Well, if you haven’t seen them for five years since high school then I would expect they are not close friends. And I think if you send them a contract with your fee clearly laid out, there should be no misunderstanding. If you get the impression on the phone that they are hedging for a bargain because they knew you, you could use your husband as a scapegoat to back out of the deal (with his permission, of course!) But it really depends on how well you knew this friend back in high school and how much you value their friendship. Is it worth selling yourself short?

I think I would get a big ball of anxiety if anyone from my high school called me to play harp at their wedding. Those were some of the most awkward and insecure years of my life. To have people around that reminded me of that would definitely unglue me!

Good Luck~

Karen

I would just be like, “OK, great, I will fax you a copy of my contract and fee schedule”.

If it were a REAL friend (i.e. someone who would

If the value of your services is greater than what you’d spend on a wedding gift, then the gift of your services is out of line. If you’re comfortable with that, then tell them, just as you would anyone else, the cost. I’ve always done with with friends and it’s never been a problem.

If they call and ask then probably the best thing to do is send your contract with the fees, as you said. If it’s too far just tell them you can’t travel with the harp but that you’d be happy to refer them to someone who lives closer and then send them the numbers of some harpists from the AHS directory. You can always ask other harpists or call those harpists yourself to be sure they are qualified. All of this since they’re not clsoe friends.

I have played for free for three weddings that were friends getting married. I did this for several reasons. Either they asked and assumed they were paying but I know them well enough to know they didn’t have that kind of money (they were young college students) or they didn’t ask and I simply offered as something I would like to do for them because we are so close. In those situations I just approached them and said I would like to offer to play for the ceremony if they would like it but I knew they might want something or someone else and that’d be fine with me.

One thing I don’t do is offer or agree to play receptions for free. Each time I have only played the prelude and ceremony because that I think it very nice and a great gift to participate in the ceremony (especially in lieu of being a bridesmaid) but I think I would feel badly playing all during the reception while my friends were enjoying themselves without me.

Tonya the one wedding per person is