My weekend , good and bad.
I haven't posted for a while but thought I'd just tell you all about the weekends bookings.
Friday was a nice wedding in Pashley Manor Gardens , East Sussex. We arrived at the marquee(it was very nice, laid out for 120 guests with seperate bar area with sofas) and could park the van right by the side. Lovely venue, glorious day in lovely surroundings. Got setup by about 3pm, they wanted us to provide backgound music and a radio mic for speeches. Guests didn't come in the marquee until about 6pm:(
They did a couple of the speeches before the meal started and saved the best mans speech until after, he gave an excellent account of the grooms life and was a natural public speaker. He then handed over to me for the first dance around 9.30pm (it was due to finish at 11.30 so a short night).
The best man also handed me about 13 postcards that had been left on the tables for the guests to fill out with there top 3 requests. ( I new this was going to happen and thought the worst). One of the cards (must have come from a table with the older guests!) had 1. Edelwiess 2. All things bright and beautiful and a 3rd song I had never heard of and can't remember. Anyway that card seemed to disapear never did find it-shame:) All the other requests were the normal standard and the dance floor was packed all night. Finished off with Oasis - Champagne Supernova with a nice big circle around the bride and groom.
Had a chat with the video guy before we started and he was filming it on a cine camera (from the 60's) apparently the film has to go to Germany to be specially developed, he then gets it back on a proper cine reel and it has to go to the BBC to be mastered. He was also filming on a digital video camera.
Saturday
A long day for me as we had 6 discos on the go. I left our base near Brighton at 10am to head up to The Warren, The Metropolitan Police HQ in Hayes for another wedding. They wanted 2 plasma screens with large projector screen along with the disco, as a surprise for the bride the groom had got a lovely presentation put together for their first dance. I have been to this venue before but when I arrived the function suite has been completely refitted, all the lighting is built in to the ceiling (Martin Mania range) and was all computer controlled from a seperate little room facing the stage. You could control everything from the room colour to the colour of the pillars to the colour of the wall light, very impressive, by roadie had a field day.
We finished setting up about 1pm and left to go to the next venue about 15 miles away called the West Heath Centre in Sevenoaks, another nice venue I have worked in before and was Princess Diana's old school. I was to provide music for their wedding ceremony as the bride walked in and as the happy couple left. We set a couple of small powered speakers up in the room and the groom provided me with his ipod with the 2 tracks loaded. The tracks were somewhat unusual and I knew when the registrar read out a poem by Dr Seuss as part of their wedding this was going to be an odd one, and as my colleague confirmed this morning ( he did the disco part in the evening) I was right. More on this later............
After I did my duties for their ceremony we left some PA equipment for the band, the band were a friend of the bride and groom who had no PA of their own so I hired this to them. We then made our way back to the van only to notice they had hired an icecream man and bouncy castle for the adults (it was raining at this point) Yes that was for the Adults. We had a brief chat with the guy who was really nice and who had also come from the Brighton area.
We arrived back at Hayes around 6pm and the guests were on the coffee and speeches. The first dance /presentation was at 8.30 and went really well with the bride on the dance floor in floods of tears. Had quite a few requests for up to date r n b and dance music and used the screens to show music videos mixed in with wedding photos and visuals. A very large room with not many people to fill it but a good night was had by all, especially my roadie in total control of room lighting:) Finished at Midnight packed up and home by about 3am.
Speaking to my colleague this morning about the other wedding he arrived at 6pm and could not get into the room to setup until 9pm, the band went on first who only played their own original songs!! and my colleague was handed a memory stick by the groom saying that he only wanted these songs played, it contained such groups as the Toasters ??? Neadless to say not a brilliant night, he was glad it was all over by 11.30.
Oh well heres to next weekend, sorry about my ramblings I never normally write this much honest.
