I’m happy to report that we’ve crossed one more item off the never ending wedding to do list: the DJ. Oddly, this happened a week ago… not sure where time is going. I can’t believe next week will mean the wedding is just four months away!
Anyway, just like most of our wedding planning so far, picking a DJ didn’t happen without a bump or two along the way. We visited our first DJ company back in early March. They were okay, nothing special and traditional in that cheesy-not-so-modern-DJ kind of way. So we visited another company. Way better straight away, and Brian had actually worked with the DJ we met with at a previous wedding, so he knew his style. Only problem? They don’t do ceremonies unless they are at the same venue as the reception. Crap.
So we thought about it. And thought some more. And life got busy and time passed. But all the while, knowing we needed to book with someone was in the back of my mind. So, when we were at the lake a few weekends ago, I told Brian we’d also be figuring out which company we were going with. Despite not being able to do the ceremony, we both agreed that the second company was way more what we were looking for. We called on Monday (we had both taken the extra day off to stay for a long weekend) and SURPRISE! He had been booked. Literally the day before. As you can imagine, I may have shot Brian a glare or two for his “it’ll get done eventually” mentality.
But they assured us that they had other great DJ’s and asked if we would like to come in and meet with someone else. Knowing we preferred this company in general, we said yes. Since we had nothing to lose at this point, I also asked if they had any recommendations for having music at our ceremony since it was not on site with the reception. They asked how far away the locations were, and when we said they were literally under ten minutes apart, surprised us by saying that our DJ could do both, for just $100 extra! That was $300 less than the other company wanted to charge for a simple, half-hour ceremony, and technically free since I received a $100 coupon for this company at a wedding walk I attended in April. Yay for free ceremony music!
We went back to Music by Design on Wednesday, and met Tim, our now-DJ. He was great, and really shared his style and philosophy with us. Not only does he love music, but he went to school for it, so he really has a deeper understanding and knowledge of what he is doing. Although as long as he keeps everyone on the dance floor, we’re happy! We booked on the spot and headed home feeling a bit more relieved to finally have another huge to-do checked off our list.
Then, to our surprise, Brian got a call a few days later to say that they had forgot to put the industry discount (Brian inquired about it since he also works weddings), onto our estimate, so it would decrease yet again. We hadn’t mentioned it at our second meeting since they were already bending the rules to do our ceremony and accepted the $100 off coupon I brought. Combine that kind of customer service with their awesome online event/music planning software, and we’re happy customers.
Now that we have an awesome DJ and know our dance floor will be packed all night, it’s time to move on to some other pretty important aspects of the day, i.e. food! Stay tuned- tomorrow’s post will be all about out catering conundrums!
