Hiring Hayes was the biggest mistake we made for our wedding. He's very aggressive, impolite even,…read moreand though he prides himself on being professional, he is anything but. The only thing he has going for him is his rate ($600 for 5 hours), but in retrospect, his services are definitely overpriced.
The conversations we had before the wedding were okay. He had conviction behind his advice and we adopted them because he's "done 600+ weddings" and he knew how to run things, apparently. He was an aggressive "take charge" kind of a guy.
Things were running pretty smoothly for the first half of the wedding. Hayes was surprising polite and tried to take care of things. However, his services and demeanor started to go sour once we hit a snag.
We were running off schedule by about 30 minutes because of issues with the center pieces and other set backs, so we had to compromise a few things and modify the order of events. Our bridesmaids, coordinator, and officiant wanted to make sure things kept on going smoothly, so they all checked-in with Hayes to make sure he was updated on the new schedule. I can understand how he could have felt bombarded, but it's no excuse for how he acted.
When it came time to dance, there wasn't a lot of people that came up. It was a Sunday, people were shy, and I picked a lot of the music. I just want to make it clear that I'm not blaming Hayes for any of that.
After some dancing (or lack there of) my wife and I were going to perform for our guests. I was looking for my ukulele and Hayes made a snide remark to our guests that I was looking for my "little toy." Whatever, no big deal.
But after the wedding was over, we had a conversation with one of our bridesmaids who said that Hayes snapped and yelled at her. She also pointed out that he was short with my wife. That's right, he gave the bride attitude. I haven't DJ'ed at 600+ weddings, but I'm pretty sure that you do not yell at the bride on her wedding day. That is totally inexcusable! We also found out sometime after that some of our vendors had a tough time dealing with Hayes.
Hayes also was supposed to give us group dance lessons during the wedding. We asked him to, but he refused, saying that he'd only do it when more people were on the dance floor. To top it all off, he left an hour early without saying a word to us.
He may have had a bad day, things didn't go according to plan, but it's no excuse for acting unprofessional and rude. His personality was the tipping point. I probably wouldn't have bothered signing up on yelp and writing this review if it weren't for how he acted.
Despite Sugar Rhythm, we still had a great time. It was still the best day of our lives. I dislike reminding myself of Hayes and thinking negatively, but I just want to make sure wedding couples knew how his services were at our wedding.