Chicago Wedding DJ

Your dance floor is the whole point

Every part of a wedding has a backup plan except the reception. The food can be late, the toasts can run long, the cake can lean. People forgive all of it. What they remember is whether the floor filled up, and whether it stayed full.

That is the only thing I am hired to do.

I blend live off the room. R&B, hip-hop, Top 40, house, Afrobeats, Motown, and the songs your aunt has been waiting all night for. Nothing is queued up in advance and left to run, because a dance floor at 9:40 is not the same room it was at 8:15, and a pre-built playlist cannot tell the difference.

Two ways to book

Reception only

You have a ceremony handled and you need the party to work. I arrive an hour before doors, run sound and lighting for the reception, and MC every announcement: the introductions, the first dance, the parent dances, the toasts, the cake, the last song.

The whole day

Ceremony, cocktail hour and reception, run by one person on one timeline. Separate sound for the ceremony space so your vows are actually audible in the back row. Cocktail hour at conversation volume. Then the room turns over and the night starts.

The advantage of one DJ across all three is not the price. It is that nobody is handing off a timeline at 6pm on the most scheduled day of your life.

What is included

• MC for every announcement. Introductions, dances, toasts, cake, last call, last song. You do not need to hire a separate host.
• Full sound, scaled to your room. Two Electro-Voice EVOLVE 50M column arrays. Slim towers, not black boxes on poles. They disperse evenly across a ballroom and they do not appear in your photographs.
• Two wireless microphones. Xvive M5D handhelds on 5.8GHz. Two matters: the maid of honor and the best man each hold one instead of passing a mic across the head table mid-sentence. The 5.8GHz band matters too, because cheap wireless runs on 2.4GHz and fights every phone in the room.
• Ceremony sound. Dedicated speakers on stands for the ceremony space, and a wireless mic on a stand at the officiant’s position, so your vows carry to the back row instead of dying in row four.
• Lighting. A Chauvet GigBAR 3 ILS over the floor, and par lights that can wash the room or sit on the column arrays as uplights.
• Two planning calls and a written timeline you approve before the day.
• Must-play and do-not-play lists. The do-not-play list is the one that matters, and I follow it even when a guest begs.

I visit your venue before I quote you

Not after you book. Before.

Rooms lie. A space that looks enormous on a website is a low-ceilinged rectangle with one outlet and a support column exactly where the booth should go. I would rather find that out in April than at 4pm on your wedding day.

So I walk the room, find the power, look at where the floor sits relative to the head table, and work out what gear the space actually needs. Then I quote you. It means my number is real, and it means nothing is a surprise on the day.

A client wrote a Google review specifically about this. It is the part of the job nobody else does, and it is the reason she picked me.

Insured, and used to being asked

$1 million per occurrence, $3 million aggregate, through Lloyd’s of London.

I issue a certificate of insurance naming your venue as an additional insured, usually within a day. If that sentence means nothing to you, it will mean a great deal to your venue coordinator, who has to collect one from every vendor and is used to chasing people for it.

The last one I issued named the Chicago White Sox, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and the City of Chicago, because that is what Guaranteed Rate Field requires. Your hotel ballroom will be easier.

Backup that actually exists

I bring two flagship controllers to every wedding: a Pioneer DDJ-FLX10 and a Pioneer DDJ-1000. Not a controller and a hope. If one fails at 10:15pm, the other is already under the table and the music does not stop.

Investment

Uplighting is included, not an upsell.

Photo booth available on request. I do not own one, so I would bring in a specialist and add it to the same quote, which means one vendor and one timeline rather than two.

To hold your date: a 50% non-refundable retainer, with the balance due 14 days before the wedding. Once the retainer is in, the date is yours and I turn down everyone else who asks for it.

Where I go

Chicago, Chicagoland and the surrounding suburbs at no travel charge. Northwest Indiana and southern Wisconsin, quoted with travel. If you are more than 90 minutes out and the reception runs past 11pm, lodging is added, because a DJ driving home at 2am is a DJ you do not want on the road.

How it works

1. Tell me the date. I reply within 24 hours, every time.
2. I walk your venue and put together a real quote.
3. You sign and pay the retainer. The date is off the market.
4. We build the timeline. Two calls, your must-plays, your do-not-plays.
5. I arrive an hour early, sound check, and you never think about the music again.