Madison’s Best DJ

We received a special call earlier this month and were advised by a well-known, highly respected third party, The Knot and Wedding Channel, that our organization, DJ Magic Entertainment ~ Madison’s Best DJ, was awarded as one of Wisconsin’s Top Ten Entertainment Companies. According to Matt Long, operations manager, “We are humbled by this award. It adds value to the company that we are building and speaks to the ongoing training and dedication all of our entertainers afford to each and every customer. We look forward to continuing the ultimate customer service in 2010 as this is only the beginning!”

It is not every year that July 4th aligns with a Saturday.  Plus the weather that day was perfect, not overbearingly hot and not too cool.  One can not complain about the location either. Right next to Lake Mendota, 2,000 people outside overlooking the lake and our wedding ceremony and reception inside.  Yes, that is correct, we performed at The University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union Building with a wedding ceremony and reception in the Great Hall. It was an exciting day!

As we are a Premium Custom Service company, we pride ourselves in the fact that we are able to accommodate almost any request from a customer.  And for this customer, Jeff & Maria-Elise, it was not different. Below, I will provide a quick summary of some of the services we provided last weekend to Jefft & Maria-Elise on their special day:

• Wedding Ceremony – Not only did we provide the music for their ceremony we recorded the event and produced a nice CD for Jeff & Elise to archive now and remember later. Additionally, we also were able to provide lapel microphones and execute their special production.  By the way, if you are wondering they both said yes and are not Mr. & Mrs. Endres. Elise was not sure if she would be taking Jeff’s name or going the hyphenated route at our last meeting.
• Photography Services – Our great friend, Karen Beard, provided her expert skills throughout the evening to enact our “Live Photo Montage Display”.  This is much different than a static montage, rather, it is dynamic and occurs through out the evening as we mixed in special effects.  For example, we provided transitions from picture to picture, information slides and let us not forget the firework slides.  It was the 4th of July after all. Karen does a really nice job of capturing photos during the ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner and dancing and at the end of the night we provided Jeff and Maria-Elise a copy of our product.
• Cool Video Presentation – About 2 months ago, we obtained pictures of family, friends and Jeff & Elise together.  We worked our “magic” and produced them a static Cool Video Presentation that we played during dinner synced to music.  This is not the average presentation that one might see, instead one which is produced in four separate movie and graphic design programs fully integrated with our sound system.  And at the end of the evening we delivered two DVD’s for our couple to enjoy later.
• Audio Recording – Jeff & Elise wanted to capture special moments of time throughout the day.  For a minimal price, we provided them copies of the ceremony, special speeches by their Best Man – Joel, Maids of Honor Sarah & Amy and their parents speaking throughout the evening.  I wish this technology was available when I was married as my sister-n-law and best man gave great speeches and that is all I can remember – they were great.  Now, Jeff & Elise have physical copies and can cherish them forever.
• Video Productions – Our staff that evening was a bit larger than normal.  Just this 2009, we have rolled out an HD video production service. Want to catch excerpts throughout the evening?  Give me a call and we can go over this service more in detail.
• DJ / Entertainment – Dan Beard headed up our emceeing, event coordination and entertainer services that evening.  He played a variety of songs that evening which kept a mix of guests on the Great Hall’s floor while always integrating our Must Plays, Do Not Plays and our guests requests.
• Child Interaction – The UW Great Hall was really set-up well for a lot of guests including children.  DJ Magic helped provide supervision and some games for all the children at the reception.  This all occurred in a room next to our main reception hall.  One of the nice items I liked about Jeff & Elise’s planning for the children was that they had separate meals in a fun environment for the children.  Plus the meals were appropriately chosen to be different than the adult meals so that the kids would be excited about having their own room with different food and lots of games to play.  (Games included coloring books, Nintendo Wii and some other interactive games led by DJ Magic).
• Party Props – Our main focus that evening was not only to ensure a great time for Jeff, Elise and all of their guests, but also create a FUN environment.  We brought our party prop expertise and handed out over 125 props including glow sticks, air guitars, air saxophones, air rock guitars and a few other props.  This was a nice way to keep people engaged and reinforce the fun environment we had established.

All in all, a huge thank you goes out to Greg & Jennifer Larson for the referral (see our blog entry on their wedding or their satisfaction survey from their wedding last October).  And we wish Jeff & Maria-Elise nothing but the best for their new marriage.

Here is a list of the vendors we worked with from that evening:

+University of Wisconsin Great Hall
+Appletree Images – Lori Ronspiez
+DJ Magic Photography – Karen Beard
+DJ Magic Entertainment – Dan & Matt (That’s Us!)

I was thinking about how I would write 5 new blog entries for Madison’s Best DJ blog last Wednesday.  I mean, I think it would be cool to have an entry for every wedding I did while also inviting the other staff members to chirp in whenever they please.  Really though, it is not a reality.  Business pulls me away from my blog along with family responsibilities.  Yes, my garden is officially weeded after 3 full hours on the hottest morning of the year last week and I am catching up on some other personal household chores like tiling my kitchen (well not really, I am putting that off!)

June has been a really good month for Madison’s Best DJ and the crew.
So here is what my schedule looked like the week of June 13:

Wedding, Saturday, June 13 for Jeff & Marissa Schloesser.
Wedding, Sunday, June 14 for Maria & Greg Anilao.
Wedding Tuesday, June 16 for Mikaela and Anthony Figueroa.
Wedding Show, Wednesday, June 17 in West Madison.
Wedding, Saturday, June 20 for John & Kate Vasudevan.

That was just me and none of our other staff.  We also booked everyone out for the past few Saturdays too.  So I’ll just talk about me, I’m selfish….

So what is the best way to tell you about my busy week in the “usual way”? Let’s do a quick summary for each event, talk about some of the vendors and hit the highlights.

Jeff & Marissa Schloesser – Saturday
Large wedding at the Comfort Suites in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin.  I arrived early as I wanted to ensure we had our Montage Equipment set-up in time while also preparing to record all speeches and ensure a quality wedding reception video. (Early = Usually about 3 hours before the first guest)

It was quite apparent that their guests had a great time as we had a few referral calls the Monday after the wedding reception.

Vendors:
Heidi Lee Photography – Jason
Comfort Suites, Johnson Creek – Kim Mungen
DJ Magic Entertainment – Matt Long

Maria & Greg Anilao – Sunday
Andrew and I left early around 12 pm Sunday. This was a super special day for Greg and Maria.  Their facility, Parkway Banquets, is nicely located near Lake Long in Ingleside, Illinois.  Plus it is highly recognized by many national wedding publications such as The Knot dot com and Wedding Channel dot com.

Our first order of business that day was to assist providing ceremony music, wireless microphones and audio recording services for their wedding ceremony.  Our banquet manager, Jerry, was handling almost all of the coordination activities.  We were happy to work with Jerry that way but also recognized that this was highly out of the ordinary. Bottom line though is that we are highly flexible and able to adapt to various ways of business.

Greg and Maria’s wedding had a few special needs and was quite culturally diverse. Fifty percent of our wedding guests were of Mexican heritage while the other 50% were of Philippine backgrounds.  Plus, Maria, who had an unfortunate disability, was deaf.  One of the ways we accommodated everyone was to not only provide our emceeing by microphone but we also had a person who knew sign language and was able to speak both Philippine and Spanish. Through all of these unique additions and special accommodations it did not stop everyone from having a great time.  It was great to see everyone using all of their senses that evening.

Did you know we not only played Salsa, Meringue and other South American music but we also played a lot of Philippine music.  I can honestly say that we are probably the most flexible entertainment company you will have the pleasure to work with in planning and following-through in a wedding.  Don’t believe me, check out our references! Click here.

Vendors:
- Parkway Banquets – Jerry
+ Sharrett Studios – Tammy Sharrett
+ DJ Magic Enterprises, Inc. – Andrew Accola

Mikaela & Anthony Figueroa – Tuesday
A Tuesday wedding occurred at the beautiful Monona Terrace in Madison, Wisconsin.  Being that it was a Tuesday, we did not let that stop us from providing the absolute best customer services in Southern Wisconsin!

Let me tell you a little about our bride and groom.  Mikaela comes from Wisconsin and within the last few years fell madly in love with Anthony.  Anthony’s family came all the way from New York.  Many people of Puerto Rican decent came from the Bronx to help celebrate.  It was great to see the two sides, who were of completely different backgrounds come together.

We kept everyone on the floor the whole evening.  One of the custom services that we were able to offer Mikaela and Anthony was our custom recording services.  When Mikaela initially contacted us she wanted to take 20 songs from totally different genres but with similar lyrics and sounds and mix them together. Check our her customer service survey, we exceeded her expectations.  Are you interested in doing something like this?  Let us know, we have the whole compilation on Audio and we also made the extra effort to record the event so you can see us in action.

Vendors:
+ Monona Terrace – Sales Manager: Edit Lonkay
+ Images by Joe – Joe DeGroot
+ DJ Magic Enterprises, Inc. – Andrew Accola

Madison Summer Wedding Show – Wednesday
So at this point you are probably thinking we are running out of gas.  Nope, we filled up last night and we found a good deal on East Washing Avenue near Blockbuster. Anyways, this show went really well to the point that we have set-up several meetings and have reserved a handful of new customers.

Below is a link to a picture of our ice sculpture that we made for showing at our booth.  By the way, we do Ice Sculptures too.

Awesome Wedding Ice Sculpture Picture Link

John & Kate Vasudevan – Saturday
Classic scenery for a wedding in a good way is what we had at Madison’s Masonic Center near beautiful downtown.  Our bride and groom were originally from Wisconsin and had worked with us planning their wedding all the way from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Definitely call me if you are reading this and are from out of state wondering how the dynamics might work.  I would be happy to direct you to John and Kate for their opinion on our awesome experiences together.

The evening started upstairs at the Masonic Center for a Cocktail hour.  Although a bit warm that day, it did not stop their guests from getting to know each other and preparing for a fun celebration downstairs in our main reception hall.  Our cocktail hour music consisted of great artists like Harry Belafonte, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Frank Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole and Tommy Dorsey. Timeless music!

Once our cocktail hour was over, I led our guests to our wonderfully air conditioned reception hall (and if you were there you would also agree that it was wonderfully cool and a nice change).  All in all, our speeches and dinner went well. Dancing started and we kept everyone on the dance floor all evening.  Our groom, John, commented that he noticed we played their must play list and he was worried because some of the songs he listed he advised he was not sure if his crowd was dance to all night.  No worries, that’s our specialty in knowing when to play the right song at the right time and reading crowds.  It’s priceless!  Anyone can go our and purchase the equipment but do they have the skills to motivate your guests? May be worth the money to pay for the Best Service in Madison – DJ Magic Entertainment!

Check out John and Kate’s customer survey.

The first real day of spring happened last weekend and the weather could not have been any nicer for two people in love, Sara and Jonathan.  Ahead of time at our pre-event meetings, I could tell we were in for a great event just by the way the couple treated each other and their inclusion of the groom’s mom, Jill – that is “J” “I” “L” “L” (all you at the reception know what I’m talking about!), into the wedding planning.  This was an inside joke among the family as this was how Jonathan’s mother introduced herself to customer service people.

Upon arriving at the event at 2:00 pm, the Wingra room at the Crown Plaza was decorated especially nicely with beautiful flowers on each table along with the elegant effects of chair linens with the wedding colors.  In addition to those details, the bride and groom had ordered an ice sculpture that had their initials etched into the ice.

The cocktail hour started outside the banquet room with fine hors d’oevres at 4 pm.  By that time both Andrew and I were dressed in our tuxedos welcoming the guests.  We also were busy moving the gifts to the gifts table within the banquet room.  As 5:30 pm rolled around, a beautiful bus arrived with our wedding party having a good time within it.  I boarded the party bus and welcomed our wedding party of 20.  They were excited and hungry to eat.

One could tell there was magic in the air this evening.  Everything seemed to flow perfectly and our newly married kissed and posed well when their guests requested by clinking glasses.  Did you know there can be multiple ways to stimulate your crowd and have them act in a manner you desire?  Everything from DJ Magic emceeing the event with trivia questions about the bride and groom to spinning a wedding wheel– come talk to us if you need ideas!  For our occasion though, Sara and Jonathan let the evening flow without much worry and that organic approach worked perfectly.  Congratulations and best wishes to the happy couple!

Wedding Vendors:
Photographer: Carl Stevens of Artistic Eyes
Banquet Facility: Kate of The Crown Plaza Madison
Music & Entertainment: Matt & Andrew of DJ Magic Enterprises, Inc.