How to Find Cheap Live Entertainment for Your Christmas Party

When planning your next Christmas party, you may want to go with some nice live entertainment rather than trying to put together some mix CD's or play lists for your iPod to play during the party. Although live entertainment is great because it allows you to have more fun with your guests while they take care of the entertaining, live entertainment can also be very pricey. Here are some ideas on how to find cheap live entertainment for your upcoming Christmas party.

1. One place that you can locate cheap live entertainment for your holiday parties is by checking with local university's that have music departments, or other music or voice schools. Students often need money for the holidays themselves. Since students often do not book entertainment jobs throughout the year, they will have cheaper pricing since they are not professionals.

2. With a Christmas party, just a pianist can go a long way. Having a crowd gathered around a piano/keyboard and singing Christmas Carols together is very warm and nostalgic.

3. Another great way to locate cheap live entertainment is by searching through sites that provide profiles for different live entertainment. This is wonderful because you can easily see what prices are running and you can see customer's reviews for any entertainment that you are considering. One thing that I discovered during my wedding preparations is that you can actually negotiate the price of the entertainment down if you let them know you have gotten a cheaper quote from someone else.

You may be able to find some sites that are specific to your area, but a national one I would suggest and Gig Masters: www.gigmasters.com

There are some additional things that you can negotiate with your live entertainment in order to get the price cheaper.

1. You can have them play for only a portion of your party. By having a band or DJ earlier in the night you can really get the party off to a great start. After that you can move onto your favorite mixes that you've put together yourself. Or, if you are having a dinner party, play your own music for the cocktails and then move on to the live entertainment later.

2. Consider seeing if the live band can be assembled with fewer of the members at a cheaper price. Sometimes bands will also offer to use some prerecorded background music to fill in for having less members of the band.

3. Negotiate down the contract by allowing for longer breaks and offering to allow the entertainment to be well fed for the party.

The important thing to remember when you are choosing cheap live entertainment for your Christmas party is that a little can really go a long way. By using some of the suggestions above you will be able to find the perfect entertainment while keeping within your budget.