Have I bit off more than I can chew?

Yes on both counts.

I have the K10s and their not going to cut it for 300 people much less outside and the Ksubs aren’t going to do much of anything. You’d also need at least two gigbars and probably a couple moving heads to get any sort or respectable light show.

Definitely rent.

I’ve played a few shows outside and I’m guessing you’ll need a minimum of four 15’s. I can’t even begin to guess what you’d need for subs to make a prom crowd happy…but I’d say you’d need four 18s to start.

Try using 4 tops 15″ and 2 18″ subs. Put the tops on the four corners of the dance area, preferably slightly higher and angled downward a bit (speaker stand adapters exist for just this purpose). All aimed roughly towards the center of the dance area.

Have the rental company deliver and pick up. Try to get discount. I usually manage to get between 10-25% discount, or get the insurance fee and transport free. It’s normally negotiable. Prices in their price list is what they would normally charge your end-customer and they understand you can’t charge more than that, but still would like to make some money.

While I wouldn’t worry too much about the gear thing (can always visit the venue and get eyes-on -always a good plan btw), but the “stick to the playlist” one is what would have turned me away instantly.

That is one of those can’t win situations. You are basically a human CD-changer/jukebox. If the playlist works, fine, but you get no pleasure out of it as you are just sticking other peoples choices on. If it doesn’t work, which is far more likely (almost 100% certain really) -after all, the pinnacle of DJ-ing is knowing what must come next at that particular moment, with that particular crowd- it’s on you and your reputation.

So with that additional information, this is one job I’d certainly skip.

I’ll usually accept some dont’s and some “please play” tracks or genres, but usually only when coming from the party folks (like wedding couple). Other than that, if you hire me to do a good DJ job, then let me do my thing. If you don’t trust me enough for that and think you can do something pretty much no DJ can, create a playlist in advance that will fully work on the night itself, then by all means be my guest, but I am not gonna be around for it.

Good luck with your decision.

Like I said, the mandatory playlist thing would have ended this one for me already, but if it hadn’t, this would have certainly done it.

BTW, it does show how important it is to know what to ask in advance and to ask all those things.

Take a look at the following chart and you can see that your max. levels will be between conversational speech at 1 meter away and a vacuum cleaner at the same distance. I can tell you from experience that a small crowd of people will EASILY produce as much as 70-80 dB when excitedly chatting. Granted, dB measurements are usually done at 10m from the source. And the good news about that is that if you halve the distance you gain 6db:
10m = 65
5m = 71
2,5m = 77
1,25m = 83dB, still not very loud, but better than 65. So those moving close to the speakers get “some” feeling of the music being played.

http://www.noisemonitoringservices.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Decibel-scale.jpg

Which means it is near impossible to do an actual DJ job as you are reduced to not only play like a Spotify playlist, but also at background music levels.

I am one to always push people to take any (paid) gig they can get, as there is always something to learn, but this would be a “purely for the money” thing for me.

I like this question

Who can authorize a request to continue past the defined end time?