September 6, 2009

I received a call from the mother of the groom on or about August 3rd looking for an Edmonton DJ and slideshow like I had just done that past weekend.  The nephew of the mother of the groom was at a wedding that past weekend said that I did some creative things and referred me to Gail and Paul.

So we got the ball rolling and due to the condensed time frame we are all working under the gun as there was a lot to do, and very little time to do it.

Paul and Gail were very accommodating to get all that we had to get done in order to make the slide show happen.  We got together and shoot the video and we were off to the races.  I was under a lot of pressure to complete the slide show in under a month as I had a number of other projects on the go.

With the BIG day now upon us, I arrived at the Oasis Conference Centre about 2:30 in the afternoon as the wedding ceremony was also being held on site at 5pm.  This was the first time I ever played at the Oasis Conference Centre and was blown away by the look of this venue.  Wow, the Oasis is a beautiful place to hold a function and has almost everything you need to have a successful function. 

I was very impressed with the staff at the conference center as there were tremendously helpful to me as I was setting up for the ceremony.

The wedding ceremony went off without it hitch.  With Gail’s brothers being in the military and dressed in uniform added to the formalities.  It was all topped off with bagpipes filling the room with music as the bride came down the aisle.  One other unique thing happened that was very special, was that each woman that came to the ceremony was given a single rose.  They held onto the rose until Gail walked down the aisle, she then proceeded to collect all of the roses to form a bouquet.  One of the bridesmaids quickly tied the roses together to secure the bouquet.  All I can say is that this created a very special moment in the ceremony.  Paul’s father and brother in law officiated the wedding ceremony and together did an amazing job of joining Paul and Gail in marriage.  There were a number of funny points made along the way as Paul’s father made good use of his role as the marriage commissioner.

Following the wedding ceremony we flipped the room to get ready for the reception.  With only about an hour to do this made for quite a good deal of work to be done in a very short period of time.  The guests were then allowed to reenter the room about seven o’clock which was then followed by a nice meal provided by Elizabethan Catering.  It was a pretty standard meal with all the fixings and the highlight of dinner for me was the green leaf salad with raspberry dressing.  The master of ceremonies did a great job of entertaining and leading the evening.  Unfortunately, as hard as he tried, the guests did not respond as well as he hoped to some of his jokes and interactions.

As an Edmonton disc jockey I thought I had seen every kissing came ever invented, until tonight.  The bride and groom decided to play Plinko, a game need famous on the “Price is Right”. 

You simply had to come out and drop a disc down the pegboard and where it landed told you what would happen or what you have to do.  Either the bride and groom would kiss or you have to do the bird dance or even spin a hula hoop.  I will be sure to recommend this kissing game idea to all my clients.

Speeches follow dinner and everybody was very well spoken which made speeches even more enjoyable.  Right at the end of speeches we ran the slideshow which seem to go over quite well.  The brother of the groom, as it turns out, was at another wedding I did this summer and he commented on the difference between both slideshows.  The slideshow I built for Gail and Paul is an advanced product with a video interview of the bride and groom a long with pictures of the bride and groom over their lifetimes.  The brother went on to say how unique this slideshow was as it was like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Please see the entire slide show in full

We then moved into the dance were the bride and groom decided to do a choreographed number.  I helped put together a sequence of songs were they did different dance moves the each of those songs.  It really helped to get the party headed in the right direction and added a lot of energy to the night.  The first dance where everyone was asked to join in was great. 

I think everyone in the whole room was on the dance floor, and you could barely move without running into someone else.  With a good start to the night, and the first dance in the bride and groom being on the dance floor helped get the party right off the ground.  Everyone was dancing and enjoying themselves the whole light through.  Just after 12 o’clock the party got even better everyone that was there was pretty much on the dance floor having a great time.  Had we not had to shut down at 1 a.m. I am sure we would went for another hour.

I am happy to say, that Paul and Gail were a joy to work with.  They were easy-going, laid-back and a lot of fun which made my job that much easier. 

Edmonton Oasis Conference Centre Highlights: What impressed me were the following.

1.  The look and feel of the venue were great and is one of the nicest venues in Edmonton

2.  The Garden.  Great for pictures or an outdoor ceremony. The waterfall just makes the space pop.

3.  The upstairs rooms.  Made available for a place for the bride and groom to get ready or hang out before they come into the reception.  Almost like a hotel with seating and bathrooms that allows for a great place to catch your breath between the pictures and reception. 

4.  Very good lighting control.  Lots of dimmers and I could fairly easily adjust the lighting to the setting I like for the dance.

5.  The Staff.  Everyone there works hard to make sure the details are done well and for the most part they were.  A gentleman (I can’t remember his name) was amazing.  He made sure I had what I needed and made sure the venue looked its best and were 100% people focused.  Thanks for all your help that day.

Edmonton Oasis Conference Centre Low Points: Here a couple of things that I noticed that were a bit of a challenge.

1.  Storage.  As an Edmonton Disc Jockey and being in almost every venue in the city this venue was built almost to perfection EXCEPT there is almost no in house storage for my empty containers.  This almost doubled my work load by having me put all my empty containers back into the trailer and then get them back out again at the end of the night.

2.  The A/V department.  This was very disappointing.  On Thursday Anne McLennan called me to make sure all is in order for the wedding and we talked about mics for the ceremony and plugging in a video feed to the projectors and this is not rocket science but she still had  their A/V tech call my on Friday to ask me a bunch of questions that made no sense at all.  What was nice the A/V tech did come a little early to make sure all was ready to go and I gave them the video feed and they powered up the projectors for a test and there were reddish lines running horizontally through both projectors.  We then went on to confirm that this problem was caused by something on their end.  As it was almost 7pm when we got to this point there was nothing that could really be done to fix the problem.  What annoyed me was that the A/V tech tells me that they had someone into do some work and it has not worked properly since then.  OK, if you knew of the problem why didn’t they get this fixed prior to the function and more so the new of the problem and proceeded to charge the customer for something that was not working properly.  This did not impress me at all. 

3. Rules.   They have a lot of rules that did not make sense to me.  Being an interactive Edmonton DJ I want to be as close to the dance floor as possible so I can jump into the party and have some fun with the guests.  I had to work a little to get them to place me as close to the dance floor as possible.  My rig is very sharp looking and very clean, I don’t even have my company name on any of my equipment as I think that looks tacky, and since I am generally 4 hours of the night a little more emphasis on the DJ would be great as generally I am the reason you stay or go home.

4. Cost.  From what I have heard talking to other people in the industry this is one of the most expensive places in the city to hold a function and they charge for everything.  Just to have someone turn on the projectors for 1 hour you had to pay the tech for 4 hours labour.  I could have turned on the projectors myself and saved the costumer that extra fee.  Also, if you do not use their preferred DJ, that’s right they charge you, I believe, $300 extra.  If you want to use an outside catering company or event company there are fees attached to that as well.  Just to name a few things.  All I can say is make sure of all your costs prior to signing a contract with any venue.

It started as a typical Edmonton Wedding but that did not last long. 

The Clyde Curling Rink is by far one of the hardest venues I have ever had to get my equipment into.  The only ramp into the build was at the front door which is 300 feet from where I setup for the dance.  So it is shorter to come in one of the side doors which is 8 inches off the ground and then there is a short deck around the curling rink on the inside that then goes down 8 inches.  This meant that I had to lift my equipment twice just to get it into the room.  Had I know that this was the case I would have brought some help with me.

LUCKY I WAS THERE!!!

The girl that was building the wedding slideshow ran into a small problem that day.  She had just bought a new Mac PC and either she was not sure on how to run it or there was a problem with iDVD but she could not render the slideshow to any digital format or DVD.  Lucky enough she came to the hall early to see if I could help out.  The thing is, I know nothing about a Mac and she did not bring the monitor adaptor to connect the laptop to the projector we could not even run it directly from her machine. 

I then recommended that she transfer all the pictures to a memory stick and I would build the slideshow from scratch and hope that I could get it completed in less than an hour.  Long story short, I finished rendering the slide show 2 minutes prior running it and it went off without a hitch.  The bride and groom did the right thing by thanking the girl that built the slide show for building it and for the most part the guests had no idea that things went the way they did. 

It was great to help out and make sure that this part of the evening went well.  There are very few people that could have made this all happen, and I am proud to say that being more than just and Edmonton DJ is what DJing is all about.  I have all said that more people need to do more than what is expected of them and on this day… I did just that.  The bride and groom later visited me to thank me and that was a great thing for them to do.

We then headed into dinner which was all homemade and was very, very well done.  Even though I only eat chicken or turkey there was more than enough even for me to be made happy.

Being an Edmonton Wedding DJ, I can not remember the last time I saw so many kids at a function.  This can be both good and bad depending on the night.  Good, because kids have a lot of energy and can get the party going but when it is bed time for the kids you then end up losing the parents as well.

We had a good start to the dance with a few good/solid 2-steps and some oldies.  Country weddings are usually better than Edmonton Parties and that is mainly because you get the hall for the weekend and you can therefore party well into the night.  Add in that there were a lot of the guests camped right there on site, so all they had to do was crawl home at the end of the night. 

By 1 am the party was a jumpin’ and everyone that was there was on the dance floor having a great time.    I ended up playing ’til 2 am and that is when the parents shut us down as they wanted to go home as it had been a very long day.

Enjoy some Edmonton Disc Jockey Services highlights!

Lonnie and Christine were a lot of fun to work with.  When it comes to slide shows and what I do, it takes a leap of faith to do this type of slide show.  I am so glad that they took the chance to this and boy it was worth all the hard work.  We shot the video footage for the slideshow almost a month prior to the wedding date and we had been trying to get together a number of times but the weather just wasn’t cooperating.  It was raining a little that night and we just had to go for it as I was running out of time to build the project.  The rain let up and turned out to be a great night to shoot the video and the back drop of the small lake worked great.  I even got lucky and shot a few frames with my new Canon 5D Mark 2 that turned out really well.

The day of the wedding I arrive 3 hours prior to the doors opening and it was one of the tightest rooms I have ever been in.  After I setup my show and the screen and projector there wasn’t an inch to move in the room.  It is great to be at or close to capacity of the room as you never want a room looks empty or like people did not come and this was not the case at all.

The room looked great and the decorations were great with chair covers and ties that really added to the overall look to the room.  They rented everything from River City Rentals including the dance floor which we helped setup that afternoon.

The guests started arriving at about 6 pm and everyone was having a great time right from the get go.  The bride and groom arrived about 6:30 and picked, what is becoming the number 1 entrance song, “Black Eyed Peas – I Got a Feelin” and everyone was clapping and cheering as the wedding party came in the room.

This was my first time to the Hilton Garden Inn and dinner was very well done with some great deserts and a special thanks goes out to the staff that worked hard to make sure that, not only the guests, but me as a contractor had everything I needed.  When we got there they asked if we needed a drink or if they could help with anything.  The only thing could be a little better was that the air conditioning could not keep up as it was a little warm in the room and it is a bit of a challenge to get gear into the room if you do not have a ramp to get up the 6 in curb on the outside of the building.

I must say that speeches were GREAT.  The best man stole the show with his very funny opening that took a direct shot at the groom and had the room in stitches.  They were a very well spoken group that helped set the tone for the rest of the night.  I have always said that the better the front end of the night is; leads to a better back end.

The formal end of the night ended with the slide show and it went better then even I expected.  I am a little used the response I get from the slide show I build because it is very unique.  Add in that the bride and groom had great personalities led to one of the best received slide shows I have ever had the pleasure of building.  The laughter at times was so loud and long that we almost needed to show it a second time so that you could hear what was said during that laughter.  It was a lot of fun for me to just watch the people in the room as the slide show happened.

What can I say about the dance but WOW.  This summer continues to be one of the best ever and people are in the party mood.  Simply put this was a rocker.  Being an Edmonton DJ is by far one of the best things you can be.  I have always said that what makes the difference at a party is the bride and groom and if they are on the dance floor or not.  Christine and Lonnie spent a great deal of the night dancing which help elevate this party to a great time.  The highlight of the night is when I played an Eminem song and gave the mic to Lonnie and sang along to the lyrics like a pro.  Everyone loved it and it helped take the party to another level.

Edmonton Wedding Slide Show

A day to remember.

It is hard to believe that a year has already gone by since my cousins wedding.  It was a great day where I did a little more than I normally do.

Doing functions for family is something I seem to do less and less of for the main reason that I get treated better via the people I do not know over the people I do.  This was not the case however with Terry and Penny.  Even though I am yet to recieve a formal thank you in the mail they sure did thank me that night and every time I have seen them since.

Penny wanted to do a slide show and Terry didn’t and with all the goings on it just never really came together. So, a few weeks before the wedding I decided I would take pictures from the day and build a slide show during dinner from the pictures I took and then show it at the end of speeches.  Well I have to say this nearly killed me as it was one of the hottest days of the summer and on top of it I was providing sound for the ceremony.  A normal Edmonton Wedding is a 12 – 16 hour day and with all the goings on for this wedding I had clocked in at almost 21 hours. 

 I can say this for sure as it was all worth it.  The slide show went off without a hitch and added a great touch to an already great day.  On top of it all I got lucky and snapped a few nice pictures and we had a lot of fun as well.

  

It was a hot day and I am glad we had air conditioning tonight at the Terra Losa Seniors Centre in Edmonton, Alberta.  This is a great community hall that holds about 200 maximum and that is what we had for this wedding.  It is always great to play here the load in is pretty good with a ramp out the front door and a deck on 2 sides of the building with a great view of the lake.

The M/C’s did a great job of leading the night.  One of the two M/C’s used to be a DJ and he had great microphones skills.

Dinner was very good; expect the caterer ran out of porgies for almost 15 minutes right at the end of the line.  And to make things worse they ran out of sour crème and ended up using did for those 10 of us left at the end of the line.  I am not it the caterer is a little new or everyone brought there appetite.

Speeches were very well done with the highlight being a PowerPoint slide show that the Maid-of-honor spoke throughout and it was hilarious the way she did it.  The bride and groom ended off speeches and they remember to thank me which is often over looked as I really have not done too much until this part of the night.

The dance started off with a traditional first dance and mother/son and father/daughter dance.  We ended the formal dances with the wedding party and then we were off to the races.  Even though it was one of the hottest days of the summer this year everyone dance the night away.  Being an Edmonton DJ is a great thing to be when everyone is willing to get out on to the dance floor you can create a great party and that is exactly how things played out that night. 

The only thing is that they shut me down about 12:30 as the hall wants everyone out by 1:00 AM.  I was a little upset as no one wants to go home when they are having a good time and we for sure could have gone for another hour.

I would like to thank Deborah and Eric for going the extra distance.  On Monday I got a great phone call thanking me for helping create what they called a great evening where everyone that came had a great time. This really met a lot to me, THANX.

Lori & Eugene did a great job of decorating the Fort Legion, I can not remember the last time it look this good.

Being an Edmonton Wedding DJ has taken me to many small towns and those often prove to be some of the best parties.

It was a great time, made better by the fact that there was people there that I new as friends or people that I had done weddings for in the past.

The speaches we very well done and even the little flower girl had some great words of advice for the bride and groom.

The dance got going and it was a rocker.  Everyone willing to get out on the dance floor and have a good time.  The bridal party was reved up and led the way on the dance floor.  The party never stopped all night and would have went well into the morning but the venue pulled the plug and we ended on a high note at about 1 AM.

Please see some highlights with my very new Canon 5D mark 2 camera.  Lots of fun in the parking lot.