First off, a word of warning. Do not try to start a blog during one of the busiest times of the year.
So, let’s start off with a quick story. Once while I was DJing, right as I was getting the bridal party lined for the grand entrance (so minutes before the reception was about to start) the bride decides now is the perfect to to inform me of a massive schedule change. She says, “oh by the way, the photographer is taking us out for sunset pictures at 6:30.” So I look at the schedule, with dinner wrapping up at 6, followed toasts and all her reception events scheduled to begin right at 6:30. Right at that moment, despite all my years of experience, the rest of the night never recovered. The flow of a couple’s day is even more important than the schedule actually being on time. So when a bride tells me she’s completely changing the schedule and inserting an event at the worst possible time for that event, it throws the entire flow of the schedule off. Had the bride alerted this to me, even the day before, I could have suggested a few changes to the scheduled to help with the flow.
So, we look at ourselves as a “one stop shop” type of wedding company. Combining our services doesn’t just save money, but you get a better product. One of the biggest benefits from this is our planning process. Instead of a couple building a timeline with say a photographer who says “this is what I suggest” and then taking it to your DJ who says “well in my experience it will work better this way” how are you supposed to know who is right? And then you have to go back to the first vendor to make sure the changes are correct, then start taking it to all your other vendors and keep your fingers crossed the timeline works for them as well. Yikes.
I’m not at all afraid to say we do it better! Every wedding has a team assigned to them. A couple could meet with one of our DJ’s, and the schedule they build is going to work perfectly for the photographer and visa versa. Typically a couple would meet with their photographer, who may suggest a timeline, and then they meet with their DJ who says, “actually this is the timeline I would suggest.” And then you go back to your photographer to make sure the change is ok, and then pray that all your other vendors agree as well! Not with us. We draw up a schedule for you and then communicate with each other to get it just perfect. No more middle man for you.
So just how exactly do we do it better? Aside from your team working together to make things easier for you, we also use a series of online planning forms to help keep you organized. We call it “guided planning.” For example, from the DJ side we often get the question “so do we just give you a whole playlist of songs that we want for the whole night?” No, no, please no. What we want from you instead is more like guidelines. These are our top 5 or 10 must play songs. Or we really love country music but don’t like rap. On our planning form for DJ, it asks for “must plays” and “do not plays” to help give us that direction. Instead of our photographer saying, “tell me all the shots you want to make sure I get,” the forms are set up to guide you to make sure you are concentrating on capturing what’s most important while also helping to make sure you don’t leave anything out. Here’s some other awesome benefits of our planning system:
Cloud Based. This means that couples can work on their forms whenever and where ever and as often as they want. Open up the form and input some of the answers and come back later to finish it up. Or maybe you pick out a song for your first dance but want to change it later because a new song came out that you both love. No big deal! Just log in to your form and change it.
Add Other Vendors. Have a wedding coordinator? Or maybe your caterer wants a copy of the schedule so they know when you have dinner there and ready to go. Or maybe they need to know when to poor the champagne. We can add them to our system! Then they have full access to your timeline, planning forms, and everything! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve showed up to a wedding and there have been 2-3 schedules floating around that are all different! Ugh, it’s not pretty.
Logged Communication. I’m the first to admit that I don’t catch all emails. Is that bad to admit? I can’t be the only one who has read an email, then something came up and I forgot to respond. There are few things that make me feel more guilty than this. Which is why I love this function of our system. Any email you send us or we send you gets logged in our system. You can see it, we can see it, any other vendor on there can see it. No more lost emails or forgotten communication. No more lost details.
But at the end of the day, we, your team, are your best source for planning. Likely, you’ve never been married before, we attend an average of 100 weddings a year! We know what we are doing, and we want you to be confident that we’ll make sure you know what you are doing as well. When we take the right steps on the planning end, then when the day of your wedding comes, we’ve got you covered! We’re going to keep you on time, keep the flow of your wedding, and make sure everything goes as smooth as possible. You just have to have fun!
Written by: Taylor Cotter
Owner – DJ – Videographer
