My wife and I got married on October 1, 2016 at Castle Green in Pasadena, CA and needed a DJ for our event. We interviewed several vendors but never fit what we need because they were either: too expensive, not responsive and late, or their styles seem fake (throwing in a fake English accent when they lived in America since they were born). We ended up interviewing John Villa, a friend's friend for the gig. Not only did he offer DJing our event, he also was able to offer us lighting, and be our officiant as well (he was ordained in California)! So he was a one stop shop to take care of 3 things at once!
So when we did the interview, we realized he was just as sarcastic and had a sick sense of humor like my wife and myself. It made conversation much easier and comfortable that we could talk about cupping each other balls (I have no idea how that got in the conversation). That being put aside, he is also a perfectionist like myself and wants to know detail by detail, line by line, about everything. He also acted similar to a wedding coordinator and has great ideas on how to make everything flow seamless. For example, we ended up doing a grand entrance for the bridal party as well as the bride and groom. Rather than going back to our seats, he had us stay there, do a group photo (as he mentioned that most of the time you don't get good pictures after the ceremony cause everyone is doing their own thing), and then shoot to the first dance as all the gusts have already been seated and facing the dance floor. This is just ONE example of the tricks of his sleeve to make things seamless.
He went along with everything we had to say. He had great opinions on certain things but we didn't use all of them. But since we had a Vietnamese wedding with Vietnamese names, he learned the names with us (btw, he's not Vietnamese) and did a great job of learning them. We wanted to roast our bridal party and he helped us put together jokes that caught everyone off guard and was hilarious when the bridal party did their grand entrance. He took charge when he needed to and regulated the crowd as sometimes, they would not listen to our coordinators. The songs he played were fun and everyone went on dancing the rest of the night without skipping a beat.
Besides the DJing part, the lighting he did was spectacular. It gave our ballroom a unique glow and was gorgeous. He set our gobo on the dance floor perfectly. Speaking of which, we had a very detailed GOBO design which he took care of and paid for and didn't want to bother us until after all of our wedding was over. Same with the mic rentals for our 4 singers/MCs. He initially wasn't even going to charge us but I couldn't let him do that.
We had a blast and so did our guests. John was very professional, communicated with us in a timely manner, and is fun to work with. Although you may be swayed away because of his rape van, I'm sure that's just to store his equipment and not little children. We plan on hiring him for any anniversaries or events and actually we all became friends. read more