How much does a violinist cost for a wedding?
How much salary do you have to plan for to be a professional violinist?
The fees for a really good wedding violinist are currently (beginning of 2025) around €350 to €600 for a wedding ceremony lasting 45 minutes to a good hour. Of course, there are also colleagues who demand significantly more.
The price increases with the musical arrangement of a subsequent champagne reception, background music at dinner or music at the party.
Travel costs are usually charged extra.
Why is the cost of a violin player so high?
To answer this question, you have to go into detail and first talk about the person and the instrument.
The violinist
Playing the violin is a very demanding art. In order to really master it, you almost necessarily need to study at a state music college for around 10 semesters under a famous professor with the appropriate degree.
Bridal couples want the violinist to create an emotional, romantic atmosphere for their weddings. Booking a musician who doesn't even have a music college degree is a very big risk. Insecurity, scratching, unclean or even wrong tones would be a huge disaster in the most important moments of the wedding ceremony on the most beautiful day of your life.
However, you can only start studying music if you have passed a very demanding entrance exam. To do this, you need to take individual violin lessons many years beforehand, i.e. as a child, practice daily and train for competitions.
Everyone can work out for themselves how expensive that is.
During their studies, ambitious students generally complete several master classes with great soloists, which are very expensive.
But it's not over after the studies. A really good violin education is complemented by internships or temporary contracts in state cultural orchestras, because here you get the finishing touches for a stylish artistic interpretation of the most diverse musical styles (including pop, rock and musicals, as the repertoires of almost all theaters also include these musical styles), you learn a really economical, professional way of working and gain the necessary stage experience to be able to deal with stage fright in a relaxed manner.
This means that the entire training to become a professional violinist takes at least 12 years. Many of my colleagues started playing the violin at the age of 3 or 4 and did not complete their entire training until they were in their late twenties, meaning they had been learning for more than 20 years.
But even then, the practice never stops. Since playing the violin is a high-performance sport for the hands and upper musculoskeletal system, you have to train throughout your life to maintain flexibility and technical skills. In addition, you have to constantly learn new pieces of music and recall your repertoire.
(Note: No one would expect a professional footballer to play a match successfully on Saturday if he had not trained and kept fit the whole week beforehand. So why do some people think that a musician does not need to practice after completing his training?)
The instrument
The prices for professional violins are so high that, for safety reasons for myself and my colleagues, I don't want to give any concrete figures here, just this much:
If you couldn't buy at least a new car for the price of your violin, you wouldn't even need to start your professional career, you wouldn't stand a chance against the competition. The prices are completely open-ended, as the value of a violin is not only calculated by purely craftsmanship, technical and sound aspects, but also by its antique value.
The comparison with a car is not far-fetched. A violin and a bow also have to be inspected by a violin maker about once a year. The violin maker checks whether there are any open spots (wood is known to move), whether there are any breaks, scratches or cracks, smoothes the fingerboard, adjusts the sound of the violin, rehairs the bow and repairs any paint damage.
In the worst case scenario, the violin may have had an "accident" and there is still a lot more work to be done and replaced.
The costs for this can also be compared to the corresponding workshop prices for a car.
New strings also have to be put on regularly. A set of professional violin strings generally costs between €90 and €150 and is due at least four times a year.
This means that a musician must recoup the purchase costs and maintenance of his instrument during his professional life.
This means that a musician must recoup the purchase costs and maintenance of his instrument during his professional life.
In classical music, a violinist takes her violin, puts on a suitable dress and drives to the concert hall/opera house, where everything is already ready for her: the music stands are set up, the orchestra manager has placed the sheet music provided by the employer on the desks, and for studio recordings, professionals have already installed the technology, set it up and positioned the microphones.
A wedding violinist has to buy all of this equipment herself, prepare it and bring it to the location.
The microphone
A good professional violin produces enough sound to be able to get by in small rooms, concert halls with good acoustics and in churches without microphone amplification. Even outdoors in locations without background noise, its sound is sufficient for a certain radius.
In other rooms, especially in certain conditions (e.g. very low ceilings, lots of carpet, background noise) or outdoors, a microphone may be necessary. This should be a high-quality clip-on microphone that is specially designed for violins.
A professional violinist brings such a microphone with her and is on site in time on the day of the event to do a sound check before the guests arrive, usually at least an hour beforehand.
The system and other equipment
Not many pieces of music that are suitable for the musical arrangement of weddings can be played by a violinist completely solo without any accompaniment. For musical reasons, it is often necessary to add rhythm and harmonies to make the music sound meaningful.
Pop and rock music in particular cannot be played without accompaniment playback, unless there are other musicians there to accompany them.
The violinist must therefore provide the accompaniment system herself and ideally bring her own equipment. This works independently, but can also be coupled with the DJ's system if necessary after consultation with him on site.
To accompany a violin, a single high-quality box is sufficient to output the accompaniment playback by connecting it to a tablet or smartphone and, if necessary, to amplify it with a microphone.
But a single loudspeaker box must also be purchased at some point and also has a certain transport weight (approx. 17 kg). The total weight of the equipment should not be underestimated. With a violin case, music stand, music lighting, tablet, box, microphone plus phantom power adapter, music bag and performance clothing, it easily adds up to more than 32 kg.
The sheet music
Sheet music costs money. Even if the violinist had to play from memory during the performance in order to be able to move freely, she would have had to buy the sheet music at some point in order to rehearse the music. Learning pieces of music purely by ear is much more time-consuming and therefore economically pointless.
The accompanying music
A collection of music suitable for accompanying a violin also incurs costs, but above all a lot of working time.
Sound files are often only available for a fee, but in most cases are not immediately suitable for accompanying a violin, and often have to be edited in the home studio (which of course also requires considerable investment).
With purely classical music, the problem is that the accompanying music is often only available in versions for students, so the quality is relatively poor, which is why it is better to make your own recordings.
With pop and rock music, you can buy a karaoke version for almost all pieces of music. However, this usually has to be cut and tuned to a suitable Hertz number, because nobody wants the violinist to constantly retune her violin to the respective playbacks during a wedding ceremony. In addition, synthetic sounds often sound very unpleasant in combination with the sound of the violin. Sounds such as synthesizers, electric guitars, sound effects, etc. should be filtered out so that the overall sound is harmonious. Sometimes it is also necessary to replace musically important background singers with a recording of a sound track from a classical instrument (e.g. piano or cello, which harmonizes well with the violin). All of this takes a lot of work.
Advertising and accounting
A musician incurs additional operating costs through the creation and operation of a website, advertisements and other advertising measures, otherwise people would not be able to find her and find out about her offer.
A professional violinist will also communicate sufficiently with the customer by email or telephone, discuss all the details, create a proper order confirmation and an invoice and also take care of the other accounting, just like any other self-employed person. All of this time is also included in the processing of the order.
Specific order processing
Once the music program has finally been agreed and agreed with the customer, preparation begins specifically for this performance. If pieces of music are requested that are not yet in the repertoire, they must be rehearsed in good time before the date and a suitable accompanying playback must often be produced. I will soon publish what this means in detail in a separate article entitled “Requested song”.
A few days before the performance, a responsible musician will collect the relevant sheet music, play through repertoire pieces again and refresh them if necessary. If music is to be played from memory, gaps in memory must be found and eliminated. The violinist creates a playlist of accompanying music specifically for this event so that she does not have to search through her sound files during the performance. It is also a good idea to look into the journey and logistical details of this exact location in advance.
Now it is finally here: the wedding day
When the date for the performance arrives, all the equipment is loaded and the journey begins. The corresponding travel costs (30 cents per km) are usually charged extra, but the time required is not. A responsible musician arrives on site well in advance to check parking options, organize the transport of the equipment, do a sound check and get changed and ready accordingly. It is unrealistic that the violinist will jump out of the car after several hours of driving in an evening dress, perfectly styled, and then lug 32 kg of equipment around. So she only changes on site.
Sometimes agreements have to be made, e.g. B. with the priest or the wedding officiant shortly before the ceremony.
Everything is completely installed and the violinist is in place at least 15 minutes before the start.
Only then does the actual performance begin.
After the end, everything is done in reverse: dismantling the equipment, changing, transporting it in the car and the corresponding journey home.
If you now consider the acquisition and operating costs that a professional violinist actually has to bear, deduct these proportionately from the fee and divide the remainder by the actual preparation time, you will quickly realize that the gross hourly wage for a person with a degree is not particularly high.