When it comes to our wedding my guy and I have very clear priorities. Food, food and food. We're renting out one of our favorite restaurants and throwing what we hope is a great dinner party stuffed to the gills with love.
There will be a couple of hours following dinner where people can sit and talk or go into the courtyard for dancing. We don't want a DJ. The last thing we want is a stranger in a satin vest yelling at our elderly relatives to get funky. There are fantastic, magical DJs who can integrate seamlessly into a party but as I said earlier our budget priority is the food and those unicorn DJs don't come cheap. We have a dear family friend acting as casual MC and a cousin who will man the laptop with the music as his gift to us.
Are there any DJs I can pay a flat fee for organizing our play list? We have a random play list and I'd like to pay someone to organize it so that the music balances heating up and slowing down, that genres aren't clumped together and the end finishes with a great set of songs that work well together. I not very into music so I don't trust myself to make it cohesive.
Thanks in advance for your help.
*****
I asked my friend Jesse of Dart DJ, “What would you do if someone asked you to organize her playlist? Tell her to eff off?”
Here's his response:
I would probably say that "organizing" a playlist without physically being there to assess the crowd, room and mood of the event is kind of like a baseball player stepping up to the plate blindfolded and hoping to hit a home run. It could happen but the much more likely conclusion would be a total disaster. Honestly, every wedding we do is so different in terms of crowd, size, mood and set length that it would just be irresponsible of us to take money for this sort of thing. I would never recommend it. The only thing we do for people is sometimes provide a cocktail playlist. Since we are just setting a mood, sometimes this can be done with a good deal of accuracy. Hope this helps!
p.s. (from me) What is a "casual MC"? And WHYYYYEEEEEEE?
p.p.s. Stay tuned for a weird, wonderful holiday mix crafted especially for us by Dart DJ.
Photo courtesy of the world wide webs. Let me know if you know who took it.
My husband and I had the same priorities, a restaurant venue and no budget for a DJ. We crafted our own playlist and had the best man MC the reception. It was a disaster. Our 'casual' MC did all the same cheesy things we were afraid a DJ would and he didn't stick by the playlist to protect it from tampering guests or bother to check that it wasn't on shuffle. In our personal recap we promised that if we ever came across a couple trying to do what we tried we would tell them to steer clear. Hire a pro if you care in the slightest, and you do otherwise you wouldn't be asking for help organizing a playlist.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very timely question. Just like OP, we will not be having a dance (venue kick out time is 8:30pm), so I am also tempted to request a playlist (for instance, eliminating the time gaps between songs, getting the sound levels right, etc). But it sounds like that just isn't possible.
ReplyDeleteMy co-workers husband is a local music producer and artist, and I'm hoping to talk to him soon about how he would troubleshoot this kind of situation.
I assure you, you can find DJs who will just play music and not do all the cheesy things. Especially if you only want them for two hours, they should be reasonably priced. Like anonymous 6:12am, I would advise you to stear clear of the amateur MC route.
ReplyDeleteIf you are going to do your own music, I suggest making 5 or so playlists at different levels of party intensity (cocktails, not-quite dance party, dance party, end of night etc) and switching between them when the time seems right.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this requires that someone be in charge of watching over things/ shooing other guests away etc. This is terrible job for a bride or groom and an annoying job for any of the other guests, but if you have someone you can count on it could work out ok. My husband did this for his sister's wedding and they had a great dance party, but he was kind of precocupied with DJ worries all night.
Honestly, I think you can easily do this yourself. I did it for my wedding, and it took about an hour to set up 2 playlists - cocktail/dinner and dancing. Our dancefloor was packed the whole night, and if we did have a song the guests weren't into, I jumped from the the dancefloor to the podium and just advanced to the next song. I didn't mind doing it since I was in the crowd dancing anyway, and I only did it twice. If I hadn't been there micromanaging I'm sure it still would have worked out.
ReplyDeleteSince you have a playlist, just start putting it in order. Listen to it and move stuff around till it feels good to you. We DJ'ed our own wedding and I spent a lot of time googling to find popular dance songs to make sure we had stuff that was danceable. A Practical Wedding has tons of playlists.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't have an MC because we didn't have any announcements or anything. After the ceremony, we turned the cocktail/dinner playlist on. And then 90 minutes later, we stood up, thanked everyone for coming, and cut the cake. Then we turned the dancing playlist on and started dancing. Easy peasy and it worked great.
you're not very into music, yet you picked all the songs? if you aren't capable of sorting out genres (which is totally OK), you probably shouldn't trust yourself at all.
ReplyDeletepick some pre-made mixes by tasteful people, add your few must-have tunez, and maintain control of the remote.
Use online playlists as reference guides, and if you have a very musically inclined friend, I'm sure that's a job they'd love to help with. I've got a couple friends who always create kick-ass playlists and love doing it. There are apps to help you organize your playlists into sections (ceremony, cocktail hour, dancing) so whoever ends up running the music has an easier time of it.
ReplyDeleteSo my husband made/manned the playlist for our friends' wedding a while ago and has it on Spotify if you just want someone else to do most of the work for you. It was about a year ago and of course there's no accounting for taste, so anything you choose, go through it carefully first to edit.
ReplyDeleteThe couple he did this for are not huge dancers, so there wasn't a lot of dancing. We DIYed the playlist at our own wedding with the help of my sister, and danced all night. A lot just really depends on you and your FH and your guests.
This is just another post wherein a DJ is trying to justify their cost.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteI always wonder when I read these posts if the horror stories are just wedding DJs in disguise.
DeleteAn ipod (or laptop) DJ is totally fine if you put thought into it and let, say, Robyn be the most obscure artist on your list. I can't decide if the LW wants people to dance or not, though.
I see this as a case of wanting to have your cake, and eat it too.
DeleteYou can totally get by without a wedding DJ. But you have to be willing to put in the work.
You can't say "I don't want a DJ, but oh hey can I pay you to organize this music for me?" No.
I don't get why that's such a big deal -- she wants to pay someone a fair price for a service, she just doesn't want the full-service package. The DJ in this post is telling her that if she doesn't get the full-service package, her wedding is going to suck, and that's a flat-out lie.
DeleteA friend made us a few mixes and put them on Spotify as her gift to us. I think my husband mostly manned the music, although I don't remember him spending that much time on it. I also don't remember our guests trying to surreptitiously change the music, so I'm less concerned about drafting someone to act as an informal security guard. We got up and thanked everyone for coming before cutting the cake, and we didn't need anyone to MC.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't care that much about music now, you aren't going to care much about music at your wedding. If you're not planning to dance much then it's really just going to be the background noise as you share this experience with your friends and family. I say just put something functional on an ipod and enjoy yourself. If you're anything like me, you won't even pay much attention to the result.
If you are under 35, chances are someone you know is friends with a non-corny DJ. We were originally going to make our own playlist, but ended up having a friend-of-a-friend DJ for a good price. I think it was worth it to not having to figure out what the hell to do if no one's dancing.
ReplyDeleteMy husband (a DJ) does Spotify playlists for events and venues (bars, restaurants, etc) all the time. As far as I know it's never been "a total disaster." He even did a yoga class one. He charges anywhere from $50 to a few hundred depending on length, number of play lists, etc and how long it will take him to put it together. Agree with Dart DJ that this would not be a good solution if you want people to dance and sustain a party mood, but if you just want some ambiance over dinner it totally works.
ReplyDeleteI would guess that a professional wedding DJ like Dart DJ is probably not going to do this for you for the reasons stated above, so ask musically inclined friends.
It's possible that I've been to a wedding where an iPod/phone/computer stood in for a DJ and I didn't notice, but the one where I DID notice, ti was a disaster. It was about 70% Feist and 30% oldies. Stuff kept repeating and guests would change songs in the middle of a song. It was awful.
ReplyDeleteThis happened at my wedding (except for the music selection part). Maybe others viewed it as a disaster.. I didn't give a shit because I had just gotten married!
DeleteWe made the playlists for our wedding and I compulsively organized/arranged the order of the songs - it worked out just fine (except for one point where Joan Jett got stuck on repeat, but we figured it out.) We had a cocktail, dinner, and dancing playlist, no MC. If you're not up to arranging the lists on your own, hopefully there's a friend who would love to!
ReplyDeletegood god, don't let your friend (um, or anyone) MC your wedding. It's not a sporting event.
ReplyDeleteYou can get a pretty inexpensive DJ who won't do any of those annoying things if you ask around for recs or read reviews carefully and then provide lots of guidance. We found a great DJ who was reasonable enough that it wasn't that much more than renting all the equipment we would have needed to DIY it. He wasn't super familiar with the music we wanted so we put the effort into providing him with a huge number of songs and specifying what portion of the evening they were for. He was enthusiastic about it and he did an amazing job - not like having a DJ who is a full on artist or something, but we were fine with just having good solid music that didn't cut out at random times and no cheesy chatter. We love music but it wasn't one of our top priorities for the wedding, so we were happy with this semi-DIY option.
ReplyDeleteWe did something similar. We found a DJ who was open to playing the music we wanted without making announcements, and it was very reasonable. We made all the playlists and even put them in order for him (generally playing 3 or so fast songs in a row, then one or two slower songs to let people cool down) and it worked out perfectly. He brought all the equipment, so we didn't have to worry about setup, and our dance floor was packed the entire night.
DeleteIn Canada, it's totally normal wedding practice to have a friend MC. It's kind of a standard role. FYI.
ReplyDelete