I hired Denon & Doyle for our wedding reception in November 2008 in Mill Valley, CA. We booked them several months before the wedding, paid our deposit, and completed their required online event worksheet online (where you tell them all about your event) immediately after booking. We submitted an additional "Must Play" list, as requested, a few weeks later. I will admit that we had a LOT of "must play" songs on our list. More on that in a minute ...
We heard nothing from D&D for a couple months, until the week before our final deposit was due. The reminder e-mail they sent at that time had an error on it, and stated that we owed them more than we did. A quick e-mail to them solved that problem, and we paid our deposit in full on time.
Two weeks before the wedding, we still had heard nothing from them. I called and left a message to ask what the next steps were and to make sure they had everything they needed, and my call was promptly returned. The rep said that their policy is to call "the week before the event" to go over the day-of schedule, special requests, etc.
I found that a little odd, considering how crucial to the success of an event they make the DJ service and music out to be on their web site. Where's the planning?
Finally, the Wednesday before the wedding (when, if you're a bride, you are waayy past "stressed" and in complete panic mode), their ops guy calls to review the agenda.
He was very polite and the call went smoothly. We ended up having to make a couple changes to the bridal-party entrance to the reception that I had planned (I'm still not sure why, but he told me the entrance to the music I had requested wouldn't work). Nothing huge, but it sure would have been nice to know about earlier. That was it.
The day of the wedding, as my husband and I arrived to the reception site, we were met by the actual DJ, who was very polite. Only then did he go over the specifics of the agenda with me (keep in mind, I had JUST gotten married, JUST arrived to the reception site, and was definitely not in "planning" mode). He was asking us if we wanted to open the mic to guests for toasts (yes), what order we wanted the bridal party to enter (which I had already submitted electronically months before and discussed with the ops guy 3 days ago), how to pronounce names, etc. Now, I can see how he'd want to double check some of these things with me in case there had been any changes, or to reassure us that he knew what was going on, but really, he was asking us to make some decisions that either we already had conveyed to D&D, or that we were being presented with for the first time at our reception. A little unnerving and annoying.
Still, he was very nice and everything went OK (although he didn't open the mic to guests after the best man made his toast, and he really had almost no stage presence or charisma).
Then, before our first dance (so obviously before the dance floor was open for guests to dance), he starts playing out "Must Play" music! He must have played like 8 must-play songs before anyone was even on the dance floor! As I said, we did have a lot of must-play songs. However, we were clear that these songs were for dancing, not "mingling" time. If we had requested too many songs to play during the dancing time, then someone should have told us so we could have edited down the list to include only our absolute faves (we're new to this wedding thing!). No one said a word about it, though. They just played our favorites when no one could dance to them. At this point, of course we just let it go. We then hurriedly got ready for our first dance. The rest of the event was fine.
All in all, the onsite DJ was capable and extremely polite. Everyone we encountered along the way was polite, too (notice my heavy use of the word "polite" in this review?). The quality of the sound and music was good, although unmemorable. No one commented at all on the music - lots of compliments on the food, service staff, flowers, but nothing about the music either on site or afterwards.
I found D&D's organization and planning extremely lacking. Considering they do this all the time and I've never planned a wedding before, more guidance and communication from them would have made all these problems go away, and would have gone a long way to make us feel like our wedding was special, not just another event on their schedule. read more