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.

Believe it or not, I sometimes do not know how special a client's wedding day is going to be until the days leading up to it.  While the music for a couple's wedding day is one of the most important aspects of their day, I never really know what my couple's are envisioning and expecting as their wedding day approaches.  However, it's been my experience that when a bride and groom choose Middleton Place, an instant love story and fairy tale are created. Middleton Place is in my opinion one of the most beautiful wedding venues in the South. In order to appreciate Middleton Place, you've got to visit there to see the beauty of its lush gardens.  Middleton Place weddings tend to be classy, black-tie affairs with the backdrop of an old South plantation and exquisite gardens located on the Ashley River.  Shelby + Greg were from the Atlanta, Georgia area and actually found me by way of a very fine wedding planner, Nia Thompson, of Thompson & Tuile.  I'll put a link to her website toward the end of this post, but she is one of the many wedding planners NOT in Charleston, who over the years have hired me to provide the music for their destination brides and grooms.  I'll talk more about Nia soon, but let's get to the love story that is Shelby & Greg, who were married at Middleton Place on a spectacular Sunday afternoon in October.

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. 

When planning a wedding in the late summer or fall in Charleston, modern brides and grooms need to have it in the back of their mind that their most special day could be threatened by a tropical storm or hurricane. While the chances of having to reschedule because of weather are generally fairly low, the past 8-9 years in Charleston have seen an increase in sleepless nights come September. In 2016, we had Matthew. In 2017, we had Irma. In 2018, we had Florence and Michael. In 2019, we had Dorian. Thankfully, as COVID raged during 2020 and 2021, we weren't threatened at all.  You can say that 2022 was the year that brides and grooms didn't have COVID on their mind, which was a welcome relief from the previous two years.  Josh's mother, Abby found me back in February of 2022.  Since Katie + Josh have demanding jobs up in Washington DC, I didn't get to speak with Josh until April.  Josh set up a call with me at that time and asked me a lot of the questions that brides and grooms should be asking their prospective wedding DJs.  I'll attach a link to some of those important questions at the end of this post, but thankfully I passed the test and was hired to be Katie + Josh's wedding DJ for their Veteran's Day wedding on 11-11-22.

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.

Now that I've got some time on my hands since my fall wedding rush has subsided a tad, it's time to stop neglecting my beloved wedding DJ blog. I'm still glowing about my fall wedding clients; such an amazing and eclectic group of modern brides and grooms coming to the Holy City for their most special and important day. It's very nice to know that recently engaged brides and grooms are deciding to move past COVID and are ready to get married in one of the top wedding destinations in the country. Sarah + Anthony actually found me back in the spring by way of a referral on Facebook. Apparently, my name was mentioned at some point inside a wedding group. Special thanks to whoever made this mention of me because most all of my clients find me by way of Google search. I will include a link to archive post about Google searches later in this post. I am so glad I got mentioned and that Sarah + Anthony decided to click over to my website and learn more about me.  For more on Sarah + Anthony's destination wedding, click below.

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.