Illinois' Most Requested DJ Company
Even though restrictions continue to loosen across America’s fruited plains, so many of us are bored and are looking for ideas to keep our minds and bodies engaged. As frustration with employment and wedding plans mount, check back in the coming days for ways to relieve stress.
Get some sidewalk chalk an get creative! Here’s an example…
to see examples of creative Chicagoland Disc Jockeys, click here.
What are the favorite first dance songs?
Our blog presented ten of the best a while back, but we also recommend the Knot’s great list, complete with 50 wonderful songs you’ll hear at weddings coast to coast.
We’ve made an interesting observation of these songs. The older and the better they are, the more artists who cover the song. This presents wonderful opportunities for you. The more great artists who have covered a song, the more likely you’ll hear a version just right for you.
Let’s check out songs #11 and #19 on The Knot’s list:
Van Morrison wrote and recorded Crazy Love in 1970. Here it is:
What a smooth, timeless love ballad. On the other hand, maybe you’d like it a little more bluesy. No problem. Listen to Morrison’s duet with the legendary Ray Charles, backed up with Charles on piano and Hammond organ.
Then again, maybe you prefer a real mellow interpretation of the song. Who better than Michael Bublé? Check it out:
This is a well-crafted song that holds up to a wide range of vocal interpretations, and the same goes for this next song from The Knot.
Five years before Morrison wrote “Crazy Love,” John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote “In My Life.” This song is so good that Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it 23rd on their list of the 500 all-time greatest songs ever written. Impressive.
Here is this wistful love song as performed by The Beatles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbm4-aqv_Lg
Can’t get any better than that, right? Well, that depends on your unique musical tastes. For example, Sara Niemietz offers this delightful, romantic rendition that might make it on to your favorite first dance songs list. Take a listen and enjoy:
Your first dance song should be a few minutes of pure heaven. All eyes are on you. The love of your life looks you in the eyes and gently sways to the music with you. Time stands still.
Your first dance song defines the moment.
Crestline Entertainment offers a simple benefit for you as you build your own list of potential favorite first dance songs: we can play whatever you want, by any artist.
This matters. No offense to the local bands around (and there are some fine ones), not all of them can sing as well as Michael Bublé or as distinctively as a Van Morrison or a Ray Charles or The Beatles. No offense, but they simply may not be as good of musicians as these legendary bands were.
With us, you get exactly what you want: the perfect song played at the perfect moment by the perfect artist.
What’s on your list of favorite first dance songs? Check out our music database. If you don’t have it, we’ll get it!
Your wedding guest list should be big, no, make that huge! Your marriage may depend upon it! Let me explain.
A couple of professors at Emory University conducted a study on weddings and marriage. One of their findings was pretty amazing. The more people you invite to your wedding, the more likely your marriage will be successful.
A couple that invites ten people to their wedding is 35% less likely to ever get divorced than a couple who exchange vows without any guests.
Even more dramatically, couples that invite more than 200 guests are 92% less likely to get divorced than couples with no guests.
As you review the graph above, you can see that at every level, the more guests you invite, the less likely you’ll ever get divorced. One of the researchers, Randy Olson, explained why:
“Clearly, this shows us that having a large group of family and friends who support the marriage is critically important to long-term marital stability.”
In other words, when you have a large group of family and friends, they have a vested interest in your well-being. They help provide the emotional “safety net” to nurture and sustain your fledgling family over the years.
To quote an African proverb, “it takes a village.”
To quote another African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.”
Community matters to your marriage as you travel on your new journey together.
Last week’s blogpost dispensed wedding guest list advice. We focused on practical ways to cut your list down to size to accommodate your wedding budget. However, in light of this research, perhaps conventional thinking is backward. Perhaps the proper way to plan your wedding is that your wedding budget needs to accommodate your guest list, not the other way around.
It’s more important to get your community out in full force for your life-changing wedding celebration, even if you need to cut back a little on the menu or the flowers. The love and prayers your “community” brings to your marriage is more important than a sit-down dinner verses a buffet.
Crestline Entertainment offers a full palate of wedding entertainment options that are easily customizable to fit your budget. You never have to scrimp on the fun with Crestline Entertainment!
So invite away!
Men and women have totally different ways to pack for their honeymoon, as the humorous video below points out. Nonetheless, there are some rock solid honeymoon packing tips that apply to both genders.
TIP #1: Be sure to label your luggage on the inside and out. Even more, make your bags standout with a unique, colorful luggage tag so it is not mistakenly taken by someone else with a similar bag. Don’t let missing luggage slow down your honeymoon!
TIP #2: Create a packing checklist. It’s just as easy to overpack as it is to forget critical items. Checklists make packing more efficient and less stressful. By the same token, checklists reduce your risk of leaving items behind at the end of your honeymoon. I’ve attached a real, nice checklist for women I found from a website at www.HouseMixBlog.com to get you started.
TIP #3: Travel light. Be honest with yourself, traveling heavy is hard. It’s more expensive. It’s unwieldy. You work up a sweat. Your luggage breaks. And if you are really, really honest with yourself, you never use everything you’ve packed. Traveling light is so much easier. A website called www.TravelJoy.com advises brides to ‘recycle’ and accessorize:
√ RECYCLING: Instead of bringing 8 tops and 8 bottoms for 8 days of travel, try bringing half that amount and then mixing and matching outfits. It will help you feel like you are wearing something new without adding bulk and weight to your bag.
√ ACCESSORIZING: Adding scarves and jewelry to simple outfits is the another way to increase your travel wardrobe. A bright blue scarf and some fun earrings will make a black dress look different than it does with only a simple belt and a simple chain necklace.
TIP #4: Start with your non-clothes necessities. Here are things your really need to have;
√ Drivers license.
√ Airline tickets or e-ticket confirmations.
√ Passport and visas.
√ Credit cards. Leave behind those you don’t need.
√ Reservation confirmations.
√ Medical prescriptions.
√ Photocopies of everything listed above. Make 2 sets: one to carry with you; one to leave behind in your hotel.
√ Phone #s for your doctor, credit card companies (in case they’re stolen), and house and pet sitters.
TIP #5: Carry key items on the plane with you, such as medications in their original bottles, tickets, itineraries, emergency contact info, change of clothes, and a few fun and light items, like magazines, e-books, or playing cards.
These simple tips will help you relax and enjoy your honeymoon all the more!
Congratulations … and bon voyage!
[Don’t forget to check out Crestline Entertainment’s wedding services!]
Do you value your friendships? Whatever you do, don’t let a friend DJ your wedding. It’s a recipe for disaster, unless he or she is an experienced professional with at least 50 weddings under their belt.
As regular readers of this blog know, entertainment makes the event. It is the great equalizer for brides on a budget. Great entertainment compensates for the need for most of us to moderate our desires when it comes to which package we select from our caterer, photographer, and florist.
But if the entertainment is legendary, your reception will be legendary, too, even if you had to cut back a little on other areas of your wedding.
Here’s your risk, and it’s a big one: you try to cut corners by having a friend play some tunes off of his iPod at your reception. Not only will you put your friendship at risk, you put your entire wedding reception at risk when your guests start to leave early.
DJing involves far, far more than just playing music. In the hands of professionals like Crestline Entertainment, it is an art form that energizes and entertains your friends and family.
We know how to read an audience and play music that packs the dance floor. Even more, we know how to engage even your shy guests to move them from their seats to the dance floor. It’s done so naturally, but the talent to do that was honed by raw experience.
Your friend just doesn’t have that experience. Nor does he have the experience to MC a wedding reception.
Announcements have to be timed perfectly. They need to be coordinated with the rest of your wedding vendors. A wedding reception doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are a lot of moving parts. Our skilled professionals are the quarterbacks to pulling everything together so your party flows like clockwork.
And there are practical reasons professional wedding entertainment is priceless. Crestline Entertainment offers the professional pre-planning, the professional lighting options, the professional microphones and cutting edge sound equipment, and the professional photo booths that transform ordinary receptions into extraordinary ones.
Your friend just can’t bring these resources to the table. This is why two out of every three brides in the U.S. hires a professional wedding DJ company, according to a massive survey of 18,000 brides and grooms by The Knot.
We’ve heard way too many horror stories from people who let their friend DJ their event. Their friend only played his favorite music. Few people danced. The equipment was terrible. There was no first dance. The cake-cutting was ruined. No one could hear the toasts because the microphones and speakers were horrible. Speaker feedback was distracting. The party ended an hour early.
Isn’t your friendship worth more than this? Don’t put him in the position of disappointing you.
Even more, isn’t your wedding reception worthy of a legendary party? Yes, it is, and the key is the entertainment. Entertainment makes the event every time. Learn more about how Crestline Entertainment can make your wedding dreams come true, while saving your friendships!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i57hKBnMx6k
Would you like to have a celebrity wedding?
Think twice about that. Just because celebrities have money doesn’t mean that they have any taste. As evidence, just watch the video above which showcases the 10 ugliest celebrity wedding dresses EVER!
What a waste of money!
The typical bride has to deal with reality, a limited budget. Here’s the good news. You can celebrate your Chicagoland wedding like a celebrity without spending buckets of money. In fact, you’ve probably got more taste than a whole lot of celebrities.
Nowhere is your taste more on display than with the entertainment. Entertainment makes the event. Crestline Entertainment can taylor the entertainment to suit your personality, your sense of style, and your taste, and packages can be customized to fit your budget.
When you think about it, weddings are really about families and friends who love you and want to share in your celebration. There’s no need to try to impress people who really care about you with a wedding dress you can’t afford.
Instead, throw a great party you CAN afford, and entertainment makes the party.
Forget about a celebrity wedding. Make your celebration distinctly you with customized entertainment from Crestline Entertainment. Check out our wedding planning tools to get started now.
Do you like the owner of the DJ company you’re considering for your wedding? If not, move on. DJ integrity is paramount to a successful wedding. The first vibe you pick up from a company is often telling.
Don’t look back. Wedding celebrations are special. And entertainment makes the event. If there is something about the personality of the owner of a DJ company company that just doesn’t sit right with you, find someone else.
For the record, that includes me!
Chemistry is important at weddings. Your DJ company has a disproportionate impact on the success of your event. Choose carefully, beginning with an assessment of how well you LIKE and TRUST the owner.
Now how do you do that? You need to make some sort of personal contact.
You can’t do that if you’re merely filling out a form on a website and hitting send. Yes, we’ve got awesome forms right here and here on our own website. They’re a start. But better yet, pick up the phone and call.
Do you get a real, live person on the phone?
If not, how quickly do you get a call back?
And here is the key: how well do they come across on the phone? Are they warm and friendly? Do they listen? Do they come across like they care about your event? Even more, are they excited about your event? Or do you get the sense that they look at you merely as a paycheck?
As wonderful as modern technology is, it does you no favors by de-personalizing the wedding planning process. Don’t let that happen to you. Pick up the phone and call us at 1-800-331-3341. We’d love to talk to you about your event.
Better yet, set up a time to meet in person. This is the ultimate way for you to get to know the person who can make or break your event. This is the ultimate way for you to gauge their integrity. And DJ integrity is everything.
Memorize this: no price is a good price IF you aren’t happy with your reception.
Price is meaningless. Dreams are everything when it comes to your wedding. If you cut corners on your wedding entertainment budget, you may pay a very big price.
Okay, now let’s deal with reality. I’m guessing you’re like most of the brides in this area: you’re working on a budget. Am I right?
Your wedding entertainment budget may be bigger than the last bride we worked with, but it may be less, much less than the next. Since we live in the real world, most of us do have to consider dollars and cents when it comes to planning a wedding.
So most brides have to find a happy medium when it comes to balancing their wedding entertainment budget.
The Knot conducted a survey of 18,000 brides across the country. According to them the average wedding costs $31,213. But it varies widely depending on where you live. For example, it’s closer to $19,000 in South Dakota, but it tops $39,000 in San Francisco.
What is pretty consistent, though, is that the average bride invests about 10% of her budget on the entertainment. And yet entertainment provides 90% of the fun.
We’ve worked with a ton of brides over the years. If something goes wrong with the dinner or the flowers, it is quickly forgotten IF the guests have fun.
That’s where we come in. Entertainment makes the event. Any minor glitches you experience with any of your other vendors will quickly fade away once we pack your dance floor. And we will.
Your guests are hungry to celebrate and honor your marriage. Entertainment is the key catalyst to ensuring your party maximizes your potential.
This leads me back to the first sentence of this post: no price is a good price IF you aren’t happy with your reception. This maxim applies to your wedding entertainment more than any other service you book.
So am I saying that if you book us, the food will taste better? That the flowers will look fresher? That the cake will look more magnificent?
No. It will only seem that way. And, my friend, perception IS reality.
Here’s the bottom line: there is one place where you never want to scrimp: the entertainment. Entertainment makes the event, and we will make your event extraordinary!
The next step? Tell us a little about your event and get a quote without obligation.
Let me guess: you’ve got a well-intentioned best man and maid of honor for your Chicagoland wedding.
They know you. They love you, and wedding etiquette calls on them to stand up and toast you at your wedding reception.
These beloved friends or family can morph into your worst nightmare. Don’t let them hijack your wedding reception with an embarrassing, meandering, or never-ending toast.
In fairness, your best man or maid of honor doesn’t want to embarrass you or scandalize your family, but beer and a microphone can be a dangerous combination. A nice, warm three minute toast can quickly devolve into a dozen minutes of booze-drenched awkwardness if you’re not prepared.
Rather, provide your event’s toasters with the following guidelines as provided by Toastmasters International:
As the bride and groom, this is your party. So I encourage you to say something like this to your toasters:
“Thank-you for being my [best man/maid of honor]. I am so honored to have you share this day with me in such a meaningful way. I wanted to be sure you knew that we’d like you to make a brief toast after dinner. You okay with that? We’d like you to keep it fairly brief, 3 minutes … 4 max. Share something special you see in our relationship and wish us well. I know I don’t need to say this, but please, nothing off color or embarrassing.”
Be direct.
Really say something like this to be sure everyone’s on the same page. Or simply print this page off and hand it to your toasters (or share the link with them).
Now, let us all raise a glass to honor this beautiful couple. May God richly bless your marriage!
[Check back next week for an actual script for a nice wedding toast. Your best man and maid of honor will love it! In the meantime, check out our wedding services here!]
