Helen Pfaff

Helen Pfaff's own site draws a line most singers' sites never have to. She doesn't just perform at a wedding, she writes the speech for it and delivers it herself, as what her site calls a "Zeremonienleiterin" and "freie Traurednerin." Her homepage names all 3 formats she'll work with: the civil ceremony at the Standesamt, a church wedding, or a freie Trauung, a non-religious symbolic ceremony. Whichever one it is, though, her own site is careful in the same sentence: "An eurem Hochzeitstag begleitet Helen gesanglich die Trauung," she accompanies the ceremony musically. The signing itself, wherever it happens, is a Swiss civil registrar's job, not hers, whether that registrar works from a desk in the registry office or somewhere else the canton has separately approved for it. Nothing on Helen Pfaff's own pages claims otherwise. She sings at the wedding and, if you book her for it, writes and reads the words around it. She does not marry anyone.

Getting to that speech starts with what her site calls a "Kennenlernen," a getting-acquainted step offered several ways: a face-to-face meeting, a phone call, or a video call over Skype or Zoom, with an email exchange as a further option on the Traurednerin page specifically. The stated point of a personal meeting cuts both ways: a trial appointment gets the couple a live sample of her voice, and gives her enough of what her site calls "die wichtigsten Ereignisse eurer Beziehung," the important events in the relationship, to build a speech around that story rather than a template. What comes back, by her own description, centers on the couple's love story, their personalities and their rings, with older ceremony elements folded back in only on request: read-aloud well-wishes from family and friends ("Fürbitten"), a chosen line to run through the ceremony as its thread ("Trauspruch"), and an entrance either sung live to guitar or walked to the traditional wedding march.

The music itself tracks the day rather than staying fixed. At the ceremony, her stated repertoire runs classic wedding songs, contemporary pop ballads, jazz standards and spiritual or religious pieces, alongside whatever the couple actually requests; nothing on the site names a genre or a song she won't play. After the vows, her own copy has her taking the apéro and dinner with what she describes as romantic, stylish and danceable music, and for dinner specifically the example given is guitar and vocals rather than a full band, closer to a soundtrack than a performance. Later in the evening the job changes hands: it's the wedding band, in her site's own phrasing, that "bringt Eure Gäste zum Tanzen," gets guests dancing, with a repertoire that widens to pop, rock, soul, classics, funk and salsa. As a DJane she describes mixing charts, classics and party music, Swiss hits included on request, while singing live over instrumental backing tracks rather than only cueing other people's recordings, so the DJ set is still her performing, not just her programming a playlist.

How much of that a couple books scales with the venue. Solo, she plays guitar and sings. The smallest full band her site names runs drums, piano and vocals, and scales up from there with musicians like a saxophonist added as the room or the budget allows. For a genuinely awkward venue, her site names something more specific than "flexible": a "Walk Act" for spaces with no stage and difficult access, played acoustically with no amplifier and no PA at all. Where a PA does come out, it's hers rather than a house system: 2 Bose units, a subwoofer and a top cabinet, a mixing desk, and a wireless microphone she offers separately for speeches and toasts, plus lighting made up of 8 single-colour LED units and 6 with moving coloured points, ceiling lighting, and a fog machine on request. Setup happens, by her own description, before guests are let into the room, so the walk-in moment is already scored, quiet background music or a first live song, rather than a band still testing microphones as the wedding party arrives.

Parts of the speech in English, a full one costs more

Her stated fluency is "perfekt Hochdeutsch und Schweizerdeutsch," standard German and Swiss German, and that's the default. Beyond that, her Traurednerin page draws a distinction most singers' sites don't bother making: parts of the speech can go into French, Spanish or English as a standard option, while a full speech in one of 8 other languages, English, French, Spanish, Serbian, Polish, Croatian, Italian and Portuguese among them, carries a higher price that the page doesn't put a figure on. Read plainly, a partly bilingual ceremony is routine, while a fully English-language speech is available but priced as an add-on rather than folded into the standard offer, worth knowing for a couple whose guest list will mostly be following in English rather than catching a phrase here and there.

On cost more generally, the site publishes almost nothing in figures. The one line that addresses it at all, on the same page, ties the fee to effort rather than naming one: "Der Preis von freien Zeremonien hängt vom Aufwand ab," the price of a freie Trauung depends on the work involved. Nothing is published for the singer, band or DJ services either, and the only booking guidance anywhere on the site is to reserve "so früh wie möglich," as early as possible, with no lead time given in weeks or months.

National reach, but Germany only shows up on the DJ page

Her homepage lists 12 regions rather than a hometown: Zürich, Bern, Basel, Luzern, Thun, Solothurn, Zug, Uri, Graubünden, Aargau, St. Gallen and Thurgau, attributed to mobile sound and lighting rather than a fixed base. Solothurn is one name among that list, not a stated home town, and no street address turns up anywhere on the site. The DJane page goes further and names Liechtenstein and Winterthur alongside a direct claim to work "in der Schweiz und in Deutschland," in Switzerland and in Germany. That cross-border line appears only there. The rest of the site doesn't repeat it, so it reads as a DJ-booking specific claim rather than a blanket promise to follow a couple's whole wedding weekend over a border.

A Radio Regenbogen nomination, a Fernsehgarten credit and 10 venues she recommends

A separate page on her site lists venues rather than testimonials: 10 named locations, among them Hotel Gasthof zum Ochsen, Sonne Seehotel, Juckerhof Seegräben and Berggasthaus First, framed as recommendations rather than a client list. The page doesn't spell out which ones she's actually performed a wedding at versus simply rates, but a page built entirely around other businesses' names is a different kind of evidence than a testimonial slider would be.

Her performance history away from the wedding pages backs up that this is a working professional rather than someone doing weddings as a sideline. Her own dated timeline runs vocal training starting in 2001, a first musical lead role in 2002, background vocals opening for José Feliciano in 2006 and for Paul Anka in Bonn that same year, a win at the "Musical Fieber" casting competition in 2009, a Radio Regenbogen Award nomination in the "Best Show" category in 2012 for a Pink Floyd tribute production, a Bachelor of Arts in communication studies from Mannheim completed the same year, background vocals on ZDF's Fernsehgarten in 2015, and a tour with "Das Zelt" in 2021. None of that is wedding work, and the site never tries to make it sound like it is, but it explains why a trial appointment for a live sample is the actual pitch here rather than a promise a couple has to take on faith.

That dual role is really the whole offer. Book Helen Pfaff and a couple isn't coordinating a singer and a separate celebrant who've never met each other; they're booking a single act who already knows how the ceremony music and the ceremony words are meant to fit together, then handing that same act the dinner set and the dance floor once the vows are done.