Last night was a very rare yet extremely welcome experience for me……a Saturday night off to attend my second cousin’s glamorous wedding at the fabulous Hengrave Hall in Suffolk.
I met up with family and friends I haven’t seen since….er…..the last family wedding, and it was truly refreshing to be in front of the decks instead of behind them. Hengrave Hall is a magnificent Elizabethan (I think!) mansion and an awesome venue for a wedding, with breathtaking gardens and surrounding grounds.
Which leads me to my only negative point of the whole day…..why oh why does a venue as prestigious as Hengrave Hall employ such an inexperienced DJ to host the party? Don’t get me wrong, the guy had guests dancing for the majority of the evening, and he certainly had good technology at his fingertips (for DJs reading this…..2 x CDJ1000s, CDM 700 and HK speakers) but he lacked two very very important skills……beat mixing and vocal dexterity. He played dance music for the majority of the night, but the top level decks were clearly wasted on him when it came to seamlessly blending the beats, often fading the out-playing track to almost silence before dropping in the next one. But more importantly, he was very poor when it came to addressing the crowd. His introduction for the first dance was simply one line, and then we never heard him again until he uttered, “This is the last song from me.”
Now no-one wants to hear banal DJ chatter all evening, but this fella was the polar opposite. He never once mentioned the bride and groom, and ending with just a solitary good-bye without any kind of finale left us all (not just me!) feeling somewhat shortchanged. In summary, it almost seemed like he’d forgotten the reason for being there.
As any DJ will tell you, it’s hard attending parties as a guest!