Oklahoma Entertainment

A wedding reception is a time to celebrate the love between you and your fianc

Exactly what should your disc jockey be doing in the weeks/months prior to your wedding? If you think that they just show up at your reception and are ready to go – you’ve missed out on what they’ve been doing to prepare.

Typically, your DJ will meet you during the sales stage of things – you get to know him, they get to know what you are looking for. Once you’ve decided that they are the right DJ for you, then the work starts. Your DJ would lock in your date and start working on preparation. About 2 months prior to your wedding, they would meet you again and start going over details with you. If your DJ wants to meet only a week or so ahead of your wedding – just say no. You should expect more from them.

This is what a professional DJ does in the months prior to your event:

1. They have your itinerary / wedding party names to review and make sure there are no issues and that transitions from one thing to a next have a natural flow to them.

2. They would be communicating with you regarding any last minute changes you might have, sometimes talking to the banquet facility or your photographer if questions arise or to discuss setup requirements.

3. They would review your music requests and make sure they have all your key songs. Many DJs will prepare a working CD with all your selected songs on it to even further make sure there are no issues on the day of your wedding.

4. Many DJs now will work on music programming on their laptop – they will prepare just the right mix of music for social hour and dinner ahead of time. For your dance selections, they may prepare a play list so all the songs you want are easily accessible and for quick reference.

5. They will prepare their equipment and load up just the right pieces for your event and bring sufficient backup in case of emergency.

A typical wedding might require about 5-10 hours of preparation event BEFORE the day of your wedding. Ask your potential DJ how much time they invest in preparation for your event – you might be amazed at the differences between lesser DJs and true professionals.

Rob Alberti
After Hours Disc Jockey Service – MA/CT/RI
http://www.afterhoursdj.net

Your true love got down on his knees and asked you to marry him. Barely able to get the words out, you say “I Will”. That is but the first of many choices you must make when planning a wedding. So many people get caught up in the buying frenzy of wedding planning, that they lose sight of the thing that really matters.

Choosing your Wedding disc jockey should not be one of the final details. In a recent survey of brides-to-be, they ranked choosing their wedding photographer more than twice as important as their Wedding disc jockey. Let’s think about this – sure, wedding photography is important when it comes to capturing the moment. If your photographer didn’t show up – the wedding and reception would go on just as planned. Without your Wedding disc jockey – things come to a screeching halt. People would leave soon after dinner without the musical entertainment of your Wedding disc jockey. So why is it that people pay $2,000-$4,000 on average for a wedding photographer and they look to pay only $750 for a bargain disc jockey?

Here is some food for thought. The average Connecticut banquet facility charges around $75/pp for the meal. With an average wedding comprised of about 150 guests, that’s over $11,000 in meal cost. The 18% gratuity on that alone is over $2,000. A top-quality Wedding disc jockey would cost you between $1,000-$2,000. That’s less than the gratuity on the meal!

Remember that $75/pp meal will only occupy guests for 2 hours out of the average 5 hour reception. Your Wedding disc jockey is responsible for everything after the meal. Your banquet staff will disappear into the background. Their job is done. It is time for your Wedding disc jockey to bring the event to a party atmosphere.

Let’s look at your wedding budget for a minute. The difference between a low-end disc jockey and a true top-notch professional Wedding disc jockey is less than $1,000. What other items in your wedding budget can be eliminated to facilitate obtaining a better wedding reception entertainer?

Printed napkins – $150
Cake knife set – $50
Toast glasses – $50
Ice sculpture – $200
Floral centerpieces – $20/table = $200 (can be replaced with inexpensive votive candles)
Wedding favors – $250

Not one of these items would be missed if they were not present at your Wedding reception. Without the best available Wedding disc jockey, your party could be a flop from the moment people walk in. We’ve all been to events where the Wedding disc jockey plays “Kenny G” music throughout cocktail and dinner as if guests are not supposed to notice that they are just playing the same cd. We’ve gone to events where the Wedding disc jockey plays the same music in the same order as the last person without any regard to the crowd or what they are reacting to or not reacting to. Choose wisely and make sure your Wedding budget keeps emphasis on the important things that will guarantee you a successful Wedding reception and not one where guests stare at their wrist watches looking for an opportunity to sneak out early due to lack of quality Wedding disc jockey entertainment.

Rob Alberti
Professional Wedding Disc Jockey since 1983
After Hours Disc Jockey Service – MA/CT/RI Regions
http://www.afterhoursdj.net

Let’s think about what goes into your wedding budget. Your caterer/banquet facility will get the lion’s share of it. If you are having 150 guests (an average number) and the banquet facility charges $100 pp. (typical high-end facility in New England area – including gratuity, tax, hidden fees) – that works out to $15,000 right off the top. If you have it and want to spend it – great. If you are trying to stretch your wedding dollars, then you really need to step back. Many couples get so caught up in the facility that they spend all their budget on it and don’t have enough left over for quality entertainment or wedding photos.

If you took that same 150 guests and found a facility that only cost $75 pp, you now have an additional $4,000 that you can spend on your photographer and disc jockey. Why? When you walk away from your reception – if the music was a disaster – the entire event is a disaster. If you don’t have quality wedding photos to cherish for years to come, it will just fade in your memory. The reality is – if the view wasn’t so great at the facility and the food was just ok – people will not care as long as they had a great time. Think about that before you spend your entire wedding budget on the facility and run out of money for everything else. There needs to be a balance in your wedding budget.

In the New England Area average pricing for a quality disc jockey ranges between $1000-$1500. For a quality professional photographer, you should expect to spend at least $2,500-$4,000. Believe me, you will know the difference if you hire below this range.

Rob Alberti
After Hours DJ Service
http://www.afterhoursdj.net

When planning your wedding, what type of entertainment are you looking for? A comedian? A clown? A 3-ring circus? Of course not you are looking for high quality entertainment that is tailored to your vision for this once-in-a-lifetime event. Your wedding reception entertainment should tie together all the things you have been dreaming of for many, many months.

When it is time to look for wedding reception entertainment, you need to consider many aspects. Cost may seem to be your highest priority at first, but as you weed through the list of considerations, you will need to find someone you trust to keep your special day flowing smoothly. Tacky rhetoric, shoddy equipment, or lack of music to please your guests should not ruin your picture-perfect day.

You will want a DJ with a high quality, and guaranteed, sound system. The entertainment must provide a wide range of music to offer all your guests music they are requesting. You want a DJ who will listen to your wishes and make suggestions, not mandates, as to how the reception should flow. You want experienced wedding entertainment – people who know the pitfalls from years of past experience – and can handle little ‘emergencies’ as they arise with grace and professionalism.

Your DJ/MC will weave all the activities of your reception into a tapestry of memories to be remembered for a lifetime. From the moment you arrive at your reception, your DJ will orchestrate the perfect dance between music, generations, customs, and cultures. Your wedding entertainment is more that just ‘entertainment’; it is the life-blood of your reception.

Planning your wedding entertainment carefully pays off more than you might expect. Your care when selecting the best wedding entertainment possible will ensure that in turn, your entertainment can attend to all the little details and make your day perfect in every way.

Louise Alberti – Wedding Officiant
After Hours DJ Service – MA/CT/RI
If you remember the music, you’ll never forget the times…
http://www.afterhoursdj.net

Wedding couples are frustrated. DJs are frustrated. There’s a disconnect here. But what exactly is the problem?

It depends on who you ask. DJs continually wonder why brides and grooms treat the mobile DJ — the type who lugs around his equipment to show up at big events and weddings — as a commodity. In other words, couples price-shop ruthlessly, as if any given DJ were interchangeable with the rest.

Paul Arnett, a Yorkshire DJ and NADJ (National Association of Disc Jockeys) member who organizes the UK’s Mobile DJ Show North event, puts the problem like this: “Well, your average couple spends hours deliberating over the dress. You hand-pick the caterers. You pore over flowers and sweat over the florist. You spend hours choosing just the right venue and church — not to mention the time spent on favors.’

“But then, you go out and hire a DJ because he’s ten dollars cheaper than the next one. Or he’s a friend of your brother’s, or he does Tuesdays at the local bar. You might never even see him work, check out his equipment, or meet with him personally to make sure he’s suitable.”

Most couples handle every other major item in their budget differently. You don’t choose one venue over another because it costs a hundred dollars less. Few brides with a budget to work with buy their cakes from the discount grocery store, even though that cake (slathered in tubs of “BetterCream” frosting) would be much cheaper than one from the designer bakery downtown. Instead, they investigate. They take pictures. They taste-test amaretto fillings and hors d’oeuvres. And eventually, they settle on the vendor who seems poised to deliver the best experience to their guests.

Why Is It So Different With DJs?

Part of the answer is an image problem, says Paul. “People perceive that most mobile DJs will turn up fifteen minutes ahead of time, with a couple of speakers and some cheesy circa-1970’s light screens, and play ‘Agadoo’ all night.” (For we lucky few who haven’t heard it, the 1984 song Agadoo frequently charts as “the worst song of all time.”)

We all feel confident identifying an excellent meal or a sublime dessert. But few of us feel comfortable evaluating DJs in the same way. We know that a good one can “get the party started,” but we’re not sure how to tell a good one from a bad one.

Some people think so poorly of DJs, they prefer to eliminate them entirely, soundtracking the dance portion of the night with iPods or laptops. This isn’t easy — it requires you to rent expensive sound equipment, find someone to mind the iPod, possibly buy insurance, and somehow get around or ignore the technical issues, like the inevitable three second delay between songs you get on an iPod. And yet some people find that preferable to risking the “Agadoo” or “Chicken Dance” scenario on their Big Day.

An iPod might well be better than a bad DJ. But the DJ is a key part of your five-hour reception, and some of them are very good indeed.

When She Was Good, She Was Very Very Good

Perhaps it’s hard for the average bride and groom to grasp the difference between a green DJ with low-end equipment, and a seasoned one who knows how to transform shy and retiring Clark Kents into dance floor superheros.

The first may be nothing more than a glorified CD changer. He may or may not have a firm grasp of the different musical needs that accompany standard reception rituals, like the cake cutting or the father/daughter dance. He may lug in his entry-level Peavy subwoofers and arrange his sound system in ways that ignore your venue’s peculiarities.

The second may have emceed hundreds of weddings. Along the way, he’s developed something subtle but important known as voice and personality — not an imitation of some radio host’s, but his own. He doesn’t practice on your wedding; he brings his skills to it, along with a top-of-the-line sound system, which he’ll arrange differently depending on factors like whether or not your venue is broken up into several chambers (the cocktail lounge and the banquet area, for example).

If he’s a gearhead, he might even offer specialty lighting abilities you might not think of, such as the ability to shine gobos on the dance floor — gobos being customized templates that display things like your wedding monogram. Some DJs even offer giant video screens and live replays of key points in the reception.

But the most important skills a good DJ will bring to your wedding is a honed personality, a formal-friendly image, and an absolute mastery of what gets crowds on their feet.

Okay, so you get it. You understand that not all DJs are alike, and that a good one brings as much your wedding as any premium florist or baker. So how do you find him?

Choose DJs that Take Their Job Seriously

Skip the part-timers — they’re still learning the ropes, and they’ll be practicing on your wedding. Instead, look for full-timers who show their commitment to the profession by belonging to professional DJ associations such as CPDJA, ADJA, & NAME, or NADJ in the UK.

Paul adds, “Ask if they have public liability insurance (in case Grandma trips over a speaker wire) and PAT electrical test certificates (to insure their equipment is safe). This also shows they’re professionals and not cutting corners.”

Meet with them in person, and take a gander at their sound systems. You might not know your Geminis or Peaveys from your Mackies or QSCs, but even a casual glance should tell you whether the DJ or company invests in good equipment. In fact, most will be delighted to run you through their top-of-the-line systems if you give them the slightest excuse.

While you’re there, take a look at their promotional photos and videos. Are they wearing tuxes? Do they look sharp? Does their sound stage sport garish self-promoting signs, or do they keep things discreet?

Turn on Your X-Ray Vision

Everyone has what it takes to pick a great DJ. You simply have to meet with them in person, and absorb what they have to offer.

Paul says, “Talk to them — their personality should shine through. While you’re there, ask them what special qualities they can bring to their wedding. Ask how they’re prepared to work with you to make your day extraordinary.”

The DJ should be happy to meet you, seem interested in the specifics of your venue, and ask questions. “Any DJ who seems phased or reluctant by any of this — they’re not the one. If your DJ seems bored, or gives you the sense you’ll be just another date on their calendar, they’re also not the one.”

A Coda for the Couple

It’s true with the cake, it’s true with the steak tartar, and it’s true for your DJ — the final word is quality, not price. As Paul puts it, “When you look back on your wedding reception in years to come, do you want to remember what a fantastic time everyone had? Or do you want to say, ‘Well, at least we saved some money on the DJ?’”

Good DJs see themselves as part of the larger picture. They expect to work closely with your coordinator, photographer and videographer, and to custom-fit their setup to your venue. So hire a good DJ — one who can help you tailor the night’s entertainment to your individual wedding.

“And see what they can offer to make your wedding function unique,” adds Paul.

Blake Kritzberg is editor of FavorIdeas. Stop by for continually-updated celebrity
wedding news, remarkable beach wedding favors, exclusive hairstyling articles and gorgeous and unique wedding favors.

The banquet room is immaculately set. The flowers adorn every table. You splurged and spend the extra to have the white chair covers. The appetizers are passed as guests mingle with drinks in hand. The music softly plays in the background, setting the perfect tone. But wait, the lights in the facility are on so bright that they drown out the candle light. Lighting can ruin the stage – at the wrong level or cued at the wrong time.

Lighting can add or detract from your wedding reception. The banquet staff runs around and has little care for lighting. Asking them to dim the lights once dancing starts is like pulling teeth – most of the time they just don’t want to be bothered. How important is lighting? Fill the dance floor and then go turn the lights on full bright and see what happens. The dance floor clears and people are slow to come out and dance. Dim the lights again and the dance floor energy builds once again at your wedding reception.

Imagine an event where there is a dedicated person responsible for setting the theatrical stage with light. The lights dim at exactly the right time. The room changes from blue to pink as the bride and groom enter. A spot light follows them as they walk towards the dance floor for their first dance. The entire room pulsates with changing lights and patterns when your guests are filling the dance floor. Green laser beams arc across the room. Look up; the ceiling is filled with stars from a gobo projector as the night sky is portrayed above your heads. You are dancing beneath the stars at your wedding reception.

Your wedding reception disc jockey and lighting specialist can create not only the perfect soundtrack, but can set the stage for a spectacular visual experience as well with today’s high-tech lighting options. Flood lights, computer controlled luminaries, gobo projectors and LED color wash lights can make this happen at your wedding reception.

Rob Alberti
Owner of After Hours Disc Jockey Service – Serving the New England Area since 1983
http://www.afterhoursdj.net
info@afterhoursdj.net

It must be great. You work on Saturday night for 5 hours and make $1,000 or more. What a life. It has been equated to selling drugs – the lucrative wedding disc jockey business is not what it’s cracked up to be. The reality is – this is far from the easy money that a potential wedding client thinks it is. They are shocked when they first hear the price that professional DJs charge and think that they are being ripped off because “wedding” was in their vocabulary when they called for a quote.

Here are some interesting facts to understand better what the life of a wedding disc jockey really is like:

Clients call at all times of the day – the phone rings from 8am until around 11pm virtually every day. For the most part, you must be available to answer the calls because most people won’t leave a message if you don’t.

Most weekday nights are spent away from home meeting with clients or potential clients.

Most weekends are spent away from friends and family working at your events. Forget the 4th of July picnic and New Years Eve.

Wedding Disc Jockeys are booked a year or two in advance – so that last minute call from your friend asking you to dinner or to a concert is a wasted call. You’re already booked.

Your daughter’s concert that is on a Friday in May – you will most likely miss. Again, you are already booked.

Try standing for 5 hours straight and see how your legs and feet feel.

Did you know one of the most feared things to do is speak in public? As a wedding disc jockey, that is what we do every weekend.

Most people bring a cup of coffee to work – a wedding disc jockey brings over $15,000 worth of equipment and another $20,000 or more in music to most events.

A wedding disc jockey will haul in about 1,000 pounds of equipment into and out of the reception – that means up stairs, across rickety stone paths and through parking garages, through kitchens and in the cold and rain.

A typical wedding lasts for 5 hours. Your wedding disc jockey will arrive an hour early to setup, will be there after guests leave tearing down and typically drives 30 minutes to 60 minutes each way to the event. They have to spend time preparing equipment before they leave the office. They have to unload and put away gear when they return. That adds up to between 8 and 10 hours on the day of the event alone invested in your wedding.

A wedding disc jockey will typically meet you prior to booking (pre-sales meeting) for about an hour. Most disc jockeys will drive to meet their clients. Presales and travel to and from this meeting will add about 2 hours of their time into your event.

When it’s time to discuss details, your disc jockey will again drive to meet you and spend another hour with you going over details, they’ll return to the office, type up this information and send you a copy. They’ll spend a couple hours organizing music, talking on the phone and sending/receiving emails from you over the course of the two months prior to your wedding. You can figure they’ve just invested another 5 hours into preparing for your event.

The total time invested per event will be around 17 – 20 hours when it’s all said and done. That $1,000 for 5 hours is now really $1,000 for 20 hours of time.

A wedding disc jockey will spend about $2,000 or more each year on music updates. They might invest $2,000-$6,000 in equipment, repairs and upgrades each year. They will spend $1,000 – $10,000 in advertising, bridal shows, printing, etc. They will spend $5,000 – $20,000 for office supplies, computers, and business services. They will spend $500 – $1,500 on liability insurance policies. They will spend $2,000 to $5,000 on postage. They will travel to one of the national DJ conventions to keep up to date with the industry and spend around $1,500 doing so. They will have a 800 number, cell phone, fax and voice mail services costing them around $5,000 each year. They will spend $5,000 each year on health insurance. They will spend $5,000 in gas getting back and forth to meetings and events.

A wedding disc jockey will drive 25,000 – 35,000 miles each year between meetings and back and forth to their events. That will be approximately 750 hours away from home each year just in travel time.

The reason that wedding disc jockeys charge the price that they do is simple. It is the cost of doing business. The value that a professional disc jockey brings to your event is priceless. Take away the music and you’re just inviting friends and family to eat and drink. That accounts for about 2 of the typical 5 hour wedding reception. Your professional wedding disc jockey is responsible for coordinating all the details of the flow of the event – from introductions to the cake cutting. They are the middle man between the banquet staff, your photographer and videographer. They are your wedding coordinator. Without proper quality entertainment – guests will leave soon after dinner.

If a typical wedding reception costs around $25,000 (or $5,000 per hour!), and your guests leave 2 hours before the end due to poor entertainment – you’ve just wasted $10,000 of your wedding budget. If you’re debating between a cheap $500 DJ and a professional DJ costing $1,500, the decision should be easy. Trying to cut corners on entertainment could cost you $10,000. The additional $1,000 is money well spent when the big picture is in focus. The time and effort a true professional disc jockey puts into your event will be worth every penny.

Rob Alberti is owner of http://www.afterhoursdj.net in New England and a member of http://www.thedjnetwork.com and contributing writer for http://www.weddingdetails.net

Give disc jockey’s credit. Many of them have endured so much criticism. The banquet managers sometimes won’t acknowledge their existence or tries to dictate what they have to do and when. They am forced to haul their $15,000 worth of sound equipment through a greasy kitchen or up a rickety flight of stairs because they don’t want them to be seen loading in the nice ramp in front. Wedding professionals need to work together because they should all have the same goal – please the customer (the bride and groom). So many times other professionals forget that fact too easily.

Let’s look at the basic facts. The disc jockey relies on the banquet facility to provide the meals and drinks in a timely fashion for the guests. The banquet facility will help coordinate timing to line up with meal service. Some facilities even go as far as supporting the disc jockey during introductions by directing the wedding party and collecting their flowers. For the most part, once the meal is done – you won’t see the staff until it’s time to clean up. They will walk away from your event and leave everything in the hands of the entertainment.

Without entertainment, people will just leave after the meal. It’s up to the disc jockey to entertain your guests for the next three hours. If you took them to a 2-hour movie, you’d pay $9.75 per person to entertain them. You probably just paid $75 per person to feed them (before the 18% gratuity). The $500 ice sculpture, $300 printed napkins and the $3 per person champagne toast pretty much go unnoticed and unappreciated. It is so easy to get caught up in the wedding planning that you just think that you “have” to have it. Sometimes you have to step back and look at the big picture. A wedding reception is an “entertainment” function. Your entertainment choice will clearly make or break your event.

If a party is a flop – the DJ is blamed. Never do you hear the guests complain that the meal was dragged out over 2 hours and that it killed the party. People don’t realize that by having a photographer pull a couple out of the festivities for 45 minutes can drain the energy from a wedding reception just as quickly as having the banquet manager turn the lights on full or strip clear the tables to push guests towards leaving.

With that said – your professional disc jockey does more than play music and make a few announcements. They are your event coordinator for the day. They will guide you every step of the way – from telling you where to stand while waiting for the start of parental dances to guiding you to return to the room when you’ve been out too long. They will make your party come alive with excitement while still maintaining a professional demeanor and not rely on cheesy antics and props. Your disc jockey will advise you when it is time to get the party started after dinner or if the meal is slow, they might suggest that you do some dancing between courses to mask the fact that the banquet staff is behind.

Your disc jockey will play the music you want and avoid the songs that you have placed on your no-play list. They will make sure things go as planned. If your uncle comes up and says he wants to sing you a song in the middle of your reception – they’ll stop him until they’ve cleared it with you first. There will be no surprises with a professional disc jockey.

The fact that your disc jockey mimics so many of the duties of a professional wedding planner during the wedding reception are not by accident. It is what they do. Some disc jockeys have even gone as far as to now provide pre-wedding coordination and planning duties (including menu review, vendor contract negotiations, vendor approval, invitation wording, wine pairing and so much more) through an in-house dedicated wedding planner. This way your wedding planner and your entertainment are working together in harmony with your plans.

In order to facilitate better events, our company has started to email clients a week before to give them every opportunity to have the best event possible. Here are some of the hints that we provide:

Hello, it’s your DJ. Your wedding is about a week away and I just wanted to email you and let you know a few things that you can do to help make your event run smoothly and get the most out of your time at the reception. Please circulate this email to your parents and everyone in your wedding party. The more people that are in tune with what to do that day – the better your event will be.

1. If there are any last minute changes to your itinerary – LET US KNOW AHEAD OF TIME. We need to be prepared and can help you orchestrate things much smoother only if we know about them before it’s too late. We can help guide you as to the best way to flow from one event to the next. Call or email us with those changes immediately. Thank you.

2. All formal photos should be completed by the end of dinner. That means – if you need to get a group photo of your college friends, grandmother or whomever – by the time they clear the main entr