Most Ceilidhs will last between 1 and about 3 hours. For wedding Ceilidhs, please bear in mind that you need to allow much more time than you might expect for EVERYTHING else happening during the day. So do allow plenty of time for photos, greetings and drinks, the meal, and especially for the speeches! Unless you take this into account, the Ceilidh will start later than you’ve planned, and the band will be sitting around for ages waiting to set up.
Bands usually do two dances in a row, then have a couple of minutes break for the panting dancers to have a slurp and a breather, then off we go again! If the Ceilidh Band is playing for the whole evening, they would usually take a mid-way break of about 20-30 minutes. This break is the best time to serve any buffet refreshments, to avoid splitting the evening more than necessary.

Bands sometimes play tunes in between pairs of dances to give the dancers a rest. If you want a Band to do songs as well as dancing, do check that a band sings - not all do!

Tapes or CDs may be played during this mid-way break if you wish - yours or our choice of music - that’s up to you. It’s OK to bring along your own compilation if you wish, but we strongly suggest you choose a style of music that is in keeping with the music played by the live band you have paid good money for!
If the evening is to be shared with a Disco, the Band would play for less time and then the longer break would happen naturally between the Band finishing and the Disco taking over (Juice can provide a Disco if requested).

We strongly advise against requesting a midnight finishing time. We’ve found that at weddings and other party Ceilidhs, people often start gently drifting away after 11.00pm / 11.30pm-ish, after a long, full day. Any Band always prefers to round off “on a high” at an earlier time, rather than going on for the sake of it with far less people and diminished enthusiasm.

Bands like to set up just prior to the anticipated start time and should be able to set up quickly and discreetly in about 30 minutes. Avoid booking any band which says it needs more time than this to set up - It’s not necessary for a band to arrive in a morning to set up then go away and come back later.

There will always be people at Ceilidhs or Barn Dances who have never done this sort of interactive social dancing before and therefore need more guidance than others who may already have been to a few Ceilidhs in the past. The Caller really runs the whole evening, and the key to a successful and fun dance is finding an excellent Caller who does his / her job with competence and humour- more of an entertainer than teacher. If you’re worried abut “getting it wrong” - be reassured that a Caller would never expect people to get every step of the dance correct - the object is to have fun! It’s usual to be walked through the whole thing before the music starts, so no one is left wondering what to do next.

When booking a band and caller for a Ceilidh, it’s important to ask lots of questions about the Caller as well as the Band. There is nothing worse than a Caller who gets impatient with people if they go wrong - although we reckon that’s part of the fun of a Ceilidh, when people go a bit hay-wire and it occasionally all ends up in a heap of giggling bodies!

Our own regular Caller is particularly wonderful - he does a great job of making people feel at ease when invited onto the floor and he is good at persuading people politely that they really should get off their backsides and dance NOW!!!