peter’s School in York has to mention this at some point during November 5th.

Now then, I am a tall girl, but in the huge crowd that gathered in Platt Fields Park in Manchester to watch the bonfire all I could really see was the fire, on the screens of the smartphones of the people around me. I don’t get why you would take a picture or a video of a big fire? Just enjoy it guys! Anyway, after the fireworks we rushed off for a Rusholme curry on the way home, the perfect way to warm up after standing outside for most of the evening. I think this needs to be our new Bonfire Night tradition.

The day after Bonfire Night is my Dad’s birthday so we decided to make the drive over to York to surprise him – these are appropriate for a man in his early eighties right??

The following weekend I had three gigs! Three gigs in two days! The first was a Fauré Requiem in Doncaster in honour of Remembrance Day:

Then on Sunday I was playing for a wedding in Bury:

This was then followed by another Fauré in St. Ann’s Church in Manchester.

I’m sure you’ll gather that this weekend was slightly crazy – it’s so good to be busy though.

On Tuesday 11th November it was my birthday so I decided to visit Dough in the Northern Quarter with a few friends, the food was amazing and we had a really lovely evening:

I also received this beautiful necklace from Marten, I don’t think I’ve taken it off since then! I love it:

The rest of the birthday week could have been a little more pleasant to be honest – it involved a dentist visit and spending a lot of money on my car to get it through its MOT. But enough of that! Let’s move swiftly on to the 22nd of November. I had a gig in Sheffield (my favourite) to play the Debussy Nocturnes and Holst’s The Planets. This gig was rather exciting as the other harpist was Calum Macleod and we could fit both harps in his van! So that meant no driving for me! I could definitely get used to that.

I’d never played the Nocturnes before, they are amazing – especially the third movement Sirènes, you can actually hear the mysterious song of the Sirens over the swirling sound of the sea and the waves – it’s breathtaking. The Planets will always be a favourite of mine too, the violence of Mars, the beauty of Venus, the mystery of Neptune, and Jupiter, the tune of which used to be a favourite hymn at school (who remembers the classic 295 ‘I Vow to Thee my Country’?)

Fast forward to the end of the month, the final gig of November was at Leeds Uni, playing Stravinsky’s Symphony in three movements. This piece is very cool and I suggest you have a listen if you’re unfamiliar. There’s lots of harp and the part is substantial so it’s a really good project to get stuck into.

This post was originally going to be November and December but it’s become so big I’m going to have to split it into two separate posts. Stay tuned for more craziness in December’s catch-up post.