1) Don't EVER have your Reception outside: While it seems to be every one's dream to have an outdoor wedding, most people know that outdoor receptions are a little rougher. In fact, a lot of places will straight up refuse to deal with outdoor receptions because they know its a disaster waiting to happen. The wedding that I DJ-ed was in an uncle's backyard (granted he had A LOT of property), throughout the wedding wind would kick up and blow over the potted plants on the tables causing the water inside the vase to spill everywhere on the table and on guests laps and plates of food.
2) DON'T put your DJ is a FUCKING GARAGE!: My set up that I brought to this show was HUGE. A sound board with 4 CD players built into it, four speakers, 3 CD books and a 4-light system ran through a switchboard. What did they give me? A Table for tailgating and shoved me in their garage. Know what happens when you have that much power running in a small space? Circuit breakers tend to get over-ride and shut off the power. Guess when that happened... DURING THEIR FIRST DANCE AS A COUPLE!
3) If you're 20+ and still act like a college frat house bro you're NOT allowed to be married: This wedding was like watching every hated character from every Teen Flick and College film gathered in one group. The wedding party was the Alpha-Betas, Mike Dexter and Omega Thea Pi hanging out together, but when that modern twist. The Men in the party wore khaki pants, untucked white collared shirts and gray flip-flops, the women at the party wore flip flops as well, during the reception they walked around with a bucket of flip-flops to hand out to EVERYONE who attended (except that DJ, but he was super hetero so he didn't care). The Drunker they got the more retarded they became. There's a scene in the movie Whatever it Takes where two of the Jock characters throw fireworks at a girls feet in the middle of a party just to laugh at them and end up getting with the girls, I always believed this was just a movie, until I witness that EXACT FUCKING THING HAPPEN! Not only did they throw fireworks a girl while she was dancing, she and her friends called them both assholes and ended up making out with them a few minutes later. I really knew they were douche when they asked me to play Journey, Big and Rich and Toby Keith MULTIPLE times... Which leads me too.
4) If you're a Country fan, and so is EVERYONE in your family tree, you should TELL THE DJ THAT: Most DJ's, tend to make their money doing high school and college events or bar gigs. These events tend to involve playing mostly the "big hits of today". Now every DJ is always has the "classic" party songs (90's rap, disco, line-dances, etc), but there's one genre that most DJ's don't carry much of, Country. Unless it's one of the biggest country songs out there ("Save a Horse - Big & Rich", "Amazed - Lonestar", etc) DJ's aren't very well supplied in that genre. If you don't tell the DJ that he needs country (and giving specific songs would be even MORE amazing) then don't yell at him when he DOESN'T have the music your guests request. In fact when I did my friend Mark and Laura's wedding they specifically sent me a list of 100 songs not necessarily to play but to be a GUIDELINE to what I should have with me.
I can't put a number down for this one, but if you read that list, you'll see how this wedding went DJ wise, after the Journey and Big & Rich the people were on the dance floor. I was suppose to wrap it all up at 10. The last song I was suppose to play was You and Me by Lifehouse. I started playing the song and packed up the microphone and everything else and I look up to see the bride, not dancing with her husband, but crying uncontrollably, I was asked to please fade the music out because the Bride's grandfather died on the way home. This is not funny, it's actually very upsetting, specifically to me... up until this point I had a pretty awesome stand-up routine based around this event.
