Guest Post By: DJ Jimmie Espo, Move It Music DJ and Lighting 

I like to think of true wedding DJs as symphony conductors.  Like the conductor and his baton, we use the perfect mix of music to inspire a diverse crowd of guests to dance.  Without the perfect mix, guests will eventually lose their rhythm and abandon the once full dance floor.

This “perfect mix” cannot be planned, but is spontaneously created by reading the energy of the crowd.  What can be planned and practiced is the technique and skill to provide a diverse mix of music that not only appeals to all ages and genres, but keeps guests dancing to songs that they would normally not dance to.  The outcome is a dance floor filled with guests of all generations…a true family event.

Most DJs fail at this technique because they rely on the bad habit of “sets,” or long groups of music from the same genre.  While this is great for the guests that love this genre, the rest will lose interest and retreat to their tables.  Once these guests lose interest, it is difficult to get them back on the floor.  Learning how to create the perfect mix requires the DJ to think out of the box and mix together songs that normally would belong in different sets.  By alternating genres and decades of music, all of your guests want to keep dancing in anticipation for next great song.

Example mixes would be:

“I Got a Feelin” by Black Eyed Peas

“Rock This Party” by Bob Sinclair

“PTY” by Michael Jackson

“I Can’t Help Myself” by The Four Tops

“You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” by Barry White

“This Is How We Do It” by Montel Jordan

“Poison” by Bel Biv Devoe

Beat-mixing songs together will keep a consistent tempo and help to sustain the energy on the dance floor, but this cannot always be done.  This is where other DJ skills come into play.  Skills such as cuts and record breaks can help to transition between songs.  Also, using effects and filters, your DJ can be creative while not ruining the integrity or the original song.

Another great way to keep all decades of guests dancing together is to play remixes or “mashups.”  Old classic songs remixed to new beats can really bring crowds together on the dance floor.  A great DJ knows what remixes are done well and be a hit at your wedding.

Some great songs to remix are:

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston

“Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey

“Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns and Roses

“Billie Jean” by Micheal Jackson

Find a DJ that understands how important the perfect mix is to your wedding.  Ask questions about his/her mixing techniques and how they plan to keep all of your family and friends on the dance floor together.  Inquire about remixes and ask to hear some of them to be sure that they sound great.

Remember, the right DJ with the perfect mix can make your wedding the best it can be.

DJ Jimmie Espo | CEO, Move It Music DJ and Lighting

DJ Jimmie Espo, CEO of Move It Music DJ and Lighting, has been a successful disc jockey in Boston for over 20 years. His versatile resume spans from Boston’s hottest night clubs in the mid ‘90’s, to becoming the accomplished, premier wedding DJ and master of ceremonies he is today.

Your wedding day is the one day where you get to have everyone you love together at the same place and at the same time. Your guests are there to celebrate this special day with you and make memories to last a lifetime. By including fun, creative activities, your guests will keep talking about your special day for years to come!

Lawn games are a fantastic way to keep guests entertained during cocktail hour. Croquet, bocce ball, horseshoe,s and bag toss are a few games that can get your guests mingling with one another and can be easily played in lovely wedding attire. In addition, these games can always be personalized to fit the theme or color scheme of your wedding.

Croquet is a lawn game in which players use mallets to hit colored wooden balls through wickets. The winning team is the one who gets through the most wickets. Bocce ball, also known as lawn bowling, is a game where teams bowl to get as close to the jack as possible. The winning team is the one who has the most balls closest to the jack. In Horseshoes, two teams take turns tossing horseshoes at stakes in the ground and the team that has the most horseshoes on their stake wins. Bag toss has players toss bean bags so that they land in the hole or on the board. The player scoring the most points wins. Activities like these give your guests the chance to play games they might not play very often and enables them to break the ice and laugh with each other.

Photo booths are a popular trend at weddings and for good reason. They create personalized keepsakes for your guests to take home and are a great way to get everyone out of their seats and having a fun time. Many even include props, adding a whole new level of fun and comedy to the experience. Guests can feel free to act silly and express their excitement in their photographs. Since your guests probably don’t get to see each other as often as they would like to, they will appreciate having those pictures to look back on and remember the laughs they shared on your special day.

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Not everyone throws off their shoes and tosses their inhibitions to the wind when the band gets going at a wedding reception. Many people just don’t care for dancing – especially at a wedding – and some of them might spend their down time twiddling their thumbs or making extra trips to the dessert bar as the night carries on. This may not be true for some especially enthusiastic families, but if you fear that your guests will be sitting on their hands while only a few select party animals occupy the dance floor, you might want to conjure up a few wedding activity alternatives.

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Guest Post By: Marcello Pedalino

If you and your fiancé would like to have a wedding reception that is a true reflection of your personality and style, this list can help you.  As a contributor to Peter Merry’s new book, The Best Wedding Reception… Ever!,  these ideas will make your wedding reception fun, unique and memorable.   If you are a discerning Bride or Groom who is interested in dramatically different results, read on…

1)     Set the mood! Have your first dance as husband and wife take place on top of the clouds or under the stars by utilizing the latest advances in elegant special effects and lightscaping technology. An expert like Jason Jani, from S.C.E Weddings, can make it happen.

2)     Create a Masterpiece! Make your once in a lifetime reception a priceless work of art by having an artist, like Martin Hardy, The Party Painter, paint a real-time portrait that encapsulates your entire wedding from the grand entrance to the last dance.

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I absolutely love live bands at weddings. They give an event a whole new life and really energize the crowd.  Whether it is a Blues Band, 80′s Band or a Top 40′s Band they will be able to entertain your guests and provide an energy that a DJ can not deliver.

Here are a few tips I would offer when booking a live band to make sure your guests have a rockin’ good time.

• Make sure the band has an Emcee who is experienced in wedding announcements
• If your venue is an odd shape or has low ceilings be sure to communicate this with the band for acoustics purposes
• Review their song list because every band specializes in different genres of music
• Ask them to send you a demo tape or if you could see them play live at one of their gigs
• Confirm the amount of breaks the band will take and what type of music you would like them to play during this time.

Photographs Compliments of Paul Retheford Photography and LVL Weddings & Events

Ever leave a wedding, turn to your date for the evening and say “Boy, that wedding as awful”? Yeah, me too. Nothing is worse than a boring wedding. Here are a few tips to keep the party poppin’.

Crazy Family Dancers? Check.

Bring on the Dancers:
- Look at your wedding guest list. Anyone on there who you know loves to dance? C’mon, everyone’s got at least 1 cousin or friend who loves to boogie. They may not be good at it but they love to do it. All it takes is one or two crazy dancers to egg everyone else onto the dance floor…and don’t get those decoy fake guests who are really apart of the DJ crew to do it. That’s lame.

The Wedding is for you, the Reception is for everyone else

- I’m sorry brides, I speak only the truth. Try to remember you’ve got anywhere from 75-300 people coming over for dinner and they need to be entertained too. Have your friends send you music requests a few weeks in advance and ask the DJ to play a few of them – no matter how bizarre! The best impromptu dance-off at my wedding was to the ‘Goldfinger/Diamonds Are Forever’ James Bond remix. My best friend INSISTED I play it and I’m glad I did. The video is priceless.- Also, keep in mind the elderly and try to play a few songs for them. Granny Gertrude doesn’t dig techno.

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You may have seen the popular video on YouTube that was amongst YouTube’s biggest in it’s infancy. The video was called the Evolution of Dance and featured a gentleman by the name of Judson Laipply who tore up the stage to a medley of songs that spanned over 40 years of pop music. This video has inspired people to try their own performances and the World Wide Web has give them the medium to share it with the world.

I recently had the privilege of working with a couple who wanted to surprise their family and friends with a mini-evolution of dance during their first dance. Marissa and Mike LoCasio came to me several months before their wedding to see if I could help them put together a unique wedding song that consisted of many clips of different songs. After a couple drafts we came up with the perfect edit for them. They spent some time rehearsing and on the big day they completely took their guests by surprise, and it was a huge hit! Kudos, Marissa and Mike!

Special thanks to Rob Adams, the fantastic videographer who captured this moment and released it for all to see.

Lion dancing is a Chinese classic performance that is frequently associated with a festival event. Almost 90% of the events we’ve done this had some sort of lion dancers to start off or cap off the night!

For those of you not familiar with lion dance, it is a form of traditional dance in the Chinese culture, in which performers mimic a lion’s movement in traditional Chinese costume. It is a very symbolic performance that is usually performed as a ceremony to exercise evil spirit and to summon luck and fortune. The southern lion exhibits a wide variety of color and has a distinctive head with large eyes, a mirror on the forehead, and a single horn at center of the head. The lion dance is usually accompanied by drums, cymbals and gongs.

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Now, I am going to share something very exciting with you. But I just wished that this could have been documented by a professional videographer with clean audio, which could have been captured from the DJ’s mixer. This is the mistake that you do not want to make!!! Your wedding day is very unique so I hope that you will have a professional to document the day, specially if you are organizing entertainment like this. I hope you enjoy this video and I wish you success with planning a special first dance for your guests.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QujA8YYgTWU[/youtube]

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Technology has come a long way since the days when DJ’s commonly had what we call the helicopter beacon lights that rested on the floor in front of their turntables. Not only has the price tag of high end lighting come down, but newer and more efficient lighting effects are becoming available as LED’s illuminate the future. There are three basic type of lighting fixtures… a spot, wash, and an effect fixture. The type of fixture used to create a colored splash of light over a large area is a wash light, most commonly using RGBW (Red/Green/Blue/White) LED’s.

This fixture, Color Splash Jr, depicts a standard LED wash light. 123dj.com

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