photos by Rachelle Stogner and Robert Nicholson (top right)

What kind of music do you want at your wedding? Canned from a DJ? Live from a band? A bit of both? We knew our goal was a kick-ass dance party after the day’s formalities concluded, but what about before that point? Initially, we contracted with a DJ company to provide a sound system and cue classical tracks at the appropriate point for the ceremony. But after a dear family friend (and my former music teacher) offered to help coordinate live music, we opted to go classy for the ceremony. Budget-wise, what we saved on the DJ’s ceremony services and an extra hour of his time pretty much balanced out the cost of the trio we hired. And, though my fiance and I weren’t in the room to enjoy the bulk of the trio’s music, we hear it went very well.

The Trio: Through our friend’s help, we found - heck, she found and contracted, the Kelley Maulbetsch Trio - a NorCal based group of talented players. We had a cello, violin, and flute trio. They knew all the wedding standards plus all the traditional classical music that makes a place seem all warm and wedding-y. And in a small-world moment, Kelley Maulbetsch turned out to be the former roommate of one of my close friend’s now fiance. Crazy! They’re union players - and we love unions - but the rates are fair and the performance was excellent. You really can’t beat live music. Want to hire them? Contact Kelley at kelleymaulbetsch at gmail dot com.

Now for the DJ . . . .

Some up-front advice before giving you any recommendations on DJs. DJs, like florists and photographers, are finite resources. Once they’re booked on a day, they’re booked. Obvious, right? Finding a DJ was something we let go way too long. After approximately 20 calls to DJs I’d found online (plus one that a friend used at his Napa wedding) left me with a still silent wedding, I began to panic a wee bit. So who did we end up hiring? The one company with any availability. Is this the best way to choose a vendor? Hell no. But we got lucky and ended up with a good one anyway.

We used The Entertainment Team, a DJ stable chock full of guys with two turntables and microphones. Part of their (charming) gimmick is to charge you extra if there’s one DJ in particular you’d like guaranteed at your event. Since we didn’t know any of them, and we kinda didn’t have too many choices, we avoided that charge by contracting for “A DJ.”

We met with their initial salesman at a Starbucks to go over our tastes - did we need someone to get the crowd on their feet? Someone to stay out of the way? Lots of dancing? Little dancing? No dancing? Neither my fiance nor I felt our personalities meshed with this salesman, but since we, a) had no choice and b) figured he wasn’t going to be our DJ anyway, we booked. That’s not to say the guy we met with wasn’t nice - he was great. And I’m sure he DJ’s the hell out of parties - we just weren’t that into him.

Several weeks passed, during which time my fiance and I spent many hours deliberating over song lists. We dutifully circled and crossed out our “play” and “do not play” choices from the company’s standard lists (meant to give an idea of our tastes). Out, tacky - for us anyway - group dances like the make-your-skin-crawl money dance (I’ve paid to dance with others at their wedding - if it floats there boat, fine, but for my tastes, that’s akin to including notes about where you’re registered in the invitations. Don’t Do It!) and the chicken dance. The Brits don’t do that sort of thing. We drafted a list of songs divided by reception feature: songs for cocktail hour, songs for dinner, songs for dancing. I delicately crafted a list of absolute rules (do not mess up the bride’s name; do not play “Celebration” or “We Are Family.” We faxed it all to the Entertainment Team ahead of schedule.

Then, a week or so later, they called to let us know the name of our DJ. I tried to look him up on their website. He wasn’t there. I called back to ask why not and was told the site was old. Nice. Now fix it. At any rate, the woman who gave me our DJs name told me, happily, that he was really good and even DJs for Mix 96.

Do you listen to Mix 96?

Yeah, neither do we, so I was a bit concerned from the start.

I became even more concerned when, upon meeting our DJ, it became clear within about 0.4 seconds that he had either never been given are tediously composed lists and letters, or had just not read them - leading us to spend half the meeting re-filling out the same damned information.

BUT, despite my fears and the rabid case of control-freak-itis I was developing relative to the DJ, on the big day, our DJ, Rob Lewis, proved to be absolutely wonderful. He played the right songs at the right times. He hit all the numbers we really wanted to hear. He sequenced things masterfully. He made the right announcements at the right times, and, per our wish from the start, we had a kick-ass dance party where the floor was still full by the time the last song played.

Success!

Best advice for selecting a DJ: start early and don’t be afraid to be specific - very specific - about what you want to hear on your big day. Maybe we seemed like control freaks to our DJ. I probably sounded like a bitch during our first meeting. But the results were worth the extra planning. The few weddings I’ve been to where the dancing petered out after 4 or 5 songs seem to be united by a common fault: crappy dinner music. Some DJs will happily pair your guests Chicken with John Tesh. Don’t let this happen. Do you want to remember nothing but Kenny G laced white noise during your cocktail hour? Actually, not to worry, I’m sure you wouldn’t remember “Contemporary Adult Mix Vol. 7″ anyway. Bottom line: if that’s what you want to hear, or you don’t care, then by all means, let the DJ worry about it. But if you think your guests would enjoy a simple mix of some personal tunes, then put one together. Burn a disc. Make a mix tape.

And we totally recommend Rob Lewis. He rocked so our guests could too.

For more:
Day One: The Series
Day Two: The Dress
Day Three: The Photographer
Day Four: The Music
Day Five: The Cake
Day Six: The Flowers
Day Seven: The Legal Stuff
Day Eight: Random Other Stuff