Questions to Ask Before Booking a Magician
A group of wedding guests react with laughter and delight during a close-up magic performance, capturing the kind of genuine, in-the-moment reaction couples should look for when booking wedding entertainment.
Booking a magician for an important event requires you to make a judgement about quality in a field where most people lack the specialist knowledge to assess quality directly. You are trusting someone you have likely never met in person to deliver an experience that reflects directly on you, on your occasion, and on the relationships the event is designed to strengthen or celebrate. Asking the right questions before you commit to a booking closes the gap between that trust and the evidence on which it is placed — and the specific questions below will help you identify the performers who are genuinely right for your event and avoid those who are not.
Can I see footage of real performances — not just a showreel?
This is the single most important question to ask, and how a performer responds to it tells you a great deal before you have seen a frame of footage. A polished showreel is a curated highlights package — edited for maximum impact, potentially drawing on footage from multiple years of work, and showing only the moments that were successful. What you need to assess is not the best moments from a career but the real texture of a real performance: real venues, real audiences, genuine unscripted reactions, and the moments between the magic as well as the magic itself.
Watch footage from events comparable to yours specifically. If you are planning a corporate dinner for a hundred senior professionals, footage from a children's party or a stage performance tells you very little about how the performer will handle your audience. Ask explicitly for footage from corporate events, weddings, or VIP occasions comparable to the one you are planning. A performer who has genuine relevant experience will have this footage and will provide it without hesitation. A performer who offers only the same showreel when asked for specific real-event footage is one whose relevant experience in your specific context cannot be verified.
Watch the footage critically and with the right focus. Look at the performance as a whole rather than just the individual tricks — how the performer engages with individuals in real time, how they handle transitions, how they respond to unexpected reactions, and how they sustain the quality of engagement across the full arc of a performance rather than in isolated high points.
What specific experience do you have with events like mine?
Corporate dinners, weddings, trade shows, VIP hospitality events, and children's parties are genuinely different performance contexts requiring genuinely different skills, instincts, and experience bases. Experience in one does not automatically transfer to another, and assuming otherwise is one of the most common mistakes people make when booking entertainment. Ask specifically about experience comparable to your event — the size of the audience, the level of formality, the professional or social context, the specific type of venue.
Listen for confident, specific answers rather than generalised claims of adaptability and versatility. A performer who has done your type of event repeatedly will describe specific experiences that demonstrate real familiarity with the context — specific challenges they have encountered, specific things they have learned, specific ways in which they calibrate their performance to audiences of your profile. A performer who responds with general assurances about their ability to handle any situation is one whose specific experience in your context cannot be confirmed.
How do you tailor the performance to each specific occasion?
This question separates performers who are offering a bespoke service from those who are delivering a generic act regardless of the occasion. A professional who takes a genuine brief, develops material specifically for your event, and incorporates relevant details — your brand, your key messages, specific people in the room, the specific context of the client relationships involved — delivers an experience that is fundamentally more valuable than one who arrives with an identical set regardless of context.
Ask specifically about the preparation process. How long does it take? What information do they need from you? Have they developed entirely new routines for specific clients, and can they give examples? A performer who is genuinely invested in bespoke preparation will be able to describe this process in specific detail and with genuine enthusiasm. A performer who is primarily focused on confirming the fee and the running time is one who is treating your booking as a slot rather than a project — and the performance on the night will almost certainly reflect that approach.
A magician performs a close-up coin trick for two delegates at a business networking event, their expressions capturing genuine surprise — the kind of engaging, memorable interaction worth asking about when booking entertainment for corporate events.
Are you insured, and can you confirm the details?
Public liability insurance is a non-negotiable requirement for any professional performer working at events. Most venues specify a minimum level of cover as a condition of booking, and a performer who does not carry insurance at the appropriate level is one who is not operating to the professional standard the events industry requires. Ask for confirmation of insurance cover, the specific level of indemnity, and whether it covers the type of event you are planning. A professional will provide this information immediately, clearly, and without any apparent surprise at being asked.
Any hesitation, vagueness, or suggestion that insurance is unnecessary for your type of event should be treated as a signal of concern. This is not an optional detail of professional practice — it is a fundamental requirement, and its absence or inadequacy reflects on the overall standard of professionalism that the performer brings to their work.
What happens if you are unable to perform on the day?
This question is rarely asked and genuinely important. The circumstances that could prevent a performer from honouring a booking — unexpected illness, a family emergency, a serious travel disruption — are uncommon but not impossible, and a truly professional performer has thought carefully about what happens in those circumstances and has a plan in place. This might involve a network of professional colleagues of equivalent standard who can step in, a professional association through which a replacement can be sourced at short notice, or a clearly defined contractual position on refunds and remedies.
A performer who has no answer to this question, or who responds with vague reassurances that "it won't happen," is one whose contingency planning is inadequate. For a major event where the entertainment is a significant element of the occasion, this matters. Confirm that a genuine and specific plan exists before signing any contract.
What does the contract cover, and what are the cancellation terms?
Any professional performer will provide a written contract covering the material terms of the booking — date, time, location, duration, fee, payment schedule, cancellation policy, and any specific requirements relating to the performance. Read this contract carefully before signing. Understand the cancellation terms on both sides — what your financial exposure is if you need to cancel, and what your recourse is if the performer cancels or fails to deliver. A professionally drafted contract protects both parties and is a direct marker of the seriousness with which the performer approaches their professional commitments.
A performer who is reluctant to formalise the arrangement in writing, or who provides a contract so brief or vague as to be essentially meaningless, is one whose approach to the professional aspects of the booking does not meet the standard that significant events require. The contract is not just legal protection — it is a reflection of the professional character of the person you are considering booking.
Can you provide references from comparable events?
Beyond reading online reviews, it is entirely reasonable to ask for direct references from previous clients at events similar to yours. A performer with a genuine track record of delivering extraordinary experiences for clients comparable to you will provide these without hesitation, and the conversations that result are among the most valuable pieces of pre-booking research you can do. Ask specifically about the quality of the preparation process, the level of bespoke tailoring, the impact on the atmosphere of the event, and whether they would book the same performer again. The answers to these specific questions will tell you everything you need to know about whether this is the right performer for your occasion.
The ongoing relationship after booking
The questions above focus primarily on the pre-booking evaluation process, but the assessment of whether you have made the right choice continues into the relationship itself. A genuinely professional performer maintains the same standard of engagement after the contract is signed as they demonstrated before it. They stay in communication as the event approaches. They are responsive to changes or updates to the brief. They arrive on the day with the same professionalism they brought to the initial consultation. And after the event, they follow up — genuinely interested in how the performance landed, open to feedback, and invested in whether the outcome matched the objectives set out at the beginning of the process.
This continuity of professional engagement — the same standards maintained across every phase of the booking, from first conversation to post-event follow-up — is one of the clearest available indicators that you have made the right choice. A performer who is excellent in the consultation and then goes quiet until the morning of the event is showing you something about their professional standards. A performer who maintains genuine, proactive engagement throughout the entire relationship is showing you something equally revealing — and considerably more reassuring.
To find out how these questions are answered in practice, visit my corporate events page.
Have more questions before booking? Get in touch — I'm always happy to have a straightforward, open conversation before any commitment is made.
Ready to ask the right questions? Get in touch and let's talk about your event.