Wedding Officiant St. Charles, Missouri

Today is March 16th, 2020.

My April 2020 bride and wedding just rescheduled her entire wedding. So much stress. At least, she can focus on planning for a new date.

For more than TWENTY years, I have told brides that the crises that pop up in the weeks before the wedding won’t be noticed on the wedding day. Today, I agreed with Sarah Jo that maybe a reschedule was in order due to COVID-19.

If you need a wedding officiant before your wedding license expires during this flu excitement. I can help. Small groups. Legally scaled assemblies that you can livestream for guests.

I will meet with you on the phone, Facetime, Skype, whatever and via email prior to the event and plan your ceremony.

I have a been officiating weddings for about ten years around the Mid West/Great Plains/Mid-South.

If you have rescheduled your wedding, please support your vendors. When this thing is all said and done, there are going to be some amazing Friday and Sunday wedding dates available. There are going to be dates for mind blowing, post-wedding, kick out the jams, parties. This year. If you want to get married in 2020, it will happen. Please support your current vendors who are blowing up legally binding contracts to help ease your stress right now, end this crisis and stepping out into this unknown without income.

Believe it or not, I was DJ’ing back in 2001. My first 9/11 wedding date was the next year. I had a wedding on 9/11/2002. It was life affirming. We gather together to celebrate life, new life, joined lives, lived lives.

We break bread. We dance. We live. We Love.

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Streaming music will slow your party to a trickle. There is a story going around about a wedding reception that went sideways because the DJ lost internet service and couldn’t stream any more music. A friend of mine said it best.

PROFESSIONAL DJs BRING every song. No streaming. EVER. – Jim Cerone

I walk into a event with a legal, working copy of EVERY song we discussed before the wedding and a backup (sometimes I also have on pants!). If there is internet, I am not adverse to downloading a last minute or guest request via Amazon Music, Google Music, or god forbid iTunes (if it is okay with the Bride and Groom).

There are too many variables to do it any other way. Your event deserves more respect than that.

I was at the Cheaptrick/Def Leppard/Journey show at Busch Stadium on August 24, 2018. It was an amazing show until…

At least that was the case until the last third of Journey’s performance, which was marred by sound problems. Time and again the music cut out completely and then snapped back at full volume, often distorting horribly before dying. It was jarring enough to send many scurrying for the exits, even while Journey played its most anticipated material. – Daniel Durchholz – St. Louis Post Dispatch

There was a issue with the digital wireless sound system so it went some like this.

“Don’t st… Hold on to that f…’ Streetli….eople” –  Journey

If you want to ruin a Journey concert and 50,000 peoples night or an intimate, once in a lifetime wedding that rely on wireless networks, it is illegal and it costs $5.

If you want to do it on accident, hire an idiot who needs to stream music for your event.

20190720 Abby Peters Spencer Neely Wedding

Abby was the maid of Honor for Brynleigh and Silas’s wedding. Abby is probably the sweetest and most long winded bridesmaid ever. This is my second wedding from Brookston, Indiana. Brookston is about 20 minutes from where I went to high school. So it was kind of fun to be out in the Indiana corn.

The sun was in abundance. There were butterflies everywhere.

20180922 Dave & Madriane’s Wedding

I first met Dave at his sisters wedding… a couple of years ago. That couple in the middle is Dave’s sister Jenny and Dave. They got married… a couple of years ago. They haven’t aged a day. Neither have Jenny and Dave’s mom and dad on the right. Timeless.

When Jenny got married, her little brother said. “When I get married, I am going to hire you to DJ”. He wasn’t kidding. Madriane was planning the wedding from Texas. It was gorgeous. I hadn’t been to the Minnetrista Cultural Center in Muncie, Indiana since before I met Dave and Jenny. It was a fun weekend with amazing hosts. I got to check out the new and old of Ball State University.

I was early enough that I helped decorate. This balloon sculpture is just one of many skills I can bring to an event.

This is one of the flower girls. This picture is mine.

20180721 Brynleigh and Silas

Brynleigh and Silas got married.

Brynleigh is the daughter of Scott and Cretia. Scott and Cretia got married back when I used to have music on vintage physical media. I was also a groomsman in Scott and Cretia’s wedding.

20180728 Twin Lakes High School Class Reunion

My high school class reunion was coming up. So I offered to help plan it. Never mind that the high school is in Monticello, Indiana and I was living in Missouri.

Timing wise it was amazing. It was the weekend after Brynleigh and Silas’s wedding.

So I got to combine planning trips and drove back and forth two weekends in a row.

I also got to flex some creative muscle and misappropriate some cherished memories. Bonus… I shared and duplicated a lot of the stuff for another friend’s high school class reunion.

Many thanks to the smart, capable alumni who kept me in check.

My iPhone hates me

I use Apple Music on purpose about once every six months. Usually, I am listening to a podcast or Amazon music or Audible.

When I plug my iPhone into the car, “ABC” by the Jackson Five comes screaming out. I don’t hate the song. I own it it, but fuck “ABC” by the Jackson Five when I am trying to get on the road to somewhere.

It’s annoying.

There isn’t an iPhone option to choose default apps for music or what happens when it gets plugged into a car. So today I went old school, I copied some songs and renamed them so they precede “ABC” alphabetically.

I am not a total monster. I kept the original versions, but hopefully the next time I hear Michael Jackson consent will be involved.

See that playlist? “ABC” by Jackson Five isn’t on the phone. What kind of monster app is downloading a song to play just because I plugged the phone into a car? Hubris? Satan?

This is only been an issue for about five years. I am excited/thrilled/disappointed/sad that it took me this long to come up with a solution.

#bruteforce

Absolut Greyhound Vodka Promotes DJ/Producer Cruelty

The Youtube music video promoting your new vodka Absolut Greyhound promotes DJ/Producer cruelty in the form of robot greyhound racing. While slick with a catchy soundtrack by Swedish House Mafia, DJ/Producers are once again perceived as futuristic exploited entertainment machines. The video is a deadly cross between Project Runway and Mad Max.

Let the cruelty begin!

Vapid fashionistas pose in an arid wasteland for the thrill of watching three starkly beautiful robotic greyhound creatures race for their lives. Once again the focus is on the sights and sounds, the DJ/Producers are muzzled in a dark room with no access to the dance floor, a la Mad Max style. It might have worked for Mel Gibson but it is no way justifiable for a DJ/Producers, even a CGI DJ/Producer.

And just like at the real DJ/Producers event, the lighting and clothes, food and drink take a front seat to the hard work of the entertainers. Sure a robotic, elegant, black beauty falls to the ground at 40 mph. While one model looks appalled, the other laughs. The robot gets up and continues to run. At real events, DJ/Producers are stuck in a dark corner and get no credit for a great event. DJ/Producers who usually take bad falls like that break their legs, break their backs, pull their butt muscles, or are paralyzed hauling heavy speakers and gear. Laugh models laugh.

Many are euthanized at the discretion of the caters and promoters, some with broken legs sub contract their events. Some even pretend to have broken legs to go to a better event.

Some promoters bill this as “pulse pounding action” but I bill it as DJ/Producer heartbreak.

In case you don’t know why Absolut would name a product Greyhound, there’s a cocktail called Greyhound. It’s a mix of vodka and grapefruit juice and if the bartender adds a rim of salt – the cocktail become a Salty Dog.

This ad is haunting…haunting in the way it promotes DJ/Producers Entertainment as subhuman depravity. Haunting in a way, I feel nauseous and want to vomit.

Portraying DJ/Producers as responsible, talent professionals responsible for the success of the event would have been more humane than the forgotten, unloved after thoughts that can be left in a dark corner while all the credit goes to the lighting, food, drink and chair covers. Absolut responsible, it is not.

PS- this is jest. I am Absolutly (see what I did there?) by the new Absolut Greyhound commercial.

Check it out yourself – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmlRK8Da6GE

Apologies to Karyn Zoldan @  http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-tails/2012/03/20/absolut-greyhound-vodka-promotes-animal-cruelty/ who inspired this parody. I am in favor of adopting greyhounds and working with your entertainer to create a great event.

best wedding ceremony….EVER!!!

Here is blog challenge to my friend and author, Peter Merry, author of “The Best Wedding Reception… Ever!” www.tbwre.com

I officiated and acted as master of ceremonies for Nick and Carrie’s wedding. One of the bridesmaids made the greatest Facebook post ever.

That makes her my favoritest bridesmaid EVAR…. Except for the bridesmaid I married.

20091003 Lindsay and Denny (Dennis)

Not the picture I was hoping for.

This was an amazing wedding day.
It started on Friday night with the rehearsal, as the sun set and a chill fall breeze.

The wedding and reception was held at Eagle Pointe in Bloomington. A great venue. Lindsay and Denny got married on the 1st green and had their reception on the patio. The last time I was there I was in the clubhouse with the ceremony on the 9th green. I discovered on the Monday after the wedding that Jim Cerone was the DJ on the other green. (I don’t know what the Indianapolis metro area did without us for the weekend.).

Much nicer.

Dennis paid me the nicest compliment at the end of the evening. He said… “when we were sitting down and planned this out, I had no idea how much stuff you would be doing…. Thanks”

That is the essence of what I do… Focused on the results. There are a million small things that add up to the difference in end result. It’s the difference between what I do and average.