Above is a video of my first time DJ’ing at Holiday Inn Express of Latham NY, this weekend. It’s a great place for a wedding reception with modern fixtures, multiple chandlers, ample seating and dance room for a medium sized wedding of maybe 150 or so.
Located right off of the Northway Route 87, Latham NY as a town is a great place to have a wedding; not too far from Albany, Schenectady and Troy, NY.
The Holiday Inn as a venue is a great place covering all bases for your ceremony and reception. At the wedding that I was the DJ for on Saturday, the bride & groom got married right on site, had a great photo shoot in the courtyard, and moved into the reception without a glitch. All inclusive is the key to easy transition and success for your special day.
At this particular wedding, the bride & groom had cake pops (another thing I am relatively new to), and wedding photobooth action provided by www.bryerphotography.com .
Holiday Inn Express Wedding of Latham, NY
A LOOK AT THE VENUE…
CEREMONY – The ceremony can take place in the Gazebo room or outside in the courtyard with a real gazebo.
For this particular wedding, it was overcast with a chance of rain early here in October, so the venue had a great backup plan all ready to go inside. This was good in the end because it did rain. However, everything still came off just fine.
COCKTAIL HOUR – Your cocktail hour can take place in a separate room, just outside the reception hall. In this room, there is a small fountain as a centerpiece for appetizers. The room is a little narrow, but has multiple doors for means of exit. The room is also right off of the reception hall, itself.
RECEPTION HALL – In the middle of the facility, the hall is easy to get to and very accommodating. They have a separate dance floor and the floor plan that the venue went with at this particular wedding was very effective, with entertainment in mind, as well as food service. (This is not always the case.)
Anyhow, without hesitation, I would recommend taking a look at this venue for your wedding.
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BENNINGTON VT WEDDING DJ SERVICE POINTS: If you want an affordable experienced DJ for your wedding reception with countless local venue hall relationships, our local Bennington DJ’s office serves points around Bennington, Walloomsac River, the western edge of the Green Mountains, including Bald Mountain, Woodford, Mount Anthony, the Taconic Range, or by Bennington Battle Monument. all on a regular basis for music entertainment disc jockey mobile DJ services.
Bennington, VT… Thank you for the call! Here is a video of a Typical DJ Kenny Casanova Wedding Intro, with the ring announcer energy many request!
Here’s a cool idea. Instead of just numbering tables, why not name them after a favorite rock band? If you are a music lover and like this idea, you can do what a fan couple did at The Hilton in Troy, NY this past weekend.
What they did was number the tables, but also add a cool 45 single from a favorite band as part of the centerpiece. The trick is, to locate 45 records that have cool cover art, and put them on little stands that you can find at a craft store like Michaels or Hobby Lobby. Then, the place cards will direct your guests to a table with a cool band name, instead of just a number.
One neat idea is CHANGING BACKGROUNDS! On Zoom, WebEx and Google Meets, there is a “Change background” feature. You can change your background settings very easily on Zoom, WebEx and Google Meets to get that party feel!
As you know, all the faces will come on the screen after you send them the invite/join code. You want them to feel like they are walking into a party! So how do you do that? One thing to really make it fun is to provide a few custom backgrounds for students to download and use. You can see background use on the top and bottom of column two of the picture below:
Now imagine if mostly everyone adds personality with custom backgrounds! Look how even more custom backgrounds adds to the feel! It feels more like a party than an office meeting or classroom setting, right?
CUSTOMIZE DANCE BACKGROUNDS
You can let students do whatever they want, but with a little direction, the party will come to life with the right guidance on backgrounds! Selecting Dance club and and DJ type lights in all the backgrounds would really add to the feel. Some students with Photoshop-type skills could even be creative adding their friends’ heads to their custom backgrounds into people dancing!
DARE TO USE THEMES!
Also, if you are going with a theme like many do, maybe a pirate theme for instance, students can have all kinds of fun playing with their backgrounds. Use a theme if you dare and watch the fun unroll! 🙂
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Mountain View Fire Hall – A great place to reserve for your small / medium party
Planning a party of under 100 people or so? Looking for a hall with kitchen access? Want to keep the party affordable?
If you are in the Wynantskill / Troy, NY area and are looking for a good hall for a sweet 16 party, class reunion or engagement party, this may be the place for you. Both DJ Maria and myself have had the pleasure of serving as in-house go-to DJs for 90% of the firehouse banquet functions and we can safely say these are great people to do with business with.
Seating a small to medium party or event comfortably, Mountain View Volunteer Fire Company has a great recreational room for rent.
DJ Maria one foot out in the back starting the dance
Mountain View VFC has a full kitchen and allows outside catering. The idea of a venue allowing you to have full control of the food creates a potential for super savings for any party planner. There is a full kitchen set off to the side with two serving windows into the room.
There is comfortable seating for about 100 people still with room for dancing with plenty of additional tables and chairs available.
The hall is also ground level and handicap accessible. Here is the contact information:
Mountain View Volunteer Fire Company / Mountain View VFC 2 Shafter Avenue Troy, New York 12180 518/283-4530
Recently, we had a wedding venue coordinator bring us into the room of a well-known wedding reception hall over in Albany, NY. The room was beautiful, as always. This particular venue has great lighting, superb decor, and has a really nice dance floor entirely surrounded by well-decorated tables. Everything on this particular day was just great, except for one common thing…
…Poor Placement of The DJ booth.
The DJ table was about 75 feet away from the dance floor. The entertainment was buried by at least four dinning tables, off in a distant corner of the room.
“Uggghhh!” I thought to myself before speaking. “Is there anywhere else I can set up?” I asked, as politely as I could.
She answered, “No. That is where we ALWAYS put the DJ.”
“If the wedding party has a band, do you put them in the same place?” I asked.
“Well, not really. We usually put them right next to the dance floor.”
This is a common problem with wedding venues.
Schenectady – At this hall, a Wedding DJ is often placed high on a balcony in the background. While this may look good, it is not a good option. It sounds like absolute $#*%! and leaves no opportunity for guests to make requests.
OUT OF SIGHT – OUT OF MIND
There is also a very popular wedding hall in the Schenectady, NY area that likes to put the DJ way up high on a balcony. This looks great to your venue hall, and may look neat in the final pictures too. However, this idea is all about visual. It doesn’t take sound quality or guest interation into consideration. Therefore, in a number of words, this option on an entertainment perspective actually totally SUCKS!
Just a tip… treat the DJ as your entertainmant for the night, as you would any other performer that interacts with your crowd. It really is best to have what ever entertainment that you choose to provide for your guests very close to the dance floor. This is important for a number of reasons.
Make sure and discuss this request with your venue provider’s event organizer. Quite often, their agenda is very food & service-driven. This means they do not always have in mind the best interests of optimal entertainment requirements.
Here is a list of things to think about when making your seating plan and placing your entertainment spotlight for the night:
1) IS THE DJ CLOSE ENOUGH TO THE DANCE FLOOR? – No matter what your hall organizer says, the entertainment should ALWAYS be right near the dance floor, period. They should also have a clean path with no seating in front of them.
A wedding venue knows food, and knows how to treat their guests, but they are not entertainers, nor do they know much about music equipment placement. Ask any good DJ and they will tell you it is not a good idea to be far away from the dance floor.
2)NEVER PUT TABLES IN FRONT OF THE DJ – First off, the sound quality will be terrible when ever you put something in front of a speaker. Obstacles will hinder the sound from reaching the dance floor properly. Secondly, the guests sitting in front of the DJ booth will be blasted by sound all night. Those will then be considered the worst seats in the house.
A DJ on a balcony will get NO requests and have little interaction with your guests.
3) CAN THE DJ BE SEEN BY ALL? – The DJ or band often makes announcements. You don’t want your guests wondering where this mystery voice is coming from like a blue light special announcement at K-mart.
4) CAN THE DJ CONNECT WITH THE CROWD? – It is very important for the DJ, much like a band, to connect with the crowd. Seeing what is working and what is not is a huge part of being a mobile disc jockey.
5) WILL THE DJ BE ABLE TO INTERACT WITH THE CROWD ? – If your wedding DJ is placed far away, requests become very difficult, or sometimes almost impossible.
A balcony set up typically doesn’t work well for a mobile DJ. (Balcony DJ booths only work in night clubs because the place is hard wired with smaller speakers everywhere in the hard to reach dead zones.)
BELOW IS AN EXAMPLE OF A BAD WEDDING HALL LAYOUT:
🙁
In the picture above, I would have just switched the table to the right of the DJ and the cake. This would leave enough space so that the DJ booth could have been strategically tilted so that the soundwaves travel to the dance floor with no hindering obstacles.
In a big hall, it is impossible to do a 75 feet away corner set up, facing the back of your guests with tables in front of you blocking the sound. In the picture above, 24 people are being blasted by the DJ. They wouldn’t be happy either.
Overall, in a wedding reception setting, your DJ/MC placement is critical. Do not let the hall put your entertainment in a closet.
When it comes to dancing, “The King of Dirty Dancing” Patrick Swayze once said, “Nobody puts baby in the corner.” The same should go for your wedding DJ.
Keep this in mind when laying out your wedding seating charts. For more on this common problem, check out our article, How To Seat Your Wedding Guests.
