Disappointing overall experience. We had an hour and half long meeting with Justin before our wedding and he was very nice and professional. We discussed songs that we wanted played, physically walked through the venue (a family residence), r...eviewed the reception layout, and also discussed our desire to do an acknowledgement of our guests in the armed forces and police/fire (10 guests in total out of 79). Everything seemed on track, but went straight out the window the day of. Most disappointingly, there was no acknowledgment of service members during our wedding, which was really important to us. To address the issue, rather than go straight to a negative review, we decided to speak directly with Justin about this a few weeks after our wedding. Justin responded that no announcement was made because he felt that his position was isolated from the main dining area and people couldn’t hear him well (we had an open air dance floor just outside the tent). He then proceeded to say that “if had he known the setup...he would have brought a secondary system to properly run dinner.” This is a very irritating response. Justin was physically present when we decided where the dance floor would be located and he assured us that it was fine and there would be no issues. We even measured out the space to make sure there was sufficient room for his equipment. To claim, after failing to make a really important announcement at our wedding, that he was unaware of the setup and unprepared is unacceptable. Furthermore, to make that decision on his own without informing us or our day of coordinator is mind blowing.
On another frustrating note, as music lovers, we prepared a list of songs that we wanted played at our wedding, which was made with the help of our guests on their RSVP cards. I would say that only about 20% of these songs were actually played. In response, Justin said “it’s an important part of my role as the DJ to play as many of the songs requested by the couple during both the ceremony and the reception. However, I must also use my discretion in order for guests to have the best time possible.” Here, Justin is saying he literally ignored our song requests, as the couple getting married and paying him, because he’s in a better position to know what people want to hear. Please note that we were requesting really upbeat songs that would fit perfectly at a reception and that we knew were important to our guests, so we can’t figure out why they were ignored. It’s a total bummer to look back on your wedding day and remember that most of our favorite songs were never played by the DJ.
There are a number of other frustrating things that happened (or didn’t happen), like our request to have our families join us halfway through our first dance. At the end of the day, Justin was not the DJ for us and we’re bummed out by his lack of acknowledgement once we addressed these issues directly with him. Positive note - the rest of our wedding and vendors were awesome! Still had a great day.