AIBU to think this "wedding pianist" is unbelievably rude?

[Bamsmam]

We are getting married in April and have found a lovely venue which allows us to source music ourselves. I looked around options locally and they all charge a fortune for 5-6 hour packages which we don't really need - just someone to play a few tunes as guests arrive and during and after the ceremony, nice and quiet, nothing complicated.

A friend told me about a friend of hers who plays for weddings sometimes, not as a full time career because she does other music work too. So I got in touch with her, mentioned my friend's name, said what I wanted and asked for a quote. She came back to me with £220!! For a couple of hours piano playing! Surely this is money for old rope.

I wrote back and said I thought it was a little on the steep side and this is where the rudeness comes in. She actually messaged me back and said I should start taking lessons now myself and in ten years I'll be as good as her and can play for my next wedding! AIBU to think that this is extremely unprofessional and also a very unpleasant way to communicate with prospective customers?

My DH used to get £100-150 as pianist/organist for a playing a wedding ceremony, as (an accomplished) 6th former about 20 years ago! The 'real' church organist was more expensive.

Plus the stuff on the glockenspiel. That wedding could rock.

Lol, wonderful response. You are a total cheapskate and were incredibly rude. Lucky for you they have a sense of humour and didn't just tell you to fuck off.

Ha ha!

If she’s as good a pianist as she is a comedian, she’s worth five hundred quid, not two. 😀

The price was very fair, and the OP is an embarrassing cheapskate.

Team piano lady. She sounds amazing.

' mate's rates ' aren't you the cheeky one.

She is not your friend, she is a friend of a friend.

How much were the others charging for more hours ?

I could totally do that!
My weirdest request was 'My generation' by The Who!

OP, surely you can see that you are being at least a tiny bit unreasonable?

On the plus side, it’s given quite a few of us a good laugh on a Sunday evening. A contender for Mumsnet Classics I think…….

You know what's cheap? A comb and paper.

Ah were you expecting mates rates Op as you also dropped your friends name.
Team Pianist here also.

Wow YABVU
I was sure this was a reverse
Good for the pianist
You've missed out big time

@Bamsmam I agree with this - but I would like to know exactly what you said in your response to her. Not a vague - the quote was a bit steep. She may have been rude in her response, but can't tell unless I know exactly how you worded things to her.

For info, that was a good rate she gave you. A quick Google tells me that generally prices could be between £250 and £350 for a couple of hours

Am I the only person who'd never heard of a professional wedding pianist before this evening?

Is a wedding piano a special type of instrument, or what?

Assuming these performers are competent pianists with the additional skills (patience, teeth-gritting, bridezilla wrangling, smiling at wankers) to handle unreasonable clients, £300-£700 sounds rather low for half a day's work.

Do we think the op is one of these people…

‘Male’ roles - trades etc happily pays whatever they charge, wouldn’t dream of telling them their prices are on the steep side, and thinks £100 an hour is a bargain

‘female’ roles - hair dresser, beautician, cake maker, world never pay £100 an hour and will haggle down to a tenner given it’s not a proper job.

all roles detailed above are at a guess the same level of qualification, with an equalish requirement of GCSEs (a piano player being far higher qualified)

and yet one set are worthy of £100ph and one are not.

Do people still play the spoons?

Our church organist costs £350 just for the ceremony, which lasts less than an hour. I’d expect to pay a lot more than £220 for a wedding pianist, personally.

Money for old rope indeed.
How are you not even embarrassed to be even thinking this op.

She’s incredibly wrong!!!

in ten years you still won’t be anywhere near as good as her, despite spending a small fortune on piano lessons! 😂😂

wow….. 😬 £220 for wedding entertainment sounds very reasonable.

I would say you are out of touch with what "skilled" people are paid. Skilled labour is notoriously poorly paid in the UK. People in technical and engineering fields, PhDs with extensive knowledge of hands-on laboratory techniques, and people with knowledge of programming and IT systems can expect pay that is below average. Nothing like the colossal £600 per day that your husband is being paid.

Higher pay tends to be reserved for managers who are more involved with the non-technical decision making, and people who are responsible for managing other people or customers. The grunts who are actually doing the hands-on work are paid the least, even though they are the people doing the tasks that require skills.

£220 is a very high wage for a few hours work, by the way. Even if she only did that 5 days a week, she could expect to earn a high salary of £57k+ a year. The catch though is that work for musicians is unsteady and unpredictable; hence why she needs to charge a lot of money for a few hours of work.

The OP may be in for shock if she hasn’t yet got quotes for a photographer, cake, hairdresser etc!

Yes. I do. Happy to do two hours of professional wedding spoon playing for £50

😆😆😆

😆Did you also tell her she could add your event to her portfolio and you'd showcase her on your Insta, with your 500 followers?

Come on now. No-one actually thinks that £220 for a professional musician to play at their wedding is expensive. If you'd said £2200 I might have believed you.

People don't wake up one morning with a trade, or a skill. It takes money and hard work. You may think you're paying for 2 hours of someone's time, but you are not considering what they put into their craft to get them to that place. OP is a lunatic.

Playing the piano is such a skill that takes years to hone. You're paying for that level of expertise, it's not like paying someone £15 an hour. It also will take her most of the day to accommodate so it needs to be worth her while. If you can't afford bespoke that's fine but actually that quote is really reasonable.