Why hire The Bloom Trio when those college kids are cheaper?
Hello and welcome to my first blog post! I’m very excited you’re here.
To get us started, I wanted to talk about why I think hiring a professional string ensemble is so important for your wedding.
Budget is always a huge concern for weddings. We at The Bloom Trio know that very well.
That is why we formed as a trio in the first place. By having 3 musicians, you get the best of both worlds.
The lush, full, romantic string sound of melody (violin), harmony (viola) and bass (cello). A string quartet adds a second voice of harmony and while amazing for Beethoven, Brahms and Bartok string quartets - we don’t feel like it’s necessary for weddings.
You only have to pay for three musicians!
So already we’re ahead of the curve there, for you. :)
The next thing that is so valuable when hiring your wedding musicians is to consider their experience.
When I do the math, between all the musicians that play with The Bloom Trio, we have over 100 years of combined experience playing at weddings. Crazy, right? Cause none of us are THAT old.
Many of us started playing weddings in high school with string quartets of fellow students or even our older sister in cellist Lisa’s case, herself a professional violinist in NYC! I played lots of weddings through my college years, helping to pay rent (and for beer on the weekends!)
Now, we were all pretty good in high school and college, don’t get me wrong! Lisa, our founding cellist, spent her summers at Interlochen and went to Eastman Conservatory - one of the best music schools in the world! Maria, our founding violinist, went through El Sistema in her home country of Venezuela, a music education system that is so successful at creating amazing musicians it is being replicated all over the world.
Everyone who plays with The Bloom Trio went on to further their education in music and hold college degrees in Music. Our musicians hold degrees from some of the most celebrated programs in the country and most of us hold Masters degrees in music too. A few of us are even doctors! (A DMA = Doctorate in Musical Arts) We’re a pretty smart and well practiced crew!
Another thing that makes The Bloom Trio truly distinct, is that we are all musicians for our jobs. Playing violin, viola or cello isn’t just something we do on the side. We’re not lawyers during the week and a “weekend warrior” playing a wedding or two on the weekend. No, we all perform and teach music. Really! You can make a living playing music and we all do.
Even with all those accolades in our teenage years, our years of training in college and having made music our livelihood- where our group truly shines comes back to that one word: EXPERIENCE.
I know for a fact the weddings gigs I played in high school tended to be disorganized. Our music was all over the place and we got nervous. We messed up. We were just kids, after all, without the confidence or authority to interact with fellow wedding professionals.
I’ve played weddings with non-musicians in the past and experienced a similar level of discomfort (along with a lack of proficiency on their instrument) It’s a scary thing to consider when you’re entrusting the most magical moment of your wedding - your walk down the aisle - to people who don’t play their instrument every day, have tons of performing experience both on stage and at weddings or simply don’t have the wedding experience under their belts.
Our professionalism extends beyond our playing to our customer service as well.
The Bloom Trio is my baby and I take being her CEO very seriously. Emails are answered promptly. I hire only the best professional musicians to play with us. I work with fellow wedding professionals, like wedding planners and officiants, to make sure the ceremony is seamless. We always show up in a timely manner, dressed professionally.
So we might be more expensive that a high school, college or amateur group - we get that! But we also know that you’re paying for a group of true professionals to take your wedding day as seriously as if it were our own!
You wouldn’t hire a high school kid to bake your cake or make your dress and you probably wouldn’t hire a doctor to take your photos either. So why do that with your wedding music?
I hope you will keep all this in mind as you plan the music for your wedding. I always say it, cause it’s always true - We are honored to play at every wedding we’re asked to do. I hope we can play for yours too!
Please feel free to reach out to me or comment below if you have any questions! :)
