A Wedding at Preston Park Museum
It's been a long while since I DJd on a Good Friday, but Vicki & Gary had booked me to play at their wedding at Preston Park Museum near Stockton. They were originally from the North East, now living in Manchester & decided to marry near their families at a fantastic venue.
We met to talk about their background & to discuss the kind of music they liked. It wasn't long before I'd established they weren't looking for what you might call 'typical wedding disco music' - their tastes are eclectic with a sway towards the heavier kinds of rock music. My ears lit up at the thought of playing Rage Against The Machine & Metallica. Every aspect of their booking was taken care of online, from paying their deposit & balance to supplying no less than 120 music requests. This was no self-indulgent request list - these were tracks they knew would go down very well with their guests - and how - more on that in a while.
I arrived at the venue with plenty of time to spare - 2 hours to be precise & Eloise the lovely wedding coordinator at the museum was as helpful as she was professional - very much so. I loaded my equipment through some gates & wheeled my trolley up a cobbled street among recreations of Victorian era shops then waited until I got the go-ahead to set everything up.
Once in I quickly got everything ready to go & a few minutes later we were ready for the first dance.
I sampled tracks from the request list & played requests from guests until later in the night when things went in a much heavier direction and it was AWESOME!
The lesson to take away from this of course is that your taste in music is as important to take into account as the wedding cake, the room decoration & food - infact it's as important as everything else - and it's vital to take your guests' tastes into account too. Come the last dance of the night the happy couple had an impromptu circle formed around them, playfully moving in & out to the music with everybody singing along. They all absolutely smashed it!