**Update: Mark reached out after our initial review and was extremely professional and explained the situation, which is extremely understandable and we were sad to hear. Please read the entire review for why it was not 5-stars specifically to us. We still had a good time and would definitely recommend Mark's company. Our venue also has Mark listed as one of their top recommended DJs in the area!**
Initial review:
For context read the entire review. We were married Oct. 23rd, 21. It was easy to communicate with Mark, and from every review we read and from the people we spoke with, he was the best person to have for our wedding.
Unfortunately we did not get Mark. Mark told us a month before the wedding he would have another DJ for us, Jose. We were happy with this as we would think anyone representing Mark's company would be just as good. Then a couple days before the wedding we were told we would get another person...
My wife spoke with this new person five days before the wedding, and he had never been to our reception location and she had to explain to him about the set up that Mark was already aware of. He did not seem to know answers to questions which got us a little worried. Then he called us three days before the wedding to let us know he couldn't find our recessional (departing) song. This made us a bit more concerned considering he is a DJ, and all of this music is easily found on Spotify. We asked if had the other songs which we had sent a month in advanced (word document to fill provided by Mark) and he said yes. We remained hopeful, but unsurprisingly 10 minutes before the party processional began to walk in I had a weird feeling that something was wrong. By weird feeling I mean he played none of the songs we listed for the seating of the guests. I approached, and discovered he did not have the correct song for the walk in.
He showed me how his system did not have the song. This was quite surprising as we listed all the music to be played a month before the wedding. I walked in anyway to the wrong song, but my wife heard the wrong music and thankfully had him stop the ceremony to find the right song. So we restarted the ceremony and I got to walk down twice, which was way better when he found the right song. For our recessional, we had listed the time in the song that we wanted him to start it on, but he didn't do that and just started it from the beginning- which we were happy that at least it was the right song.
The new DJ opened the reception with standard wedding music which was not what we wanted, so after another conversation with him he started to play what we hoped he would play (what we had listed on the same document we turned in earlier). What music he did play after that conversation was good, and we had a great time- although he did not mix up the genres like we had asked and had to keep going up to talk to him. Another note, the new DJ also did not accept requests from our guests, and we had to take over at choice moments because he forgot to announce key elements during specific dances. When reading reviews for Mark's company, one of the things that really stuck out was that he also did a great job MC'ing and really engaged the crowd. We did not get this and our DJ barely said a couple sentences during the reception. For example, for the father-daughter dance and mother-son dance, we had requested that he announced for all other father/daughters and mother/sons to join on the dance floor around the 1 minute mark. He did not do this and I had to go up and make the announcement for my wife, and she did the same for me. He also did not have the last song to close out the night that we had requested in advance, and started to play "it your birthday" as our last song. Once again, when asked to play the song we had listed as our last song of the night, he could not find it and played a mix version of it (and it's a popular song).
Two stars is appropriate considering three stars would be an average rating. This can't be described as average, two stars is rated because it was still a good time, considering he didn't play most music at the right time, couldn't find music that we requested a month in advance, and for a general lack of preparation even though we had provided a list with specific songs and the artist.
We were stunned by the inability of this DJ after all the glowing reviews, but we still enjoyed the evening and made the most of it. I would like to think this was the DJ's first time, but as someone who represents the quality of the company, he did not meet expectations. His assistant also took a video for us which they said they were going to send and were really looking forward to receiving, but failed to follow through with that.
I would still suggest the company; just might need a bit more oversight and request an early arrival of your DJ to confirm they know what you want and double check they have all the songs you had requested for special parts of the ceremony a read more