Weddingbee Blog

I consider myself to be a pretty well-seasoned wedding attender. I would say that I have been to about 10 or 11 in my lifetime. Of these weddings I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of music at a wedding. I have attended weddings where the DJ was so awful at picking music that no one touched the dance floor after the bridal party dances, and instead everyone opted to sit at their tables and drink themselves into a stupor (which is really sad considering that even the drunk guests were staying away from the floor). There have also been receptions where the DJ totally brought the house down. There were people busting moves that I didn’t even know existed.

This isn’t me at a wedding, but an example of how I like to get down to a good DJ. (personal photo)

I have also attended a few weddings where the couple did the music themselves on an iPod. One was really successful, and you could tell that the bride and groom had put a lot of thought into the music that they placed on their list. Everyone seemed to not even notice there wasn’t a DJ manning the booth. I also have been to two that were not as successful. One was a bust because they played 100% country music. Now, before I get those of you who like to honky-tonk on my case, let me explain. I like me some country music—MOH A made sure that I learned the ins and outs of country music (because as a city girl, I can honestly say that before Taylor Swift and the other mainstreaming of country, I never really heard or listened to country music). Country has some great songs to get down to (“Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” anyone?), but this particular couple only did slow songs. Not really the kind you can boot-scoot and boogie to. The other couple did all classic rock. Once again, I love classic rock as well (I really like almost any music), but they played stuff you can’t dance to. Have you ever tried to booty pop to “Stairway to Heaven”? Yeah, doesn’t work. And if you haven’t and want to try, record yourself doing it for a good laugh.

So when it came time for Mr. D and me decide on music for the reception, we really sat down and ironed out the pros and cons. If we did our own music, we could save a lot of money. Especially because our venue has an in-house system we could connect to for free, in addition to microphones. However, it meant monitoring the music the entire time, praying for no technical errors or mishaps, and finding a master of ceremonies. Mr. D really did not want to run the risk of not having a fun reception or having to sit at the iPod babysitting it (or finding someone who would). So we started to search for DJs in the area.

In Cedar Rapids, one of the news stations does a voted ranking of the different businesses in the area. They even have a special section devoted to wedding vendors. So I peeked and took a look at the DJs on there. I picked the top three and scoured their websites. All three had their quotes already on their website. I went one step further and looked up reviews. All three had glowing reviews, so I immediately dropped the one that had the highest price (which was outside of our $800 budget). I think I called the other two for availability, and since I was a year out when I did this I wasn’t too worried, but you just never know. Surprisingly, only one was available due to the fact that the other DJ was getting married himself that weekend. So Mr. D and I met with the available one.

Image via Absolute Entertainment

The first thing that struck Mr. D and me is how much energy both of the owners, George and Robby, had. Also, the fact that they took so much pride in their business. They told us their style of DJ’ing, how they try to play different types of music to get everyone up and moving. They also were genuinely caring and open to our styles of music and thoughts about how the reception would go. After another 20 minutes of conversation, Mr. D and I were ready to sign the contract. Now, it is not typically like Mr. D and me (mostly me), to just sign a contract based on a first meeting (we visited our reception venue three times before signing), but we liked these guys so much that we did it. And before we signed, they let us know that they also offer up-lighting.

Image via Absolute Entertainment

Now, I had already looked around for up-lighting in the area. I had sadly deemed it too costly and was going to try and figure out how to DIY it. (Remember how I said I had some ideas floating in my head as to how to perk up the venue?) I asked the price, ready to tell them no, when they said the magic number. My jaw dropped, and I told Mr. D to add the up-lighting option and sign the contract already. So what are we paying for seven hours of music plus up-lighting? All together it will be $850 dollars. The DJ package itself was under our budget, and the up-lighting added barely put it over!

A couple of months later I was signing on to mess around with our playlists (they allow us to build them online, making it easy to organize our must-plays and do-not-plays!), and I saw that they had raised the prices on all of their packages and they only have a limited amount of dates left in 2012! It turns out that business is booming and we were lucky to find them when we did!

So we made the choice to DJ, and it was pretty simple for us to make the choice and to find one. Was it that easy for you?