More Wedding Gems!
Shadowed another wedding this past weekend. This DJ has 30 years of experience and has grown his multi-op to half a dozen DJs averaging 300 events a year between mitzvahs & weddings alone. His mixing skills were even more questionable than the DJ I shadowed in DC, but he was a solid programmer and his MCing was 99/100 (he could have spoken a little slower). With so much experience, I took away five more wedding gems to immediately employ in my business.
1) Musical Glow-sticks
Give each table a glow-stick. Tell them to start passing it around as music is playing. Keep passing it until the music stops. Kill the music.
“Ok stop! Who’s holding your glow-stick? You’re now the table captain. And as captain the table has to do what you say. Now the first captain to get their entire table to the dance-floor wins! Ready? Go!”
*Drop upbeat dance music*
He says it works 99% of the time. It was so ninja, dance-floor immediately full.
2) Slow-Dances
I realized that I really under-utilize slow-dances.
After everyone was seated for the wedding party introduction & dinner orders, he gets on the mic and announces:
“Alright we’re going to get some dancing going, this one’s for all the wonderful couples out there.”
Unchained Melody beigns playing and like clockwork the dancefloor packs up. After one or two slow-dances he drops into Runaround Sue and bam. Rocking dancefloor.
Perfect Bait & Switch.
3) Freedom Sticks.
A super easy way to really kick up the atmosphere.
They’re wirelessly controlled and battery powered, so setup is crazy easy. You can get a pack of four for $500; not cheap but not ridiculous.
These you can supplement with up-lights or replace them altogether. Many couples don’t want over the top lighting anyway for their wedding, these are a nice classy upsell.
4) Setup Time
Regardless of the rig he needs to setup he gets there at least two hours before the event is scheduled. Not when he is required to begin playing, but when the event starts.
We had a one-room setup with super-easy lighting. With three guys we were done in about an hour.
A guitarist was providing music for the cocktail hour so we could have used that time to tie off odds & ends. No one would have seen us as our section was walled off.
Still, this is a bad look to the venue staff and fellow vendors when you don’t have your shit together once the event has begun. Not to mention anxiety inducing.
Don’t stress, get there early and relax.
5) Backup Laptop For Critical Music
His setup included a backup laptop with a playlist of critical songs (1st dances, introductions, etc) wired into a channel on his mixer.
In the event something happened in those moments, he’d be able to recover in seconds.
I bring a second laptop myself to all gigs, but it’s usually packed away. In the event something happens I always have my phone hooked into my mixer, but not usually with critical songs ready at a moments notice. As I don’t bring a facade with me, I might start setting up my laptop underneath my table for instant access.
