So You're Engaged, Now What?

You'd be surprised at how many people ask advice of their wedding DJ about all aspects of the wedding.  Brides and grooms know that an experienced DJ has witnessed hundreds of wedding ceremonies and receptions, so we should have some value to provide, right?

So many newly engaged couples tell us that they don't know where to begin.  In other words, they don't even know how to start thinking about their wedding day.  That's the goal of this blog post, to help you develop a strategy for how to think about your wedding.  And, the best part of this suggestion is that it involves going out on a date!

If you're newly engaged, you've probably been dating for a while now.. So, going on a date to develop a strategy for wedding planning should be easy for you and even fun.  Your very first task is to develop a value structure for your wedding day.  I don't mean value in the sense of money, although it will ultimately help determine your budget.  I mean, value as in priorities.

Plan a date for just you and your fiancé.  No one else is permitted at this point to join you in your discussion.  Ideally, plan a date where you and your fiance can have a relatively uninterrupted, focused discussion about your wedding day, dinner at your favorite restaurant, a walk in the park or something like that.  The goal of your discussion is to prioritize the elements of your wedding day experience.  When you think about your wedding day, what's most important to you?  Is the setting most important because you desire a rustic outdoor experience?  Or, is the food most important?  What about entertainment? Try to have agreement between the two of you as to the top three or four priorities.  Here are a some questions in no particular order to help you get there:

• Is it important to you to have your wedding during a particular season (for those who live in areas that enjoy seasonal changes). Do you envision a spring wedding or a fall wedding?
• Do you prefer a small gathering or a large gathering?
• What words would you use to describe the type of experience you want to have?  Describe your wedding in just one or two words, for example - elegant, festive, informal, casual, traditional or other such description.
• Is it important to you to be married in a church or will you want a secular ceremony elsewhere?
• Is the venue or physical setting important to you?  For example, do you want an indoor experience or an outdoor experience?
• When thinking about what you want guests to remember most about your wedding day, what are they? Delicious food?  Great entertainment? Beautiful floral arrangements?

There are many more questions along these lines, of course, but you see where we're going here.  By the time your date is over, you should have an agreed consensus about the top three or four priorities for your wedding day.  It should be such that if you can guarantee that these top priorities are fulfilled, you will enjoy the wedding of your dreams and everything else is really secondary.

Why is this exercise important for you to do?

• It will give you and your fiancé a shared idea for what you want to happen.  You'll both be on the same page for the most important decisions that are yet to come.
• Others will give you a ton of unsolicited advice that will throw you off your game if you don't have your top priorities already lined up.  Now you'll be able to reply to well intentioned advisors by simply saying, thanks for your ideas but we've already discussed it and we're going with an outdoor wedding.
• Your priority list will help you figure out your budget.  Be willing to pay a little more for those things that you've given top priority and be ok with spending less on low priority items.
• You'll be better able to describe to your hired wedding vendors and professionals exactly the type of experience you want them to help you create. They will appreciate your thoughtfulness and candor.
• Knowing your top priorities will help you put together a step by step action plan.  What to put in place first, who to call and when, etc. 

After your date, you should have a wedding day priority statement that summarizes your vision for the perfect wedding day.  Here are a few examples:

• We want our wedding day to be a casual gathering of a small group of family and friends to happen on an early fall day at a rustic venue.  It's important that the food be out of this world!  We'll have a DJ play background music but if no one dances, that's ok because we're not really about the dancing anyway.

• We want our wedding day to be an elegant gathering of about 300 guests in an urban setting overlooking the skyline of the city.  Music and dancing is key to our celebration!  We'll have a florist provide minimal decor to add to the venue's charm.

• We want our wedding day to be a festive gathering of about 150 guests to happen on an early summer day at an outdoor venue under a tent.  Great food is a must!  Amazing floral arrangements will highlight the garden feel of the venue.  We'll have a small jazz band play background music during the reception.

This exercise will only work if you both understand that your initial goal is NOT to plan every detail of your wedding day in one sitting.  It just isn't a realistic goal and you'll both end up very frustrated if you try to do it.  The goal of your date is simply to agree on the top three or four wedding day priorities.  Once you have your agreed priorities in place, you can then bring trusted friends and advisors into the discussion to help with the details.  You'll find that if you begin your wedding planning activities by identifying top priorities first, everything else will fall into place pretty nicely.

I hope you found this wedding planning tip helpful.  Enjoy your date and please leave comments or suggestions for others in the comment section.  Best wishes!

Click here if you want to learn more about our DJ service or receive a price quote for your upcoming event!

Tips for Visiting Guests at Your Reception

Almost all of our clients, brides and grooms, share with us early in the planning process that one of their concerns is a slow moving reception.  They tell us they've been guests at other wedding receptions and they've experienced confusion about what's happening next, boredom, and a general - when will this party start - anxiety.  They don't want a slow moving, disjointed flow, or lack of flow, to their own reception.

One thing that often slows down the flow of the reception is when the bride and groom attempts to visit each table of guests, typically during dinner or toward the end of dinner.  Ironically, they are sometimes the reason for the very slowdown that they didn't want to happen in the first place. This is because most people do not know how to "butterfly" around a room.  If you've ever noticed a butterfly in a garden, you'll see that it quickly bounces from one flower to the next, not staying in any one place for very long.  For us humans, this is a learned skill that only priests and politicians have mastered.  It's precisely because their main goal when floating through a room is to say hello, be noticed, welcome guests and then move on.  It's not to engage in any type of drawn out reminiscing or storytelling.  It's not that they don't enjoy reminiscing or storytelling, it's just that they know this isn't the right time for it, if they want to honor and acknowledge all guests.

Brides and grooms, let's do a little math.  If you have 200 guests in a room and they are sitting at 25 tables of eight guests per table - how long will it take you to visit all tables if you spend just 3 minutes at each table?  The answer, a whopping one hour and 15 minutes!  What's happening during this time?  The DJ or band can't get the dancefloor going because traditionally, the first dance belongs to the bride and the groom.  I can tell you that this is one of the most frustrating points in the evening for DJs.  We often feel stuck because we know guests are getting antsy for the dancing to begin, yet we need

Two minutes at each table!

to wait for the bride and groom to finish their butterflying.

This blog article is not meant to talk you out of butterflying, although there are other options that we can cover in another post.  The purpose of this article is to give you a few easy tips to be an awesome butterfly!

1) Understand your goal is to thank and welcome guests, not to engage in storytelling.  Storytelling takes time and you can't control the duration of the story if you're not the one telling the story.  Many of your guests know that you're on a schedule but some have no idea about your reception timeline and will immediately begin to share a story about their recent vacation to Alaska.

2) Keep moving.  It's difficult to pin you down if you're physically moving.  Do the slow walk but don't stop for very long.  If you do stop, make it for just a few seconds to give someone a hug or shake hands.  Move on.

3) Stay together.  Have you ever heard the saying, divide and conquer?  This is true with couples who butterfly a room.  If you get separated, you'll never be able to visit all tables as a couple and you'll literally lose each other at your own reception.  Hold hands while you visit each table.

4) Blame the DJ.  I give my clients permission to use me as an excuse for moving on to the next table.  If you feel caught in the grips of a storyteller, simply say John, I want to hear more but our DJ has us on a tight schedule.  Or, Jenny let's get together to talk more, our DJ needs us soon to cut our cake, have our first dance, or whatever is next.  They'll understand and you won't seem rude about leaving on your own accord.

5) Two minutes or less.  Trust me, you will lose all sense of time on your wedding day.  So, try to keep under 90 seconds to two minutes or less at each table.  That will keep you to about 45 minutes, which is manageable and won't kill the flow of your reception.

Some clients suggest that they will eat their dinner quickly, knowing they'll be first served.  That will give them time to visit guests while guests are eating and thus not impede the timing of the reception.  This can certainly work as a time strategy but if you stop to think about it, do you really want to rush your dinner on your wedding day?  After a long day, you'll be hungry and need a brief rest.  Think about your dinner as half-time for your wedding day.  I think it's better to relax for a bit, enjoy your dinner and be an effective butterfly later.

I hope these butterfly tips help you to keep a fun exciting flow to your wedding reception.  If you have other strategies, please share them with us and our readers in the comment section.  Best wishes!

Click here if you want to learn more about our DJ service or receive a price quote for your upcoming event!

18 Considerations When Planning An Outside Wedding

So you’re planning an outside wedding?  Here are a few things to consider.  These considerations are not all-inclusive but simply a handful of ideas to get you in the planning mode.  Let us know if you have other helpful tips to add!

Mother Nature:

This will not be a surprise to serious planners but if you know anything about living in northeast Ohio, you know that the weather is unpredictable and can change quickly.  You will need to have a rainy day plan, meaning a protected area for guests to go to if weather should be severe.  I recommend planning your day assuming that the weather will be bad for part or all of the day.  I don’t want you to do this because I’m a pessimist (I’m not).  But I’ve learned that a little planning can go long way toward a successful event.  If the weather is nice – great!  If the weather gets nasty, you’ll be ready for that too!

Many clients rent a tent, choose a venue that is connected to or near a cabin, covered pavilion, deck, porch, barn, etc.  Your DJ and perhaps other vendors will be bringing equipment that needs to be protected in the event of rain such as a PA system, lighting, etc. and even a 10 minute rain shower can damage electronic equipment. So, having covered protected space is going to be important no matter the weather.

You’d be surprised at how many people believe that Mother Nature will respect their special day enough to forego bad weather.  It won’t rain on us… 6 months from now!  No need for rainy day plans – ugh!

Consider your guests.  You and your fiancé may be outdoorsy people along with your close friends but not all of your guests are.  Severe heat or cold is tough on some older folks.  Will your grandparents be OK in 90-degree heat if it should be a hot day?  Just something to consider.. Be sure to share with your guests that your wedding ceremony and/or reception will be an outdoor event.  Share with them, too, if there will be protected areas from rain, sun, etc.

Here are just a few Mother Nature considerations:

1) Rain – Will you have cover? What can and cannot get wet? Where will guests gather if it should rain?

2) Drainage – Are you setting up guest tables on a high or low plateau? If it rains will water flow and puddle in that area or will it drain nicely away from the area?

3) Wet Ground – What if it rains the night before but stops on the morning of your wedding day?  The sun is out but the ground is wet and possibly muddy.  Are there walkways and/or concrete areas for guests to gather so that shoes don’t sink into muddy ground? If I had a dollar for every time I saw a female guest in high heals sink into the mud – I’d be RICH!

4) Wind – Not usually a problem but consider, what should be fastened down in case the wind picks up.  For example, if you are having your ceremony outside and you are using a runner for the aisle, you’ll surely want to figure out a way to prevent it from the affects of the wind. I’ve rarely seen a runner stay in place during an outside ceremony. Also, what about table centerpieces?  Make sure they’re heavy enough to withstand wind!

5) Heat – Again, there’s not much you can do if it’s really hot outside but guests will appreciate shady areas.  Make sure you have plenty of water available for guests to hydrate during the event.  Do not keep your wedding cake out for lengthy periods of time on a hot day.  I’ve seen a number of cakes melt, tilt, etc. due to extreme heat.  Have a protected, preferably cooler place for your cake to be kept until you plan on cutting and serving it.

6) Cool Weather – This isn’t the problem that a really hot day can pose but be sure to keep a sweater, jacket, blanket etc. handy if you should get an unusually chilly day in the middle of summer.

7) Bugs – Yes, I said BUGS! If you can, have the area sprayed a day prior to your wedding day to minimize bugs, spiders, mosquitos, etc.  Some clients also provide bug repellent torches for the event itself and spray repellent for guests if they choose to protect themselves.  I know this sounds crazy but… Contact a pest professional and ask them what bugs/pests are prevalent during that time of the year and what to do to minimize bug problems.  For example, for some reason, bees are angrier during the later months of summer and are more likely to sting – August & September.  A pest professional can give you tips on how to handle different types of bugs and other creepy crawlies.

8) Weather Radar – Just about everyone today has a smart phone with access to updated weather information. Have someone, a friend or family member, check the weather radar periodically during the event to stay informed about changes in weather – especially later in the evening when weather can change quickly in northeast Ohio.

9) Outside Noise – What?  Noise?  Yep. As DJ’s and sound professionals we’re always tuned into ambient noise.  A windy day can be noisy. Is your venue near water such as a lake or waterfall?  Animals, birds, etc. are noisy.  Is there a road or railroad tracks nearby?  There is more ambient noise outside than inside under controlled circumstances.  If you are having your ceremony outside, will your guests be able to hear your officiant declare you husband and wife?  We are often hired to provide a PA system, microphone and/or music for outside ceremonies.

Logistics:

Planning an informal outside picnic for a small group of guests is one thing but what if you are inviting a larger group of people to enjoy a grand celebration?  Yikes!  Here are just a few considerations…

10) Restrooms – Where will guests go to use the restroom?  Are the facilities adequate for your group size?

11) The elderly and guests with disabilities – Navigating uneven ground outside is typically not a problem for most people but what about your 85 year old grandmother?  What about anyone on your guest list who uses a cane or wheelchair?  Is your outside venue safe for them to navigate?  At the very least, delegate someone to assist the elderly or guests with disabilities when they need to move about the premises.  This will avoid trips, falls and other accidents and your guests will be glad that you considered their special needs.  Consider, what are other special needs for your older guests and those with disabilities?

12) Electricity – As DJ’s we always need access to electricity.  Probably some of your other vendors will also. Where are the electrical outlets for them to plug into?  Are they active?  Sometimes, if clients rent a park pavilion for example, the electricity needs to be turned on by the city or the park department before the event.  Don’t assume you have access to electricity at outdoor event venues.  Just something to look into prior to your special day.

13) Signage – How will your guests know where things are?  For example, do you need to post a sign directing guests where to park?  What about restrooms, food, etc.? Are there areas of your outdoor venue that you don’t want guests to access (especially children)? Mark those as well.

14) Lighting – When the sun goes down it will get pretty dark at your outdoor venue.  Is there adequate lighting for guests to be able to safely navigate the area at night?  Make sure you have at least some minimum lighting in the area to prevent guest accidents at night.

15) Basic first aid kit – Oh man, this is going to sound so campy… But, be prepared with a basic first aid kit if a guest should have a minor accident.  Being prepared in this way will minimize a guest’s small cut or bruise – especially if you are having children at your celebration.

16) Noise Ordinances – Check with area safety services to be sure you aren’t breaking any noise ordinances by gathering guests, playing music, etc.  Your DJ will appreciate not being approached by a police officer because he is breaking the law by playing music outside at 11PM.

17) Dance floor/area – If you intend on doing some dancing, be sure to have an even area at your outdoor venue for dancers.  Accidents can happen when people attempt to dance in an area that is uneven and/or otherwise not suitable to fancy footwork.  Consider renting a temporary dance floor under your tent or perhaps designate a deck, porch or some other even, safe area for dancing.  Preferably place your DJ near the dance area as he or she will want to be near the action and not on the other end of the yard from where dancers are doing their thing!

18) Check with your vendors – Each of your hired wedding professionals have their own special considerations regarding outside events.  The things that are important to your DJ/Band will be different compared to your photographer or catering team.  Be sure to share with your vendors your intention on having an outdoor celebration and ask them what they need from you in order to do a great job.  Also, ask for their advice.  Wedding professionals have probably worked hundreds of such events in the past and are more than happy to give you some tips and pointers on pulling off a great and memorable outside event.

We hope this article has helped you in some way, at least by giving you a few things to consider.  Please stay in touch with us if you think of other considerations we may have forgotten.  We’ll add them into the article in future updates.  Thanks in advance!


Click here if you want to learn more about our DJ service or receive a price quote for your upcoming event!

Who Will Pour the Drinks at the Head Table?

This is the one thing that is almost always overlooked at the wedding reception.  It's a small thing and it won't ruin your night, but hey, why leave anything to chance on your big day?

It's about an hour into your reception and all of your guests are enjoying cocktails and looking forward to a delicious dinner.  It's at this point where your DJ will want to do introductions to formally get the event going.  Your DJ does a fine job organizing the members of your bridal party for the entrance and he gets the attention of all of your guests, not always an easy task by the way.  The introductions go well and everyone is pumped to get on with the party.  You are all in the dining area and next on the agenda are the long anticipated toasts!

Your best man and maid of honor are extremely nervous but ready to go nonetheless.  But wait, you discover that no one has poured drinks at the head table.  All of your guests have something to drink but you have empty glasses... Somewhat embarrassing.  You'll either go ahead with the toasts anyway - with empty glasses OR you'll all scramble to the bar to get something which will appear a bit silly and will interrupt the flow of the evening.

I've learned as an experience DJ to check the drink situation at the head table before starting with the introductions.  And, sure enough, it's the one thing most often forgotten.  I think it's because everyone just kind of assumes that someone else will do it, that it never gets done.

As you plan your reception be sure to know ahead of time who will be responsible to make sure drinks are ready for you at the head table, or sweetheart table if it's just the two of you.  Ask your catering team if this is part of the service they provide, often it's the case but not always.  Is this something your bartender will do for you?  Don't assume, ask.  Sometimes it's a designated family member who makes sure drinks are ready for you when you enter.  In any case, be sure that someone has been delegated the task.  You'll be glad that you planned for it when you are introduced to your table and your DJ will have one less thing to worry about.  Cheers!

Click here if you want to learn more about our DJ service or receive a price quote for your upcoming event!

Tips for Booking a DJ in Today's Economy

We are noticing that couples are waiting longer to book their DJ than in the past. Many couples tell us that they are paying for much, if not all, of their wedding/reception themselves and that they need more time to save for the deposits necessary for vendors. Surprisingly, we are still getting inquiries for this July, August and September. It's a difficult message for us to deliver to a hopeful bride that we're already booked for her wedding date. While the need to wait longer to book is understandable, couples may risk missing out on their first choice of DJ. Experienced pro's are booked 6 months to a year in advance of the event date.

Instead of waiting longer to book, consider these options -

1) Ask for a lower than typical deposit, perhaps one quarter the total price rather than one half. Also, ask if the vendor is willing to set-up a payment plan that works best for you.

2) Ask if your vendor would consider a custom package just for you instead of their standard rates. You may choose fewer hours of play time, 5 instead of 6 for example. Opt not to have extras such as large light systems, fog machine, etc.

3) If the bride or groom is serving in the military, ask the vendor if they would consider a "military discount". We have incorporated such a discount this past year and it is proving to be a great idea. Couples get a small break in the price and we feel good about giving back to military families that serve us so well.

Instead of waiting to book your DJ, call now to see if the vendor will respect your budget with a little flexibility. We hope, of course, that your call comes to us - but whomever you choose as your DJ service, we wish you a fun and memorable time on your special day.

Best wishes!

Click here if you want to learn more about our DJ service or receive a price quote for your upcoming event!