We had numerous issues with our DJ for our wedding ceremony and reception. Normally some of these issues would be ignorable, but for the service price (A basic DJ package costs over $1500), and for the "reputation" of Elevate, I think having a...ll our needs met if not exceeded should be the expectation.
List Time: The DJ got the processional song timing wrong for the Bride walking down the aisle. He didn't read our planning forms and forgot 2 of our toasts that were listed on them. He played the wrong song for our first dance, leaving us to stand there awkwardly (for what feels like an eternity in front of hundreds of people) waiting for him to find the right one while I told him "wrong song!". The music was way too loud at the reception venue, and despite being told to turn it down by our wedding coordinator, and us, it was still so loud that multiple guests left early and were hiding out in back rooms to "get away from the noise". He kept cutting off songs halfway through, again, despite being told "please play the whole song", he kept doing this. We wanted a very elegant and classy wedding reception, and I feel like we got sent a club DJ in nice clothes. We sent a list of music to the DJ to play during the dancing portion of the reception, and while he did end up playing some of the songs, they were almost ALL cut off 1/2 way through, and strangely, he started playing the dancing music during dinner?? One of the oddest choices I've ever seen was having our 90's rock dance music playing while people are casually eating dinner and tying to talk (despite again, the music being way too loud). We asked for a "low hype level" type DJ, and we got one who was screaming into microphones and trying to get a room full 65+ year olds to be "hype", which is idiotic at best, and downright grossly incompetent at worst. A DJ should be able to read a room. Additionally, during our toasts, despite our guests being close to the DJ table, the mics they used simply did not work, leading to no one being able to hear our father's and friend's lovely toasts. When it came time for my toast, I skipped the mic and just yelled it to the room because I didn't want the incompetence of this company to ruin the final "thank you" toast I had prepared.
To top all this off, I felt we were treated in a disrespectful, and shameful manner by the team at Elevate. After we learned that the reason so many of our guests kept leaving early was the DJ being too loud (again, despite multiple remarks to turn it down), we decided to reach out to Elevate and let them know about our experience. While they did deign to allow us to voice our justified complaints, they seemed to think we were lying the whole time, kept saying "let’s see what the DJ says happened", instead of hearing our litany of issues. When we rattled off our extensive list, they offered us a small and minor refund (as they put it, for the microphone and song choice issues), which in honesty we accepted, but, when we continued to say "our biggest issue was the fact that your DJ made our families whom we haven't seen in years leave early" we were insultingly told "we just can't put a price on that, so we won't". What an absolute joke. We felt heard only in that they could parrot back what we said, not in that they planned to do anything about it, or that they believed us at all. It felt like they gave us a minor refund to get us to shut up and forget about it - we did not.