This Is How A Wedding Should Go - 6 Hours In 7 Minutes w/ DJ ESG AKA Eric Scott Gold

What's up, guys? Dj ESG on its wedding advice season number six. And today I'm talking about how a wedding is really supposed to go. Soup to nuts. I have meetings with clients. All the time I say the same thing. I never sway off of it. You can write a book by my sales meeting. We will sit down and we will go over everything from point A to point B, and it usually goes like this If you're having your ceremony at the venue, which most people nowadays do whether or not you see each other before the ceremony and do a first look or reveal, that's your problem. I don't care. Whatever you wanna do, that's what you're going to do. Whatever makes you happy.

Guests arrive, there's background music, there's a speaker out there, there's a microphone for the officiant. I do not personally like lapel microphones. You ever seen Lester Nielsen in a naked gun when he went to the bathroom? I hate lapel microphones. In my opinion, it makes people uncomfortable the groom, the officiant. They feel like they can't talk. I just know how it is. I had a lapel mic on me for my first wedding. It just made me very uncomfortable. I didn't know what I could or couldn't say, especially prior to the vows happening or anything else. That's just me. So I put a microphone out there for the officiant or whoever's doing the ceremony. I am certified ordained, so if you need me to do the ceremony, I will. If not, I can help the person who's doing the ceremony out by signing the paperwork. Fyi, it's something that I have in my back pocket, which is great.

From there, you go in cocktails. Cocktail hour is just basically background music. You wanna pick a vibe, pick a vibe. You wanna go on Spotify and pick a vibe? Pick a vibe on Spotify. I don't care. Apple music doesn't matter to me. Some people hate Spotify and Apple music. I don't care. You wanna go on there and pick a vibe out for your cocktail hour. Hey, all power to you. Nowadays there's Pandora, there's Sonus, there's a whole bunch of other things that people play in the background. It's cocktail hour and, frankly, I'm not playing cocktail hour. I mean, I'm not standing out there mixing cocktail hour. Some DJs say I'm gonna mix cocktail hour. Come on, no one's listening to it anyway. You guys are coming in there to talk to people you haven't seen in a while. Get some drinks. Background music, that's all it is. Give me a vibe for background music. I'll put it on.

From there you have your reception. Your reception starts with your grand entrance, which nowadays is usually the entire bridal party in one shot. It's like a team. You come in as a team now. Before you used to come in as couples. That was cool, but no one knew what to do. People would just walk in. Somebody was always awkward, somebody wasn't awkward Other than walking in and drinking. What are you gonna do? You're gonna walk in there and start a parade. I mean, when you come in as a group of people it looks so much cooler because if you're shy you can hide in the group, and if you're not shy and you're fun and exciting, you can be on the outside of the group. So you can intermingle or outermingle if that makes sense.

First dance can be the whole song, it can be half the song. Nowadays people invite the guests on the floor during the first dance halfway through it. Then you have your toasts. Toast can be whatever you want. And let me tell you something to the venues A lot of venues out there say you know, we'll do the toast after salad court, after the first dance is over. You know what happens. You got people that are going to the bar, the bathroom, the photo booth, getting cigarettes, smoking weed, because now it's legal. And now you're asking all those people who you're not dismissing to go and do things to come back in the room and shut up for the actual toast. Why Get them out of the way? Get the toasts out of the way. And something else you can do is preset the salad. You can have the salad court sitting at the table when the guests come in, so that we don't have to worry about serving the salad. If you're a venue Now that takes away the entire part of oh, we have to serve the salad court, so you can't do toast. You can do anything you want as a venue. It's a salad course. Nobody gives a shit, unless it's a pasta and a soup, in which case I get it. But you're bringing out a salad course, pre-plate that shit. Then from there, you can do parent dances, you can do dancing, whatever you want to do.

My favorite is people tell me here's your time, no timeline, no timeline. A timeline is ridiculous. It never goes off the way it's supposed to go. It's an order of events. That's what you need an order of events. You do not need a timeline. The only thing on that timeline that's relevant to anybody.

There is what time the chef needs to serve the main course, because that's the only thing that needs a timeline. I have to get the prime rib, the filet, the chicken, the salmon, the bass. I need to get that out at exactly. Let's pick a time, seven o'clock, served at those tables, okay, so that's the only thing on that timeline that even matters is that dinner. So basically, I have an event from six to 10. That's the reception, and the food desk gets served at seven. Okay, so order of events. These are the entire order.

Events we're gonna do Grand entrance, first dance toast, parent dances, cake, and what time do you need to serve the food? Seven. Anything else around that time, around that seven o'clock, I can do whatever the fuck I want. You know why? Because I'm the DJ and I'm the one putting it together and the chef's happy. Because the chef gets his food out on time or her food out on time, and it's hot and people are happy and they're having a good time and they're enjoying it. It doesn't matter. Timelines are dumb, stupid Timelines are dumb. Repeat after me timelines are dumb. All you need is an order of events.

Once that's done, you have a party. You can throw a couple of slow songs in there. But have a party, have a good time. Turn the lights down, because a bright room sucks. Nobody likes a bright room. Get a couple lights, maybe some up lights, maybe some dance floor lights. You don't have to go crazy with a whole up and over trust system and play good music.

If you break down a wedding where we live in the Northeast, in the Philadelphia region because all regions are different Canada is sometimes an eight hour day. You go to India, it's an entire 24 hour day. You can go over to Nebraska and it's only a three hour wedding. Break it down like this Once the cake's done, whether that cake is silent or that cake is shown, have a party. Slow songs are not important. Have a slow song or two, maybe. Do that during dinner. There's no reason to stop the presses for a slow song. Slow songs are only needed when people get tired or you feel like you have to put one on. Otherwise it's a dance party. And when people say, pick music. No, you want to pick music. You want to pick every single song that's going to get played.

Why are you hiring me? Why are you hiring a DJ? Go to Amazon, get a jukebox. You're hiring a professional DJ to play music and mix it and you're hiring a good DJ. Like, don't hire just any DJ. Don't be like, oh, I'll take this guy, you don't know what that guy can or can't do. You've seen weddings that suck and weddings that are great. Make sure your DJ can MC, is fun, exciting and can put together music Mixing and key beats, gains, lines, all that stuff sound good speakers.

Do not hire somebody, that shit. Do not hire somebody that doesn't know what they're doing. Do not hire somebody if you don't know the person's name before you hire them. None of that makes any sense whatsoever. It's like you're throwing dice in a backyard. Hey, landed on seven, I got a good one. I'm not even sure if that's a good number because I don't play dice.

A lot of people don't understand how long a party actually is. Well, music-wise. For a party you only have two and a half hours. Take an average song of two minutes, because you're not playing the whole song of everything. Divide that into 60 twice and then add another 30 to that. That's 30 plus 30 is 60, plus another 15 is 70. An actual wedding is about 60 to 80 songs. That's what a wedding is. Sometimes you get 100, sometimes you get about 50, depending on how much music you're playing. That's it. That's what a wedding is. So you start putting 80 must-play songs on a list. Hey, again, you're not hiring a DJ, you're hiring a jukebox and you get one of those on Amazon for a lot cheaper than you're paying a DJ for. That's how a wedding goes Ceremony, cocktail, reception.

A wedding is supposed to be fun and exciting. You're supposed to have fun music for when the guests arrive. You're supposed to have intimate music for when you walk down the aisle. You're supposed to have poppy sing-along stuff during cocktails. Energetic stuff during the grand entrances. Formality, slow stuff during the parent dances and the first dance. Background music during dinner time but fun stuff you can sing along to. Poppy stuff you hear at a bar and then just boom, you have a dance party for two and a half hours. That's how all my weddings are. That's why I have a thousand plus reviews on social media. That's why I'm one of the most sought after DJs in the Philadelphia market.

Yeah, I'm brash, yeah, I say some shit on this podcast, but I'm telling you at the end of the day, all those reviews and all those happy couples. They're not lying to you on wedding wire or not. They're telling you the God honest truth. They're telling you that their fucking party was great. Listen, I could screw code all of you. Hey, I'm going to do all this and this is what's going to happen, because I want your money and I want your business after 30 years. Listen, I just want to have good fucking parties. I don't want to have shit events. I don't want to have events that suck. I want to have good fucking events. I want to be like Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes at this point in time. I want to win the big one. I just don't want to show up. I hope all that makes sense to you. Peace, love and God above, and I'll be back. Bye, bye.