I had the pleasure of DJ’ing of wedding for Michael & Sonia Smith which include providing music for the ceremony, cocktail hour/dinner, and of course dancing.  The event took place at Val Vista Lakes Clubhouse in Gilbert, AZ which is a nice facility.  The location has an outdoor area for ceremonies as well as an outdoor cabana where cocktails are served.  My plan was to setup inside first where the dinner/dancing will take place, then setup one speaker connected to an MP3 player to play music in the cocktail area, and finally to setup for the ceremony.

We setup inside fairly quickly which included  a complete system, 10 uplights, and light truss.  Everything looked and sounded great.

Up next was setting up the speaker for the cocktail hour and that’s where things got interesting.  We found the perfect spot for the speaker away from the general area and right next to a power plug.  We connected everything and bam… no power!  We tried 2 other power outlets and same thing.  We tried looking around for someone to ask but unfortunately the people we found didn’t know why they weren’t working.  We found a power plug inside the cabana and it worked, so we had to run a long power cord and tape it down so it remained out of the way.  Problem solved…

Finally, it was time to setup for the ceremony.  Again, we found a great spot right next to a power outlet, and you guessed it… no power!!!  Again we looked around and finally found the event coordinator for the facility who told us the power outlets from the ones we tried using are on a timer and do not turn on until 5:30 PM.  The problem is the ceremony started at 4:30 PM with cocktail hour at 5 PM.  She told us there is an area on the side that we couldn’t see which is where DJ’s should setup; unfortunately we were not informed about this prior.

Regardless, we setup quickly and had just enough time for a quick sound/mic check and off we went.

Luckily we arrived at the venue 2 hours before the ceremony and had plenty of time to work-around the power issues.  Always give yourself an extra 30 minutes than your normal setup time for issues that come up to allow yourself to get things straightened out.  The event turned out great and the guests had a great time.

Below is a short video of the dancing.  Please excuse the crazy camera movement as I had a new person helping me.  He’s doing better now 🙂