The contract is signed. The date is on your calendar. Now you need a few dozen answers from the couple: the first dance song, how the maid of honor pronounces her last name, whether explicit lyrics are okay while the grandparents are still on the floor. Collect all of that over scattered texts and something slips through. It usually surfaces at the worst possible moment, with a microphone in your hand.
The fix is a wedding DJ questionnaire: a structured planning form you send once, so everything you need to run the night lives in one place instead of a dozen text threads. To figure out what belongs on it, we analyzed 765 wedding and DJ music planner questionnaires that working DJ and event businesses use on Check Cherry. Over the last two years, more than 20,000 wedding questionnaires like these were attached to confirmed events. This is not theory. It is what DJs who do this every weekend actually ask.
Below is the full template, grouped by the part of the night each question covers. Every one earned its place by showing up again and again across those planners. Copy it as is, or trim it to fit your style.
How long should a wedding DJ questionnaire be?
The typical wedding DJ questionnaire has 28 questions. The middle half run 14 to 41. That is longer than most new DJs expect, and the instinct is to trim hard so you do not scare the couple off.
The data says the opposite. Wedding questionnaires with 25 or more questions were completed 62% of the time, compared to 53% for wedding questionnaires overall. The same pattern holds platform-wide across every event type: the longer, more detailed forms get finished more often, not less.
Some of that is selection. Businesses that build thorough planners also tend to set expectations and follow up well. But the takeaway holds either way: a detailed planner does not scare couples off. It reads as proof that you know exactly how a wedding runs, and couples engage with it. The forms that get ignored are the thin ones.
The wedding DJ questionnaire template
Here is the template, organized the way most real questionnaires organize it. Every question earned its place by showing up again and again across those 765 planners.
Key songs
These are the moments where the wrong song is unrecoverable, and they are the most common questions on wedding DJ questionnaires. First dance leads the list.
- First dance song
- Last dance song
- Cake cutting song
- Bouquet toss song
- Garter removal and toss song
- Father and daughter dance song
- Mother and son dance song
- Anniversary dance song
- Grand entrance song
- Any custom songs or special dedications
Ceremony music
Skip this section if you only run receptions. If you cover ceremonies, these five cues are the whole job, and a mistimed processional is the one everybody remembers.
- Prelude music, played while guests are seated
- Processional song for the wedding party
- Entrance song for the bride, or for each partner
- Interlude music for a unity ceremony, sand ceremony, or candle lighting
- Recessional song for the walk back up the aisle
Timeline and announcements
You are the emcee as much as the DJ, and this is the section that makes couples say the night flowed. The introduction question matters more than it looks: it is where you catch name pronunciations before you say them into a microphone.
- Ceremony start time
- Guest arrival time
- Cocktail hour start time and music style
- Reception start time
- Wedding party introductions, in order
- How would you like to be introduced?
- Welcome toast and blessing: who gives each?
- Dinner service time and dinner music style
- Toasts and speeches: who is speaking, and in what order?
- Honeymoon send-off or grand exit plans
Preferences and guardrails
This section prevents the worst failure mode a DJ has: the right song for the wrong room. Across the templates we analyzed, 53% ask whether the DJ can take guest requests and 37% ask whether explicit lyrics are allowed. Both questions turn a judgment call at 10pm into a decision the couple already made.
- What are your favorite genres and artists?
- Can the DJ take guest requests?
- Are explicit lyrics allowed?
- Do-not-play list
- Anything else we should know?
People
Names, so your announcements land. Vendors, so the night runs coordinated. The photographer question is really a coordination question: announce the cake cutting a few minutes early and the photographer is in position instead of across the room. Those vendor names are also referral leads. Photographers, planners, and venues send couples to the people who made their last event run smoothly, so the DJ who coordinates well on the night, and follows up with a thank-you after, is the one who gets recommended for the next one.
- Parents of the bride, by name
- Parents of the groom, by name
- Photographer, name and company
- Videographer, name and company
- Estimated guest count
Copy the full wedding DJ questionnaire
Here is every question above in one place. Copy it into your form builder or planning software, then delete the sections that do not fit the events you run.
Key songs
First dance
Last dance
Cake cutting
Bouquet toss
Garter removal and toss
Father and daughter dance
Mother and son dance
Anniversary dance
Grand entrance
Custom songs or dedications
Ceremony music
Prelude
Processional
Bride or partner entrance
Interlude
Recessional
Timeline and announcements
Ceremony start time
Guest arrival time
Cocktail hour start and music style
Reception start time
Wedding party introductions, in order
How would you like to be introduced?
Welcome toast and blessing
Dinner service time and music style
Toasts and speeches, in order
Honeymoon send-off or grand exit
Preferences and guardrails
Favorite genres and artists
Can the DJ take guest requests?
Are explicit lyrics allowed?
Do-not-play list
Anything else we should know?
People and logistics
Parents of the bride, by name
Parents of the groom, by name
Photographer, name and company
Videographer, name and company
Estimated guest count
Should you embed a playlist or use song request fields?
Both patterns show up, but one dominates. Just over half (54%) of wedding DJ questionnaires embed a streaming playlist, from Spotify or a similar service, directly in the form. Couples build the playlist together over weeks, and you get a living picture of their taste instead of ten songs typed from memory. Another 20% use dedicated song request fields, which suit couples who want to hand you five must-plays and trust you with the rest.
There is no wrong answer here, so ask for both: a link to their playlist and a short must-play list. The playlist tells you who they are. The must-play list tells you what cannot be skipped.
When should you send the questionnaire?
Later than you would hope, if you leave the timing to the couple. About a third of completed wedding questionnaires are finished within a week of the event, and 15% come in within 48 hours. That is enough time to download songs, but not enough to notice that the processional song has no clean edit or that two family names need a pronunciation check. The cadence that works looks like this.
If your planning forms send those reminders automatically by email and text, the cadence runs itself. If it is you and a calendar, that works too. The point is that the deadline comes from you, not from the couple noticing the wedding is on Saturday.
Reminders will not reach everyone. Some couples go quiet no matter how many nudges you send, often in the busy weeks right before the wedding. When that happens, stop chasing and offer a short final-details call. Fifteen minutes on the phone or a video chat, with the questionnaire open in front of you, is enough to capture the first dance, the must-play list, and the name pronunciations in one pass. A meeting like this is not a failure of the form. It reaches the couples who were never going to type it all out, and it doubles as a good touchpoint before the big day.
The questionnaire is the least glamorous document in your business and the one that saves you most often. Build it once from the template above, send it the day the contract is signed, and on the night of the wedding you are the DJ who pronounces every name right and never has to guess. Couples call that magic. It was a form. And if you are still putting your toolkit together, our guide to what to look for in DJ CRM software covers where the questionnaire fits in the bigger picture.
Build your wedding questionnaire once, reuse it every weekend
Check Cherry questionnaires come with streaming playlist embeds, song request fields, and automatic reminders built in, so the template above becomes a form you attach to every booking. No credit card required.
Start Free Trial