Seeing as we are specialists in string quartet hire for wedding music we thought we would share some quick pointers to London string quartet hire for your wedding! What is important to look for when researching string quartet hire?

1) Experience

We all love social media to keep up with our friends and who doesn’t love Pinterest for wedding planning! Have a look through the string quartet’s profiles and blogs (see ours to the left!) to see what latest performances they have been up to – some string quartet’s only play a couple of times a month together in peak wedding season. Where as the best London musicians for hire will play together several times a week all year!

2) Professional Musicians

Sadly there are groups put together by agencies or ones who pop up on the scene who are made up of musicians who have never met before, or non-pros playing as a hobby that just can’t provide the quality of an established group. For a stress free wedding booking from start to finish hire a quartet with lots of experience and 100% professional musicians. From Niche String Quartet’s experience of playing at 100s of weddings every year, organising and looking after things perfectly from the first enquiry takes a lot of hard work and you need lots of experience to make sure you can create the perfect bespoke experience every-time! 

3) Do they have everything they need?

Seen a group of talented musicians? Great! What makes a great string quartet for hire for weddings?

• Insurance – A lot of top wedding venues require at least £10million Public Liability Insurance
• Quality Equipment – For the best possible sound quality (to bring tears of happiness to your guests’ eyes!) Niche Quartet’s fine instruments are worth more than a brand new car…each! For amplified performances we have equipment worth over £2000 that is fully PAT tested ready for use at any type of venue
• Music – Do they have enough varied music to entertain your guests of all ages for hours? Is there that one song that you dream of walking down the aisle to – can they arrange to learn this song for you? Perhaps you need a certain type of string quartet music to fit your wedding theme. See our repertoire list filled with fantastic classical and modern wedding music, film music and more!
• Style – Are they presentable and flexible to fit with a formal black tie event, a Midsummer Summers Night dream themed ceremony (yes we have dressed the part at The Globe no less!) a Moulin Rouge party or a Disney Themed wedding!
• Love – Most importantly do they look like they love what they are doing! Helping couple’s have an unforgettable wedding, entertaining guests with live music performances that they have never seen the likes of before and making that once in a lifetime walk up and down the aisle perfect!

Look, Listen, Love…Niche London String Quartet <3

 

Lovely bride Samantha just sent a photo of us playing during her wedding ceremony at @pembroke_lodge ❤️ We played ‘All of Me’ for the her entrance and the new Mr&Mrs walked out to cheers and ‘Mr Brightside’ 😊 💕#NicheQuartet #YourEventMusic

A post shared by Kimi @ Niche String Quartet (@kimi_nichelondonquartet) on Dec 7, 2016 at 9:23am PST

2016 has flown by for the London string quartet but it has been an amazing year of nearly 100 performances throughout London, England and abroad for Niche London String Quartet! Highlights included playing for HRH The Duchess of Cambridge and travelling to France to perform for one of Britain’s most popular newspapers at Euro 2016 in the same week of this Summer! Playing for more beautiful weddings than ever before with every single one a different mix of our modern wedding music and classical string quartet favourites has been a privilege. Also surprise engagement proposals in London, birthday parties, corporate launches, events and parties.

Top wedding songs for this year’s wedding ceremony entrance music seemed to be:

romantic ‘All of Me’ by John Legend,

painfully beautiful ‘I Giorni’ by Einaudi,

and of course the always wonderful and touching string quartet music ‘Pachelbel’s Canon’.

But of course we have had an amazing mix of song choices, one that particularly stood out for us was when the string quartet played for a bride and groom who first saw us supporting their favourite rock band at The Underworld in 2012 and then asked us to come play their favourite song ‘I Created’ for their wedding too!

Favourite ideas for the best wedding ceremony music exit includes:

Niche Quartet playing ‘Stand By Me’,

Pharrell William’s ‘Happy’,

classical Beatles favourite ‘All You Need is Love’

and of course Bruno Mars ‘Marry You’!

Looking ahead 2017 dates have already been booking up with wedding ceremony music and reception performances for the string quartet, trio and duo across London and the majority of Spring and Summer weekends have already been reserved – if you are wedding planning and would like the best quality London entertainment for your wedding day do enquire soon! We hate having to turn couples away. 

Our next performances are at Asia House in Marylebone, Moor Park in Rickmansworth, and The Cafe Royal in Picadilly – Let’s see if we can be the busiest London String Quartet ever and play for over 100 weddings and events in 2017! 

Niche London String Quartet has been so busy these past 3 months, not only playing for weddings, parties and the hugely exciting NHS Awards Ceremony (More on that below!) but also preparing for a big list of spring and summer booking by writing and rehearsing all the new music requests!

At the end of February Niche – The London String Quartet travelled to the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to provide the London entertainment for the NHS Awards and the NHS Leadership Academy. For this evening the string quartet were providing our special amplified musical performance for corporate entertainment and were plugged into the ballroom room holding the champagne reception and the gorgeous star filled hall for dinner so the whole venue was filled with music and an atmosphere of anticipation from the very beginning.  

As more than 500 guests filled the venue they stopped to take photos with Niche London Quartet and also to make some special requests. The mood was electric and Niche Quartet kept the energy going all evening with performances of the latest chart hits and classical favourites. Just before the awards ceremony was due to start, as the string quartet’s big finish, Niche played “We are the Champions” and the excited guests filled the room with applause which set the scene perfectly for the award winners to be announced!

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These past months we have added lots of new modern wedding songs like Bruno Mars ‘Just The Way You Are’, which was written as the special request for Niche String Trio’s performance at Warren House in March. Niche played for 2.5hrs at the intimate and lovely wedding reception on a beautiful sunny day in Surrey. The children and guests were thrilled with the bride’s choice of mainly modern wedding songs with some classical favourites mixed in. By the end of the wedding reception the guests and all the children were dancing away and making requests for their favourite songs to be played. A throughly enjoyable performance for us.

2012 was a fabulous year for Niche – The London String Quartet! We played for Surprise Engagement proposals, including the exciting proposal at London Zoo filmed for National TV. We played for beautiful Summer weddings as a String Quartet and String Trio at some of the most stylish central London Venues to weddings in country palaces out in the home counties and snowy winter weddings in Hertfordshire. We responded to special requests and created and learned arrangements of songs from scratch so each Bride and Groom could make sure their perfect moment was completely unique.

Niche Quartet recorded our first CD of pieces picked from our ever growing repertoire lists and we were chosen to be the recommended supplier of wedding music and corporate entertainment for It’s The Agency’s prestigious London venues. We provided entertainment for joyous birthdays parties and wedding anniversaries, and a sold out London Rock gig with The Elijah.

Towards the end of the busy year we were nominated and shortlisted as Best Live Wedding Music Entertainment in London and the South East and we finished the year with a successful, romantic surprise Christmas engagement proposal.

It has been such a pleasure to be part of so many beautiful moments and lovely to hear the wonderful feedback from our clients and their guests.

All of Niche Quartet are looking forward to all the Weddings and exciting events we have booked in the diary for 2013 – do contact us here to see what we can do for you!

Christmas is always such a lovely time of year for Niche – The London String Quartet and it’s members!

We get to visit beautiful London hotels and venues, decorated  in all their Christmas glory and serenade Surprise Engagement Proposals – always such an exciting and uplifting event! The musicians have been working hard to create the perfect romantic moments all across London as a string quartet, string trio and solo violinists this year! Some plans are elaborate and some are simple, but all of them turn out absolutely beautiful and with our huge repertoire to choose from each one is unique.

We also have been entertaining at weddings with Winter Wonderland themes, playing under sparkling Christmas trees and filling venues with Christmas Carols and modern Christmas song favourites! It is such a busy time of year, but we love it!

If you would like us to be the musicians for your event don’t hesitate to contact us – we can also advise and help with bringing your ideas together to make your plans come to life!

Yesterday was our first December wedding and Niche – The London String Quartet travelled out across the frosty fields of Essex to provide wedding music for a beautiful countryside wedding.

The venue was the lovely Maidens Barn and Niche had arranged and rehearsed plenty of new wedding music requests for the happy couple to enjoy. The String Quartet was hired for 3hrs to entertain guests with our modern music selections during the reception in the marque and then to move to the hall where dinner would be served and provide a different set of classical and Christmas songs. The important request was that the five songs that we had written specially for the brides were to be played when they were around to enjoy them with their guests and children – this was made possible by our large and varied experience of wedding entertainment and of course the careful timing of our flexible setlists.

All of Niche were excited for this to be the first outing of some of our latest Christmas songs, ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Let it Snow’ and also to play old traditional favourites such as ‘Deck the Halls’. Our arrangement and performance of Kirsty’s favourite song Iris finished to applaud by the guests and people were tapping their toes and children dancing as we played the special romantic wedding song requests One Day Like This, If Your Not the One, Only Girl in the World, All My Life, and You Give Me Something. It was a beautiful wedding with a high level of fun and Niche were happy to add something extra special to the joyous atmosphere! Kirsty and Naomi were even kind enough to quickly come out to say that our performance was everything they’d dreamed of as we finished our set, which to Niche means it was a complete success.

Congratulations Kirsty and Naomi!