DREAM WITH US

 Go to our Contact Page and complete the enquiry form. Ensure to leave the date of your wedding & location, so we can check availability. We will contact you to arrange an Initial Consultation and chat. We will provide you with an estimated quotation, based on what you think you might like. Following that, we will send a Booking Form and information on how to pay the Booking Fee.

The non-refundable Booking Fee varies (€100 – €500) depending on which package and the number of musicians you’d like to book. 

Yes!  Many of our couples don’t know what instrument line-up they’d like at the time of booking.  We will chat through all of that during your consultations and will often recommend a line-up that will best suit your song choice.  We expect that you’ll have different ideas during the planning process and that’s okay!

After you’ve booked and your date is secured in our diary, we move onto the ‘Research’ phase.  During this phase we’ll have a 2nd Consultation and start to put your ideas together.  It’s not expected that you’ll have finalised your repertoire at this point, but more that you will have a general idea – certainly enough to inform the instrument line-up.  We will then set about booking your musicians.

This part happens for many couples a year in advance of their wedding date; and this is what we’d ideally recommend.  Many of our musicians play elsewhere and are in high demand, so early booking is recommended as much as possible, especially for peak wedding dates (weekends & summer months).

Yes!  As with any supplier on your wedding day, travel rates apply to cover the costs of fuel & time spent travelling to/from your venue.  Depending on your musician line-up and where they are each traveling from, we will always do our best to provide the best possible rate.  Please enquire for details and to see if we can travel to your wedding.

No, of course not!  Naoise will happily work with you to create an individual sound for your wedding and if that is all instrumental music, then that’s perfectly wonderful!

Unforeseen circumstances are part of life and every experienced, professional person you’re working with for your wedding day will have a ‘back-up plan’.  When hiring musicians, having a professional with a network of equally talented people they can call upon is absolutely essential. 

It’s all too common to read posts on social media from a bride who has been let down by their wedding musicians and are desperate to find somebody/anybody to step in.  While the online community is a wonderfully supportive place, full of people willing to help, the standards vary greatly. 

Unforeseen circumstances are part of life and every experienced, professional person you’re working with for your wedding day will have a ‘back-up plan’.  When hiring musicians, having a professional with a network of equally talented people they can call upon is absolutely essential. 

It’s all too common to read posts on social media from a bride who has been let down by their wedding musicians and are desperate to find somebody/anybody to step in.  While the online community is a wonderfully supportive place, full of people willing to help, the standards vary greatly. 

Encore Occasions couples can rest assured knowing we will never cancel your music.  Any singer or musician who becomes unavailable will be replaced with another, equally as qualified, trained & experienced.  This applies whether we have 2 months or 2 hours notice!  These circumstances are extremely rare!

Well, in our experience, no!  Civil, Humanist, Interfaith and other services are all very different, but should all be created for each individual couple, allowing their personalities to shine through.  Music is a huge part of this.  Aside from entrance & exit, we perform stand-alone songs, reflections, underscoring for poems, light touches while you’re lighting candles, handfasting or doing other rituals.  Music motifs here & there add warmth and help draw your ceremony together.  It’s only when you experience a ceremony like this that you’ll appreciate just what we mean!

There is a great wealth of hymns old and new to choose from.  We will work with you to find ones that are musically beautiful and have lyrics that speak to you.  Lots of songs can be played as instrumental music too, so if you have some special pieces you’d like to incorporate, we are experts at re-arranging them into soft, church-suitable versions that you’ll still recognise and love!

Absolutely yes!  Ceremony music is the one part of the day where your guests will be seated and actively listening to your music, so getting it right is extremely important.  There is nothing quite like live music, which can be adapted on the spot to suit the length of each moment during the ceremony.  It just doesn’t compare in any way to pre-recorded tracks.

[We’ve had many things go wrong on a wedding day, where our music kept guests entertained as they waited… e.g. for a delayed bride to arrive, for that moment when the candles wouldn’t light, for the time the priest was quietly drinking tea not noticing the bride had arrived, for the time the groom fainted, for the time the flower girl refused to walk up the aisle, for the time the best man fell off the hotel ‘stage/altar’ and broke his arm… the list goes on!]  And all of that is not even mentioning how live music enhances each moment of your wedding ceremony.

Absolutely not necessary.  We do 90% of our weddings with the equipment we own and supply as part of our standard packages.  We set up early and check the sound, sometimes adding a lift from an in-house system also, if required.  We take pride in ensuring our sound is heard and well balanced.

The addition of a specialist Sound Engineer has arisen on several occasions: e.g. when we have performed for music-industry couples, celebrity weddings or especially large venues that don’t have a good natural acoustic and generally only where our Majestic Option has been booked. 

Lifting the sound of each individual instrument with a musically experienced live sound operator means the sound can be balanced & fed across the Church/Venue equally to all areas.  Every guest experiences the music first-hand, like a true classical concert experience.  The bonus here is that the music can be recorded from the sound desk and provided to your videographers, who can then professionally mix your live music & their ambient sound into your wedding video.  Costs range from €400-€2,000 depending on the size of the rig.

Yes, we do.  We have performed all over the UK & Europe at wedding ceremonies and work with several International Wedding Planners, who trust Naoise to deliver the highest quality music to their clients.  Our experience, meticulous attention to detail, discretion and self-sufficiency are what make Encore Occasions an excellent choice for Destination Weddings outside Ireland.  Many involve only Naoise & David (Musical Director) travelling, with Naoise singing in 6 different languages and David speaking several European languages, communication with local vendors is usually not a problem.

See our Instagram Highlights for more on our Destination Weddings and live clips of us rehearsing with local orchestral musicians abroad.

Whether you’ve chosen Ireland as your destination or Ireland is your home, we work with couples planning their weddings from other countries all the time.  All of our meetings take place online, so location is never an obstacle.  Teaming native & orchestral instruments together, having songs in different languages and choosing specific repertoire are all wonderful ways to showcase music from a country close to your heart. Naoise will chat with you about how to strike this balance during your consultations.  This is the kind of work we do all the time and we love working with couples to get it absolutely right!