After performing at hundreds of weddings, I have a major announcement to make in regards to my wedding DJ company. Recently, my total body of work as a professional wedding DJ was trampled on and ignored, and as result, my entire reputation that I've built for so many years was put at risk. There's no easy way to put this. In order for me to believe that my prospective clients are serious about having the absolute best experience on their wedding day, I will not be able to take on their wedding WITHOUT a wedding planner. This is a decision that's been a long time coming, but one that I don't take lightly, and also one that looks to serve as an insurance policy to protect my reputation as a top wedding DJ. I am at peace with this decision and I look forward to a future of continued positive growth of my brand and reputation.

After a lengthy phone call with my web developer over the weekend, I was told it had been a while since I published a blog. I've been busy in more ways than one over the past few months working on various other projects and business opportunities, so my creativity has been lacking as it pertains to putting together valuable content for my clients. The spring wedding season is underway as well and I will be busy into June. I will tell you that putting together any blog the right way can be very time consuming. These posts can be time consuming because I write each and every one of them by hand. No artificial intelligence here! Putting content together for current and future clients is one of the things that I set out to do well over a decade ago when this website was brought online. Over the years, I have carved out a niche for doing one thing amazingly well. That is playing music for the modern bride and groom and their guests. The people who hire me are from all sorts of places, they can be both young and old, both destination and local, but most all of them share a common need and desire. That is finding the best wedding DJ for what will be the most special day of their lives.

Be prepared as this is a bit of a personal post.  And while this is actually my first post of 2023, I've been taking some time to get my thoughts together because for whatever reason I've had difficulty gaining traction and focus during these first few weeks of the year.  As the owner of a successful small business, so many questions plague my mind on a daily basis. Some of those questions may include: "How are bookings going to materialize for this year?", "Am I going to be able to put together quality content for my clients in a timely manner?"  or  "Should I budget any resources for any capital (equipment) upgrades this year?"  While these questions can plague any wedding DJ or other type of vendor during the course of the year, they tend to get amplified toward the start of each year. For whatever reason, the beginning of this year feels different.  I can't quite put a handle on it. Perhaps I am still in hangover mode from a successful string of fall weddings and private events in 2022.  After coming across the Instagram posts (both of which were very relatable to my current situation) of a few wedding vendors, I began to hit on it.  I've become totally exhausted on trying to be the best wedding DJ in my market. 

Every so often I get caught in these daytime reveries that take me back to different eras of music. For those modern brides and grooms who have just arrived at my website and blog. Welcome.  You are about to time warp back to the end of one of the greatest decades in music; the 90s.  In previous posts (which I will link down below),  I've featured some other years (mostly in the early 90s) which could be some of the best of the entire decade.  By 1999, the Seattle grunge movement was all but pretty much over, being replaced by post grunge artists like Nickelback and Staind. I won't bore you with those bands that tend to be placed on Do Not Playlists.  1999 would be a long 8 years before the Iphone. High speed internet was just being installed, but was not nearly as "high speed" as today. :)  Back in 1999, we were still inserting CDs in computer towers, and saving things to floppy disk. We were still in the midst of watching Friends, and watching Britney Spears emerge as one of the most powerful women in music at that time. Buckle your seatbelt as we take a trip back in time to the year we first saw the Sopranos, Family Guy, and American Pie. 1999. 

With my last wedding of 2022 coming just 3 days before Christmas, I feel a little like Santa Claus checking my client's playlist way more than twice. :) But you know what? That's how I roll. I generally spend hours organizing a client's playlist so I always know which song to play next.  It's no quick and easy ever because I want to make sure I have everything my client's want and then some.  For this last wedding of 2022, my client's put me in charge of designing a playlist for when they partake in their plated dinner.  A great dinner music playlist will come with it a variety of songs that are all about texture and flow, as well as the ability for guests to have casual conversation while enjoying dinner, but not have to worry about raising voices.  After a cocktail hour which will consist of piano instrumentals while guests enjoy drinks at the bar, my client opted for the creation of a dinner music playlist which consisted of soft rock and easy listening songs. Over the years, I've developed quite the knack for putting these playlists together. After assembling this playlist,  I was so proud of what I put together that I had to put it up on blog, as well as Spotify and share with current and prospective clients.

You've decided to hire one of the top wedding DJs to help you put together one of the best soundtracks for the biggest day of your life. If you've found the right one, they will help you curate a playlist that will have you and your guest on the dance floor all night long.  But before you indulge in all of the delicious food prepared by your caterer, and all of the tasty adult beverages mixed together by your bartender, you've got to take care of one very important bit of business; you've got to get married. You've got to make it official.  Most professional wedding DJs will offer ceremony music as one of their services. Within this service, you'll have your wedding DJ provide all of the music parts of your wedding ceremony, as well as microphones for your officiant and possibly the groom should you decide to do your own vows.  Ever since forming my professional wedding DJ company, I've strived to provide the best sound possible for my clients.  Providing the best sound possible to my clients at their wedding ceremony is also something I strive to do. But, would you believe there are a ton of factors that haunt me when I am providing music for a client's wedding ceremony? Yes, even being "perfect" is not enough, especially for outdoor wedding ceremonies. 

The thoughts and opinions you'll see inside this post have been percolating inside my mind since I heard a statistic inside a podcast over the summer.  If you've spent anytime on my blog, you know that as a professional wedding DJ, I can assure you that no two weddings are ever alike.  If DJing your wedding was as easy as playing the same music over and over that I played last week or last month,  then I would gladfully sell all of my gear and get out of the business. Every couple I've worked with over the years has come to me with diverse, eclectic musical tastes. So as a result, each and every wedding that I perform at has a completely different set of music.  The wedding playlist of the modern bride and groom has a lot to do with what music they grew up and what music that they may be listening to on their Spotify or Apple music playlist. The statistic that got me to me to take a closer look at this was "70% of young people are consuming older music". For the purpose of this post, we'll say that "young" is 30 or younger and that older music is anything before the year 2000.

Here we are in early October and fall is settling in over the Lowcountry. It's nice to walk outside and do a load-in to a wedding venue without feeling like I need to take a shower before my client's wedding reception! You know, in a super crowded wedding market where inexperienced wedding DJS continue to burst onto the scene, I find myself smiling a lot these days. As the wedding industry has moved past COVID, I'm noticing a bit of a welcome shift in how modern brides and grooms are choosing their wedding DJ. More and more couples are hitting my website in a very decisive manner, which makes it so much easier to add another conversion into the win column for my successful DJ business. But, as someone who has been at this for quite some time, why are these lovely brides and grooms hiring me to take charge of the music for their wedding? The answer you'll see coming up in this post won't surprise you if you've spent any extended period of time on this blog. And if you have already been stalking my website to learn more about me, you've probably been given some pretty obvious clues.

It sure has been a productive summer for me! If you are just finding me, I look forward to possibly becoming your wedding DJ. Welcome to an all-new experience for the modern bride and groom seeking a top wedding DJ to help them plan the music for what will be one of the biggest days of their lives. I won't bore you with any complex technical terms, but my website has recently been rebuilt on a faster and more secure platform, and all the while this upgrade was taking place there were significant cosmetic changes made. If you are a newbie to my website, welcome and please feel free to poke around and find a little wedding playlist inspiration. Since you are new, you probably haven't seen me boast about my blog, but it happens to be one of the most informative out there and its interest has spanned numerous countries around the world. It NOW looks as stunning as the most beautiful bride. Image is truly everything when trying to secure your wedding DJ. Scroll down and I'll explain :)

The inspiration for this cocktail hour playlist came to me after the realization that this August would mark 50 years since the release of the signature song by The Spinners, "I'll Be Around".  Not long after the Spinners landed in Philaldelphia they would collaborate with Thom Bell and record the classic song at Sigma Sound Studios.  "I'll Be Around" was placed on the B side of the single " How Could I Let You Get Away".  Here in 2022, it's so surreal to think back that there was actually a time when a DJ had the power to flip over a single and play a song that (in their opinion) had a better chance of becoming a hit. In today's digital world, I'm not sure if a DJ has the ability to flip over a Spotify or Apple Music track, as most songs are delivered to radio stations by way of email or FTP.  Being the active Spotify user that I am, I cruised over to the Spinner profile and found that "I'll Be Around" came up as the 3rd most streamed song from the group.  Even though "Rubbermand Man" came in at #1, I consider "I'll Be Around" to be a signaure song that's got the perfect vibe for cocktail hour at your wedding.

Long before COVID-19 seemed to reshape the wedding industry, I made a decision to put my sole focus on DJing weddings exclusively. One of the reasons I opted to focus "just" on weddings was because of my deep respect for the art of being a top notch professional wedding DJ. Since my clients deserve the best, I felt it was important that they get my entire focus when they secure me to be their wedding DJ.  But in the years and months since making that decision, I was approached about an assignment that would provide an excellent opportunity to showcase my talents as not only a DJ, but also an emcee.

In recent weeks, I've been talking with prospective clients who would like to hire me  to be their wedding DJ. One of the questions that has come from a few of these introductory conversations is how exactly I would speak on the microphone. Most of the time these types of conversations will mainly focus around how I will motivate the crowd or mix their music, so to hear them begin to ask about a wedding DJs MC skills and voice quality is rather refreshing. Over the course of my wedding DJ career, I've always said that a wedding DJ's voice is equally as important as playing the right song at the right time. With the steady stream of amateur wedding DJs continuing to infiltrate the market, modern brides and grooms need to understand that hiring a wedding DJ with a voice that truly cuts through is very important. It really is as simple as this, if a wedding DJ sounds truly horrible on the microphone, it won't matter what songs are being played. It'll be at that time that your wedding becomes forgettable. In an effort to avoid an annoying voice at your wedding, you'll want to read on because I don't want you to make the same mistake that so many couples have made in the past.