We hired Chad for our wedding in Nov 2023 due to the many outstanding reviews and recommendations he came with. Unfortunately, our experience left much to be desired. Several aspects of the service were not up to par, making it difficult for us and our guests to fully enjoy our wedding.
The most significant disappointment was the mishandling of crucial moments. The processional song, wedding party entrance, and our first dance were screwed due to the lack of communication and timing issues on his end. These are once-in-a-lifetime moments that we will never get to experience again, and it was heartbreaking to see them not go as planned due to such avoidable situations. The processional song was messed up as he "wasn't able to read my handwriting", and rather than email/text/call me when he was unable to find the song - he just guessed? At what I MUST have been meaning. In addition to this he also miscommunicated the plan for our entrance song to our bridal party so the timing was completely off for our grand entrance.
The cherry on top to his lack of communication was when he played our first dance song, when he decided to play a remixed version? We told him in our final meeting - a month before the wedding - that we choreographed our dance and took months worth of private dance lessons. After he messed up our processional song I asked him point blank "do we need to go over the first dance to make sure its in order?" He assured me it was fine. Imagine our surprise when the song started and he cut out the first 45 second instrumental portion of the song. He never even asked if that's what we wanted! I may be no professional DJ, but I do feel it should be common sense that if a couple says they are choreographing their dance.... the song should be left as is? Unless otherwise specifically requested? Or at the very least send the edited version of the song to the couple for them to know what is going to be played and put something together for that version? Hundreds of dollars, weeks of effort, and all dreams of our special moment - down the drain. When I went up to him to try and correct the mistake and have him play the normal version - he acted as if it was ME who was confused, and it was the only one he could find. Despite his attitude I tried to offer help find the version we needed - to which he said and I quote "Nope! I found what you are looking for" and then played the EXACT same version as before. We didn't want to leave our guests waiting anymore so we just winged it with what we were given, but it was by far the biggest let down of our wedding and I cried for weeks after.
Chad also neglected our requests for specific music genres, opting instead for a playlist that did not align with our vision at all. We stressed to Chad that the dance floor was the most important part of our wedding night to us. In our initial meeting he urged us to not make our own playlist, and to let him do what he does best as he has years of experience and was "not in the business of killing dance floors"...... We specifically asked for early 2000s to present day club music, but the selection was ??? off the mark to say the least. For example: playing three undanceable/slow Kid Cudi songs back to back to back - an odd choice and not what we had in mind for our celebration. Also worth mentioning that all the songs were radio-edited clean versions, which was NOT requested and we have no idea what that was about. After the way he treated me when I tried to fix our first dance song I knew there wasn't much point in trying to work it out with him.
Furthermore, the lack of engagement and attention from Chad was incredible. Not only did we notice, but again we had guests coming up to us all night asking where he was and what was going on with the song selection. When he was there it seemed like his focus was more on his phone than the event itself. He was sat down in a chair with his head down looking at his phone the whole night (when he was even up at the DJ booth and not MIA). Only one single announcement was made all night, and it was only made since we had the cake cutting, and this caused almost all guests to miss out on planned activities and sign-ins. This lack of engagement with our guests was especially confusing since Chad sends out a wedding packet to be filled out before the wedding - with one question being how involved we wanted him to be. We selected the highly involved option, and yet he was hardly seen all night (unless it was sat down on his phone). I can only imagine this implies the not very involved option means he shows up to press play (on the playlist he for sure messed up), and then leaves for the rest of the night.
Save your wedding. Dont hire Chad. read more