I got married Oct. 24th 2014. My wife and I met with the owner Russ to discuss options and to come to an agreement on services to be rendered. We settled on a price and began planning.
I created a playlist for Russ and sent it to him with payment.
The day of the wedding:
Russ got lost on the way to the location (in his defense, the venue was in a small town in a secluded area). He did not arrive until 15 minutes before the ceremony was to begin. Needless to say, a lot of the guests had already arrived and he was scrambling to get set up to play the 'seating music'. There was no time for sound checks to audio tuning.
Russ had to set up two separate sound systems whereas the ceremony and reception were held a substantial distance apart. The processional music was extremely distorted (it was up way too loud on a small speaker leading to degraded sound quality). The recessional music was no different. After we (the wife and I) were announced as husband and wife, we stood awkwardly waiting for the recessional music to start which seemed like a lifetime. We even shouted over the crowd saying "it's time!"
Then came our first dance. Russ called us to the dance floor as people anxiously gathered around. Our song never came. We waited in each other's arms. And we waited some more. We all were just staring at the DJ who just called us to the floor to dance and didn't have the music queued up. My wife - trying to keep her cool - began playfully singing the lyrics to our first dance and we swayed trying to kill some time for the music to begin. Eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime (again) - our song played & we danced.
During the reception we began hearing some of the same songs over and over (while I can't speak to whether this was due to requests or not). While I can appreciate accommodating the guests - it is the DJ's job to control the music and realize not everyone wants to hear the Cupid Shuffle 3 times. I also saw him multiple times at the kegs refilling his cup. One of my guests reported to me that he was seen taking gulps out of a flask (I can't confirm myself, but don't think I was being lied to).
The reception came to an end and Russ packed up and somehow left some of his equipment which we later had to make arrangements to get back to him - icing on the cake.
I don't have much experiences with DJ's - but I don't think that my experience is how things are supposed to go. I would not use his services in the future. read more