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Carmela’s Banquet House located at 301 Washington Ave in Rensselaer, New York is a great place to hold a small to mid-range wedding. If you happen to be a bride or groom-to-be and have roughly 75-125 people on your guest list, this really believe that Carmela’s could be a super affordable option for you. At the same time, Carmela’s can provide quality in service for your special night.

LOCATION – Carmela’s location itself could be a positive when choosing your venue selection. This banquet house is out of the busy side of Albany and more layed back off the main drag of a Rensselaer residential area. This venue provides its own spacious parking lot, so that your guests have no parking issues. Logistically speaking, the location itself is only a few blocks away from Interstate Route 90, making for a smooth transition to and from the hall, overall.

FACILITIES – The hall provides a separate place for the bridal party to gather and relax after photos for the soon-to-come grand introduction.
Additionally, in the corner of the bar, there is enough space for traditional wedding decorations/activities, like a wedding photo booth, an acoustic guitarist, or ice sculpture, perhaps. In the dining room, there is a spacious dance floor and great adjustable lighting. It is also important to note that there is a nice round bar off of the main dining room, which allows for more people to enjoy the bar experience.

FOOD – Recently, I was the disc jockey for a wedding that had a nice chicken breast, or strip steak, as well as a vegetarian dish available. The food is really tasty! The garnishes that the bride and groom selected were garlic smashes potatoes, and a great mixed vegetable medley of peppers, onions and cauliflower.

STAFF – I really enjoy the staff. they are good people; very friendly and easy to work with.

Overall, I give I recommend this hall for a small to medium-size wedding. Give them a drive by. It could be worth it!

Have you ever been to a wedding where the buffet line is like three miles long and they are only serving on one side of the table. If so, then you know that it can often be a lenghthy, drawn-out deal just to get your plate of food.

With this being said, do you have a buffet planned for your wedding? If so, you also have to consider that there is always the question of when the people will be served. One fun alternative table serving activity that you can try is called, “Sing For Your Supper.”

“Singing For Your Supper” is a fun activity to entertain your guests during your wedding reception that also creates an order for dinner to be served.

As with all wedding activities, this a fun game is one that is chosen specifically only upon the bride & groom at their request. While this may not be for everyone, it is a fun icebreaker that can kill the wait associaed with a buffet line of, say 150 people.

Basically speaking, a microphone is passed from table to table when they are up, and the only way their table can move to the buffet line, is to have a volunteer break into song. In the spirit of the wedding, the song selection is usually supposed to be a chorus of a romantic song, dedicated to the bride and groom from table #6, for example.

Often times reluctant at first, wedding guests will quickly catch on to this activity, after they see how much it brings joy to the bride & groom. Once they buy into it, more times than not, the wait will become very creative and entertaining!

ALTERNATIVE GUIDELINES –
Have fun with the guidelines and make it your own. Below are just a few ideas you could go with to make this activity your own…

“LOVE” – the bride & groom may request that their guests sing any song containing the word “Love”

“DUETS” – Two people may have to sing in order for the table to move forward.

Whatever you do, have fun with it! 🙂

(518) 506-3305 – For an Affordable Wedding DJ in Albany NY… Party Planning Tips & Advice Blog.

Each and every time that I meet up with a bride and her groom for what they might want to hear at their wedding, Steve Jobs plays a big part. THe bride plays me a song on her iPod, I pull up the contract on my iPad and her husband-to-be breaks out some photo ideas on his Mac.

Then when the wedding happens, the majority of the music we hear is the direct product of iTunes.

Steve Jobs was the Michelangelo Buonarroti of our lifetime and we can only hope he left notes behind to continue his impactful ways on technology in the years to come.

In the last year, I have become an iPad 2 user. It really is great and I can’t live without it. I use it for calander planning, syncing information with my phone, bringing up song samples, providing photograph samples for customers and also enjoy capabilities and to surf the net. I even watched Toy Story 3 on it the other day, and enjoy a great Scrabble Game called “Words WIth Friends” from time to time. All of this in an easy compact tool that Steve Jobs dedicated his life to, in this great finale release.

Steve Jobs will always be remembered for making modern computing simple, seamless with other mediums and a very satisfying experience. The co-founder of Apple created the old school Apple I & II computers in the 70s. Later, he gave us the Macintosh and the iMac. Then people wanted better music capabilites on the computer so he added music to loop with the creation of iTunes and then the iPod. Then peopl wanted to make connections, so he added phone call capabilities with the iPhone, and then bundled it all together in the end with the Star Trek-like iPad.

Who knows where exactly things will be for apple in the future? I can only imagine Jobs has left his company behind a truck load of ideas for the years to come, and I can only hope that they will see the ideas through.

I just jumped on the apple band wagon the last couple of years, but know that people have been here a long time. Either way, many in the country agree that Steve Jobs will, in fact, be very missed.

Clifton Park Elks Lodge # 2466 – Wedding Venue Review

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of being the DJ once again at The Clifton Park Elks Lodge. Aside from some really good home-made cooking and tasty food, the people are very easy to work with at the lodge. They offer a decent nice venue at very reasonable pricing. They also really allow a lot of freedom to the bride and groom in the outline of the night’s events.

The Lodge’s facilities at the Clifton Park Elks are a great place to have the wedding of your dreams or enjoy a great barbecue. Guests can choose from their indoor facilities with 2 connecting rooms, dance floor and complete bar, or their out-door pavilion with a large grill and on-site sporting games. The Elks Lodge can also custom create a combination package of both.

The food really is great considering they cook all their own food without a cateror. It has a more homey-like feel to it, rather than the mass-produced feel that some of the bigger venues have, and I think that the guests appreciate that.

They do serve their guests the buffet food portions which slows down their buffet line to some degree. However, the hand-carved prime rib was high quality and great for a smaller-to-medium sized venue. The sides were really good, as well, and they even featured their own home-made sauces, like a great bistro horse-radish for the beef.

If I could change one thing, I would probably open the buffet line up to both sides of the table to speed up the serving, and set up a separate station for the hand-carving roasts. However, because it is a smaller venue, maybe 80-120 guests in full capacity for the dinning room, it is possible that space is an issue.

There is a nice little bar in a separate room for the drinking enthusists, as well as a small bar in dining room.

One more thing I really like is that they are super easy to work with. For example, the lodge doesn’t force the cake, or toast on you. In a lot of cases, wedding halls and catering venues really push to have the cake cutting activity very soon after the dinner. This helps them organize the employees’ duties in the back and an early cake activity can actually maximize employee potential and save the hall money. However, an early cake is not always in the best interest of the party, as many people leave right after the cake, and the activity can really slow down the fun. At the lodge, they are really cool with letting it happen later. I also don’t think they try and soak the bride and groom with a cutting fee.

The lodge is conveniently located at 695 Macelroy Road in Ballston Lake NY. This location is right on the border of Clifton Park and is an easy place to get to. It is still far enough away from the commericialism right off of the 87 exit.

If you are interested in booking your small to medium sized wedding there, the phone number is (518) 877-5200.

The whole idea of having a wedding cake tradition with music and couple feeding really has been around forever, though it has transformed more into what we know it as today in recent times.

During the ancient Roman Empire, the groom would cbreak up a bread-like cake and sprinkle the crumbs all over his bride’s head. In the 17th century, a large decorated wedding pie was uhe dessert of choice, with one main ingredient: a glass ring hidden inside to symbolize that the finder was the next to be married. After the 19th century came about, we really started to see the big frosting giants with multi-layering.

No matter which way you cut it, everyone tends to agree that music makes things better, so somewhere along the line music was added to the mix.

Having a mood-setting wedding cake theme song is a great way to put the people into the mindset of the bride and groom. However, how do you pick the right song?

The best thing to think about when choosing your wedding cake theme song is to think about what kind of atmosphere you would like to set during the actual cake cutting activity. If you want “fun,” I wouldn’t go with classical music or jazz. If you want classy, I also wouldn’t pick Def Leppard. Happy, party, fun, serious, nostalgic, classy, and romantic are a bunch of moods that you could set. Remember to always pick a suitable song that goes along with the feeling you would like to convey.

Partially from an earlier blog, here is a good updated list of songs that you may want to use for your wedding reception cake cutting activity:

Ain’t That a Kick in the Head – Dean Martin
All My Life – KC & JoJo
Better Be Good To Me – Tina Turner
Better Together – Jack Johnson
Cut the Cake – Average White Band
Cuts Like A Knife – Bryan Adams
Eat It – Weird Al Yankovic
Happy Together – The Turtles
Hit Me With Your Best Shot – Pat Benatar
How Sweet It Is – James Taylor
I Do – Colbie Calliet
I Got You Babe – Sonny Bono & Cher
I Wanna Grow Old With You – Adam Sandler
Ice Cream – Sarah McLachlan
If I had A Million Dollars – Bare Naked ladies
It Had to be You – Harry Connick Jr.
It’s your Love – Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
I’m Yours – Jason Mraz
Love and Marriage – Frank Sinatra
Mack The Knife – Bobby Darin
Marry Me – Train
Pour Some Sugar on Me – Def Leppard
Recipe for Love – Harry Connick Jr
So This Is Love – Cinderella Theme
Sugar, Sugar – The Archies
That’s Amore – Dean Martin
Theme From ‘Jaws’ – Jaws Soundtrack
This Could Be The Start of Something Big – Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme
This Guy’s In Love With You – Herb Albert
When I’m 64 – Beatles

Lady Gaga’s new song sounds just like… Just like…. Hmmm.

In case Lady Gaga’s new track “You and I” seems to sound familiar or like something else to you, you are probably right for two reasons. The music sounds like one song, and the singing sound like another. It is almost as if Lady Gaga has created her own funky fresh mashup for the little monsters on this one. Can somebody say, “remix?”

So after hours of racking my brain, I think that the pop-guitar music sounds like Shania Twain “Man, I Feel Like a Woman,” and the way she sings it really, REALLY lyrics sound like Anna Nalick’s “Breath (2am).”

PRODUCTION/MUSIC – For one, the song was produced by Robert “Mutt” Lange, the producer of Shania Twain’s Come on Over (as well as countless other rock/pop blockbusters). “You and I,” the radio release, which is actually a remix from the original studio trac, is now sort of country/pop and resembles Shania’s choppy guitar riff from “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.”

LYRICAL ARRANGEMENT – Okay little monsters. Here is the big one. Just like “Born This Way” sounded like Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” listen to Anna Nalick’s “Breath (2am)” and tell me there isn’t some similarity.

INDIVIDUAL LINE SIMILARITY – There is also to line “It’s been a long time…” that bothers me. I feel like that is somewhere else, sung identically, but It is not in Nalick’s song. If anyone recognizes it, please let me know. First, I thought maybe I heard it in “What’s Up” by The 4 Non-Blondes, but that wasn’t it, though that track , too, does sound a little like Lady Gaga’s “You and I.” Your thoughts? Drop me a line if you can think of it.

LADY GAGA’s “You And I” – So here it is… Leave a comment below and tell me what you think. You can also email me at ken@theDJservice.com.