I'd actually wanted to have way more reviews posted by now, but then I realised that a lot of them would benefit from having photos! Photos I don't yet have! So I'll hold off as long as I can on those and prioritise the review posts based on what needs a photo the least.

So, here we are: the DJ's.

Blake was put in charge of sourcing a DJ mainly because he actually wanted one; I didn't see the point of one at the time. So, after Blake poked around a bit and we met with them, we went with JK's Mobile DJ's.

THE PRICE

After meeting the DJ's for an initial face-to-face, I pretty much told Blake that I had no real opinion on DJ's at all and was okay with hiring these guys if he was happy with them as well. The main reason for that was because they were very, very affordable. They offer 1 discounted package per month to the first customer to enquire about that month, and we happened to be the first ones to ask them about DJ'ing a wedding in December. Compared to other rates I've heard from mate and some cursory research on the internet (I'm not completely switched off even when I say I am, heh), it was really, really competitive. I couldn't complain about that price at all, and I suspect they win most of their clients but outpricing the competition.

THE SERVICE: PRE-WEDDING

After choosing to go with them, we received a gigantic pile of paper to go through. This included schedules, song lists, wedding games suggestions... essentially everything you could potentially want your DJ to do for you.

The thing was, apart from play specific songs when we wanted them played, we didn't really have much for them to do! We weren't playing introductory music for any of our speakers, we weren't asking them to MC, and we weren't playing any wedding games.

I will say, though, that I was pretty pleased with the detail they go into to make sure they will do precisely as told on the night. My sole complaint is that, honestly, the paperwork looks like it was done with WinWord and then never changed or reformatted or looked at ever again (non-nerds, that's a version of MS Word from like, 1992). It didn't look professional, though the thought that went into it certainly was.

To say that these guys were old-school would make sound a bit cheeky if you were there to see them, but I will say that they were both very nice guys who did know their stuff. They've been in the industry longer than some of their competitors have been alive, and they take their job very seriously.

THE SERVICE: WEDDING DAY

This is a bit hard to review, because I didn't actually hear any of the music they were playing until we started dancing. It wasn't a question of volume or not being in earshot, it's that I just wasn't paying any attention to it because I was busy attending to our guests. Plus, Blake and I gave them a very long song list - I kept mine to 10 songs and his was about 20 in the end, and most of his were played in the background during food service and photos.

Blake did comment that they were apparently playing some "weird" music during the food service, though like I said I didn't pay much attention myself and Blake himself couldn't put his finger on what was "weird" about it. One of our guests apparently had to go over and point out that the music wasn't exactly matching the theme or atmosphere at the wedding.

Another minor issue was that we hadn't left very much time for the dancing part of the night, which meant the dancing music consisted pretty much of all the danceable songs on our list anyway! So I feel like we could've totally gotten away with just sticking in an iPod and playing a playlist for that part of the night. I mean, it left the DJ's with not much to do to that end, but that one's our fault, not really theirs.

Their music collection was pretty extensive, with collections from the 50's all the way up to Cosby Sweater. I did still needed to supply a lot of the music we wanted, but we were choosing lots of music we liked rather than what was popular or commonly heard at a wedding. Or songs from movie soundtracks. I mean, we played Be Our Guest from Beauty and the Beast, the Incredits (credits score) from The Incredibles, and Life's a Happy Song from The Muppets. I wouldn't expect any DJ to have those songs just sitting in their library.

THE VERDICT

For the price we paid, I would totally recommend these guys. To be fair, we had them do very little, but they were responsive, they were accommodating, their sound and lighting equipment was all top notch, and they had people on the dance floor pretty much non-stop right up until the end of the night.