**This is a very honest review to give newly engaged couples an idea of the entire experience from A-Z**
DJ M-EL fell short of our expectations on our wedding day. I'm mainly writing this because when I vocalized our disappointment via phone call, not once did he apologize. I've worked in the customer service industry for over a decade and I know good customer service when I see it.
Prior to the wedding, we had a consultation with him, put down a deposit, which led to 3 more meetings. Each meeting we thoroughly went over the wedding timeline, and he instructed us to download an app called Vibo which had a a good amount of paperwork to fill out, as well as listing songs for "Open Dancing" and "Must Plays" and "Do Not Plays". Mind you, each of these meetings were approx 45 min in length and were extremely thorough. I felt so comfortable going into the wedding thinking that every song I wanted to hear would play.
We agreed that he would play 30% disco, 30% Armenian music, and 30% early 2000s hip hop for the younger crowd. I carefully curated the playlist because music means a lot to me. The two genres I told him to steer away from were Reggaeton and Country.
The day of the wedding comes and I hear these (to name a few) that started off the party:
Sway by Michael Buble
Let's Get Loud by Jennifer Lopez
Hotel Room Service by Pitbull
Bamboleo - Gipsy Kings
After setting the tone of the dance floor with these songs, people were still dancing but I could tell my family wasn't feeling it. I was entertaining my guests I didn't have time to confront him and I also did not want to ruin the mood of my wedding with anger. Then after an hour into party time, ONLY when my coordinator told him that I was unhappy with the music, he managed to sprinkle in what I asked for (but by the time he did that it was like whiplash for the crowd and of COURSE it wouldn't sound good or transition well if it doesn't blend with all the Hispanic stuff he was playing). Yes he technically didn't play reggaeton but he was still in the neighborhood of it.
I was in shock. I felt like all the time we met with him was wasted. Every married couple will understand the frustration I'm going through because it takes an entire year of planning, money, time, and care to put together a once in a lifetime event. And let's say hypothetically if he played what we wanted and the night still ended early, at least he would have done what we paid him to do. He straight up didn't do the job he was asked to do.
When we were on the phone, he said he would go over his playlist to see how many "must plays" he played. My understanding is that he would try to play our entire playlist of 52 dancing songs that we provided, hit the "must plays" no matter what, and THEN play other content once he ran out. Instead he just did whatever he wanted from the get-go.
It's like going to McDonalds and ordering a cheeseburger, fries and a shake and in turn getting chicken nuggets, fries and a coke. Yes there were still "fries" in there but it overall wasn't what was ordered.
On top of all this, he took a break (which he is entitled to) at approx 11:10pm BUT he didn't announce the break, and then didn't play any real songs to fill the gap, so our guests thought the party was over. He played some really faint instrumental music which felt like it was ushering the guests out.
I had my venue til 1am and I was so sad that my wedding ended early. He didn't announce that people could take flowers home so the flowers were wasted, or a last song of the night, last call at the bar and he didn't mention the dessert table either. He just quietly left without even saying goodbye to us.
When I brought all of these issues to his attention, he pointed the blame on everything but himself. He suggested that the timeline/organization of our event caused the dance floor to be dry, that if he played what I wanted that people wouldn't dance to it. He said that the line at the bar was too long. He said he played "soft jazz" when he took his break and people leaving was out of his control. It was every single excuse and not taking any accountability that he failed to follow what he was paid to do.
I'm honestly just appalled by the way this whole situation was handled.
The sad part is, if he had just apologized to me, I probably wouldn't have left this review.
If I had read a review like this while researching him I would have looked elsewhere, so I hope this is helpful for other couples moving forward. read more