Monday, October 30, 2006

How strange! In my last post about Amanda & David's wedding I wrote something about wishing I knew what company made the cake because it looked and tasted so awesome. This past Saturday at Adrienne and Will's wedding, I found out.....It was Gwen's Cakes! Gwen made Adrienne and Will's cake and also made Amanda & David's last week. Big shout-out to Gwen, her cakes are the BOMB. Each layer of Adrienne and Will's was a different flavor, and all 3 tasted awesome (yes, I confess to having a "sample" of each layer....but it was for the benefit of future brides and grooms planning their weddings and needing a baker recommendation...). This is going to sound mean but I hope she's not doing the cakes of any of the weddings I'm working for at least the next month because I am going to get so fat at this rate. lol. :)

I wonder if its hard to plan your own wedding if you're a wedding planner? Didn't seem too difficult for Adrienne, her wedding turned out beautiful and she didn't seem the least bit stressed at all. In fact, I would say Adrienne was one of the most easy to work with brides I have had all year. What a fun group too! They partied down so hard they broke the dance floor (seriously...a few pieces of wood fell out...hahaha!) . Congrats to Will and Adrienne!




Great to work with Marcus from Lifeshot Photography again too!

Gotta say that I was impressed with The Reserve this weekend. Dan worked Lauren & Benjamin's wedding there on Saturday and Carolyn called in the morning and left a message on my voice mail to check in and see what time he was going to be there. I was impressed that a) she knew Platinum Mix was scheduled to be there, even knew the specific DJ scheduled and b) took the time to actually "check-in" with us. That's very professional on their part. If I was getting married I would most def want to work with a venue that was so on top of their game.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Amanda and David planned a very elegant wedding and reception at Weller’s in Saline. I liked how they did their first dance immediately after being introduced and also liked how they had their bridal party join in for the 2nd half of it. I had made a slideshow of some of their growing up pictures but instead of playing it once for all the guests to watch at a designated time, it just ran in the background during the cocktail hour and dinner. Every time I’ve done it this way, it seems to go over so much better with guests.

I really liked the photographer I worked with tonight, Marci Curtis. She was friendly, very easy-going and did an amazing job with the photographs. She even hooked her laptop up to my projector so she could run a slideshow of some of the photographs she had taken that day. The wedding pics played all during dancing and were a big hit with the guests. She’s got a great website. I especially like her wedding tips page located here: http://marcicurtis.com/tips.html. I totally agree with all of her “tips” with the exception of #11. Maybe she’ll change her mind about that after she gets a chance to work with me a little more often….lol :)

Really dug the wedding cake too. Wish I knew who made it so I could give credit because it tasted so damn good. It’s now 3:30 am and I’m not the least bit tired. I have to fall asleep so I can be rested for Sarah & Jeff’s wedding tomorrow. It’s going to be tough to get people dancing since I will be competing with the Tigers playing in the World Series. Jeff told me they are bringing in a TV so everyone can watch the game. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that people will dance during the commercial breaks.

More pics from Amanda and Dave's wedding

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Alright, just wanted to mention that after experiencing the buffet at Glen Oaks for Heather and Shane’s wedding Sept. 29th and at Kary and Michael’s wedding at Springfield Oaks Sept. 15th ---- Oaks Management offers the BEST buffet that I have ever personally experienced in the entire Metro Detroit area. They have this salad bar that is so big and has so much good stuff to put on it, my plate was full before I even got to the meat part. YUM! And that chocolate mousse stuff....yummmmyyyy!!! (discounts now available to platinum mix customers who are having their wedding at an Oaks Management place and have ordered the buffet….lol)

Speaking of Heather and Shane’s wedding, that reception was wild! They gave away the coolest favors…shot glasses that said “I went to Heather and Shane’s wedding and all I got was this lousy shot glass”. Awesome idea. Usually people forget their favors, so at the very end of the wedding I went looking for a few more shot glasses to take home and couldn’t find not a single one. Every single guest had taken home their glass – most def a first time for that!

Another great wedding was Jennifer and Jason’s. Their reception was held Sept. 30th at the Holiday Inn in Flint. I really liked working with Jennifer and Jason. They were clearly in love with each other, and seemed to be a great match. They were also tons of fun and so were their family and friends. Platinum Mix got to set-up all of our cool stuff (enhanced lighting, big video screen, music videos, photo montage, jam cam), and its always awesome to see our entire set-up get to come together. Most people pick one or two options, but I think its soooo much better with everything (ha-ha…I’m probably just biased though since I’m totally obsessed with DJ stuff…lol). Pictures from Jennifer and Jason's wedding can be found in our Hot Shots photo galleries.

I also enjoyed Anu & Abel’s wedding held on the Detroit Princess Boat. Boat weddings are so fun! And the Detroit Princess is really nice. The staff was super accommodating, they even let me plug into their built in sound system so I got to play on 8 speakers spread all over the boat – total surround sound. Their video is coming out really nice too…I’ve seen over 700 weddings, but when Andrew played me back their ceremony tape, the microphone we had on Abel picked him up saying the cutest things and it actually made me cry. (can’t believe I just admitted that on the internet!) :)

Also…..we are now using google’s online photo albums for our Hot Shots. This is much better because now our clients can easily download all the pictures our DJs took at their events. We also tried to re-organize our Hot Shots page on the website to make it a little easier for all of you to find the event you are looking for. If anybody has any questions about finding your event pics from the galleries please email platinummix@yahoo.com or call Sara at 248-349-8318.

The only thing I don’t like about being a DJ is not being able to call in sick to work. I’m always jealous of my friends who say stuff like “I didn’t feel that great this morning so I called in to work”. But being a DJ, it’s not quite that easy. Regardless of how I feel the show must go on. So this weekend was really rough for me. It was one of the busiest weekends we had all year and I woke up on Friday morning with that scratchy feeling in my throat. I overdosed on Vitamin C, took some sore throat medication and dressed warm to prepare for the wedding of Donella & Kyle which was scheduled at the Earhart Manor in Ann Arbor – outside in a tent. The wedding was beautiful, and this tent was really nice. They had even rented heaters that warmed up the tent when the sun went down and the temperature dropped. Jennifer House at “A Moment In Time” did an awesome job decorating and coordinating the wedding. I’m sure she was a big help to Donella who was planning from Chicago. My sickness held off and I had a great time spinning their requested play list of all 50’s and 60’s music. I also thought the instant photo booth they rented was totally cool.
Not sure why, but Saturday, October 7th was probably one of the busiest days of the year. And not just for Platinum Mix, all of our friendly DJ competitors also reported a very busy day. Maybe because it seems like every high school in the area wanted to have their Homecoming dance on this day, plus being a Saturday in early October, that’s still wedding season. So we had our hands full managing all of those Homecoming Dances and weddings! I worked a Homecoming Dance for Walled Lake that night. 1400 students! Wow! Fun! I love big dances. Big sound systems. Big light shows. Love it! I had a blast, but just want to say thank god for the Platinum Mix back-up DJ system. About halfway through the dance I totally lost my voice. The combination of being sick and my sore throat kicking in, plus trying to take requests from students (which means screaming over a sound system kicking out the bass for 1400 attendees), I guess my voice just couldn’t hold up for me anymore. But Paul Mattis was the scheduled back-up guy and after he had checked in all of our other DJs, he was headed out to help me at my dance anyway. Thank god, because he ended up MCing the 2nd half of the dance and was a huge help tearing down at the end of the night when I really thought I might just pass out.

When Paul saw the awful shape I was in Saturday night, he offered to come out and help me with the wedding I had scheduled for Sunday too. Paul ended up doing pretty much everything. We were at Weller’s in Saline for Heather and Christian’s wedding. Weller’s is an absolutely gorgeous place to have a wedding. They have the perfect spot for an outdoor ceremony, a dinner room, an area outside for dancing and tons of places to take pictures. It’s a tough place to dj though because of all the different areas. We set-up one sound system for the ceremony to play music while they walked down the aisle plus supplied the minister with a microphone so all the guests could hear everything, another sound system was set-up in the Carriage House for dinner music, introductions of the bridal party and toasts and then a third sound system outside in the gazebo for dancing. Heather and Christian’s family were a lot of fun and the wedding went great. It was great to work with “A Pair of Photographers” again too. Leslie is still the only photographer I’ve ever worked with 2 days in a row.

Paul – Thank you, thank you, thank you soooooo much for bailing me out this weekend! Your speakers worked out great at homecoming and I really don’t know what I would have done without you on Sunday.