Your Wedding Budget; where do YOU start?

The word Budget comes up a lot when planning a wedding. Some couples don't have one, they get what they need, no more no less. Others without a budget get everything they want, and deal with the expense later.

Most of us however work to a budget, realistic or not, changing plans as we go, we fit within the amount allocated, or we change the amount, and increase the budget :) 

But what is a realistic wedding budget? After all this time assisting with weddings, I still don't have an answer. BUT I do have an approach. There are a myriad of sites online that suggest that you should put aside X% for this and Y% for that. None of which address YOUR wedding, just weddings in general.

So consider looking at Your wedding from the view point of what aspects are the most important to you, down through to those that are the least important. Is the Venue the paramount part of your celebration? Or the photographic/videographic memories? the Gown? the decoration? the entertainment? the Cars or the Cake? What will add the greatest contribution to the overall result you wish to achieve?

That, is where your budget should start being spent. As you work your way down your list, from those vital items to those that you have deemed as having lesser direct impact upon the day you want to achieve. Then those things can be decreased in expense. Invest well in the parts of the wedding YOU see as important, get quality where it counts, and be frugal on the items that have less impact on your scale.

You do NOT always get what you pay for, but its a pretty good place to start

NYE 2012 message, this time its personal.

Well it’s 3 o'clock in the am, on the 1st of January 2013 and I've just got home from a function. A NYE wedding, so I guess the first order of business is to wish you all, all the best for the New Year. I've been doing that a lot tonight; generically wishing family, friends, acquaintances and even total strangers "the Best" for the coming New Year. Although I did spend some time drafting a NYE message, that I sent to all my close friends and family, something that I really did want to pass on to them, a message that said more than just the cookie cutter standard all the best for the new year.

It got me thinking; I make a point of messaging my children at some stage during every function, a simple text telling them I love them. I want them to know that it is not just a generic, bland message. I want them to know that it is sent with definite intent. Think about it, how many times do we tell those around us something that important, purely out of habit?

So now that I have the opportunity, the means, and the motivation, I want to tell my three children that I love them and that I am so very proud of them.

My eldest daughter, Shannon, honey I love you so very much, you have grown into a beautiful person. And you are so very strong my girl, much stronger than you give yourself credit for. It makes me so very proud to see you grown from the girl you once were to the Mother and Wife you now are. Those three wonderful children have helped you blossom into someone so very different than the girl you used to be. You are butterfly now, bright, colourful and full of life.

Kimberley, the middle, forgotten one, you are my rock, always there for me and always the first to reply to my daily messages. You just naturally want help those around you, adopting sisters at the drop of a hat, and running around after them even to your own detriment at times. You need to watch that bub, not everyone is as kind natured as you are and sometimes, those you are helping are taking advantage of you. Very very soon now my daughter, you will be a mother yourself, and your world will change, I know your scared, but trust in yourself, your body knows what its doing. Your caring heart will find a very special focus then. Oh yes, give more love to the boy, he is confused and he needs it.

And now to my Son, Shaun, Boy you never stop amazing me. You have such a strong work ethic and life ethic, and you’re a damn sight smarter than I was at your age. I am proud of you son, you have a good job that your good at, and a solid long term relationship that other men your age should envy. While you will always be my boy, it is more and more apparent everyday that you are a man, and a good man at that.

I love how all three of you have a strong relationship with your grandparents, and I am so very happy that each of you has found someone special to stand beside you.

Always remember, I love yous.

My most important wedding to date

Its been a while, I know, and I really have no excuse, I've been busy, just like everyone else. But to help make up for it, I want to tell you about the most important wedding I've ever been asked to be part of.

I started to DJ for functions and Wedding receptions way back in the dark ages according to my children, heading off to events after carefully loading my rig into my cart and hitching it up to my dinosaur. It was after all 1989.

Since picking up my first set of headphones, and dropping that first needle on the vinyl, I've done hundreds and hundreds of events. Some of them have been very spectacular and others have been simple backyard affairs. I've worked in tents and embassies, Grand 5 star hotels and on the back of boats. It's hard, after all those clients, all those guests and all that music to zero in on one event as being my most important. If you've read along with me for a while, you'll know of my young lady with juvenile arthritis. You would have caught a glimpse of the Bride with a terminally ill mother, and you will know of my love for the Make-A-Wish foundation and the very brave children they help. But what is the most important function I've been involved with? Can I as a service provider even make that distinction? Each function I do is very important, to the Guests of honor, their family and friends, to their supporters, but what about to me. I get emotionally invested in every event I do, particularly weddings, where I spend far more time with the Bride and Groom building a relationship and learning about their goals and aspirations for the event, than I do with other clients.

What is my most important wedding?

Right now some are thinking to themselves, "I bet he gets mushy and says his own" it should have been, but it wasn't, and I'm going to digress here a little. Gentlemen, you must do everything you can for your family, but not at the cost if it.

Back on track. There is a young couple I'm helping at the moment, much like most young couples these days. She's a stay at home mum, who has just had their third child, considering part time work soon to help make ends meet. He's a bit of a jack of all trades, working hard to pay the bills and provide for his lady and their three little ones. Their wedding is coming up and I have the honor of being part of it. They're paying for most of it themselves, their parents are unable to help out financially, so these guys got a bank loan to replace their old bomb and pay for much of the wedding, still they are cutting back on the things they don't need. Tweaking guest lists and menus, arranging seating plans and learning their vows. We have spoken at length about their vision of their day and they have changed the theme once already to make some family members more comfortable. They have a very eclectic taste in music and some fantastic ideas for the first dance, and some fun moments through the night. Thankfully they are all healthy and there are no ailing relatives that make this a wedding with a compassionate time line, so what is it about this wedding.

Why is it my most important wedding?

The bride is my eldest daughter, my first born and the first one to wed. So proud to be asked to be part of her day.

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It's been a great week.

Despite the wedding season still being a few weeks away, this week has been really eventful and wedding focused. I've had four meetings with couples, three of those have been with future brides and grooms who have been looking for their wedding entertainment and the fourth meeting was with existing clients to do some more work on their planning, memorable moments and music selection. And on tomorrow night, for another couple, it all comes together at their wedding. Really looking forward to getting out from behind the desk and getting back behind the decks.

Yesterday's meeting was the cherry on the pie when it comes to those meetings though. I've know and worked with the Groom to be, for around two years, so building a rapport with him was never going to be an issue. But the Bride to be was an unknown, we had never meet before, and worst still shes in the wedding industry too. So I half expected her to be a little distant and maybe even a bit skeptical. Still if I let a little trepidation get in the way, I'd never get anything done.

I needn't have worried, we hit it off. Together these guys were so easy to work with, giving me a vision of their day in broad strokes, thoughtfully answering my questions, and allowing me to place highlights and splashes of color where I thought they would enhance the painting that will be their day.

We started off by first establishing the type of Wedding reception they want, with a little visualization. I asked both of them to give me a few key words that come to mind when they think of their reception as being a success. Those key words become our focus and reference point for the rest of the discussion and also our future planning meetings. They help us to decide almost every aspect of the reception that I will be involved in, and also help them keep on track with many other parts of the night as well.

I try to get a real feeling for what they want to achieve of the night, and they get to decide if I'm the guy they want to trust the night to. That's what the first meeting is all about, at least it is for me. I'm not one for closing the sale or asking for their commitment to use my services on our first date. It's about building a connection with my couples, and getting to know them well enough to decide if they want to work with me, and me with them. I will work for couples on occasion, but spectacular things can really happen when I get to work with them instead.

Oh yes, the cherry on top couple, they don't get married until the middle of 2014, so I expect they maybe the subject of a few more posts here as that painting of theirs takes on more definition, highlights and depth. Stay tuned.

You can follow me on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Party.Sounds.Professional.DJs

or you can pop over to my website: http://www.partysounds.com.au/ 

and bounce to any of my social media sites from there. 

The things we do?

F824DKTZED3R

The right to wed?

As I've mentioned before, I get to see some beautiful things from back here, behind my DJ's desk. In the last few years, I've been lucky enough to attend well over 300 weddings. Some have been simple, sweet functions with a rejection of pomp and circumstance. And at others I've been involved in helping couples create awe inspiring masterpieces of romantic statement, which rivalled the grandness and magnitude of the very love the newlyweds felt. Then some have been heart warming unions of not just a Bride and her Groom, but of their families and close friends as well.

I have watched couples with hardly a base income exchange their vows, and I have helped the son of a socialite calm his nerves as he prepared to dance with his Wife for the first time. Some couples are cast from the same mould and others look as mismatched as Anna Nicole Smith & J Howard Marshall. I was there at the very, "her side - his side" wedding of a beautiful Indian bride, daughter to a family of wealth and position, as she stood beside her oil rig working "Aussie Bloke" husband and told her family to Get Over It.

I have been in tears at the hastily arranged reception of a British couple, as it was held here in Perth, so that the brides ailing mother could see her daughter wed. I've been the Master of Ceremonies at a wedding attended by 11 people and another attended by over 400. I have watched as slim brides’ married large grooms, and vice versa. I have had many multi cultural couples call on my services, Japanese tea ceremonies and Slavic drum dances float around in my memories. Heck I've even DJ'd and MC'd the wedding of a profoundly deaf couple where the only people in the room that were not hearing impaired where a handful of guests, my signing interpreter and myself.

I have had the privilege of being part medieval themed weddings and ultra chic ones. It has been so far a grand and strange rainbow of people celebrating one of our most basic of human needs. The only common thread that weaves its way through them all is the love of one person for another.

But you know that right now, as things stand in this beautiful wide brown land, I cannot watch a couple who love one another wed, if they are both of the same gender, and that, to me seems terribly wrong.

That might rub a few people up the wrong way. GOOD. We all need that from time to time, otherwise we get complacent.

You can follow me on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Party.Sounds.Professional.DJs

or you can pop over to my website: http://www.partysounds.com.au/ 

and bounce to any of my social media sites from there. 

The new car analogy.

A young man walks onto a car yard in the top end of town and is soon approached by an impeccably dressed salesperson.

I'd like to buy a car, he says. The salesperson leads him into the showroom and straight up to a gleaming black 2 door sports sedan. The young mans face broadens to a wry smile, "just to get to and from work", he continues. Ahh comes the salesperson's response, as she leads our young shopper back out to the yard and over to a shiny small blue compact. The young man's smile widens, "It's 600 kilometers each way" he says, pausing just a little between each word. "I see" replies the salesperson undaunted, and beckons the smiling youth to follow her.

Several rows over and a few cars back, sits this years, stock standard 6 cylinder 4 door, in white. The rep makes a bee line to it. What do you think, she asks, "Closer, but I need something that can carry my tool chest." is the mans answer. "Right, right, I've got just the thing, this way then" comes the acknowledgement, as she heads off deeper into the lot, stopping now and then to ensure that the buyer is still with her. Finally she halts beside a late model, low slung, ever so slightly modified Ute.

"Well that will fit all my tools, but it will never get out to the site, what have you got in a 4 wheel drive?" Its the sales rep's turn to smile, at last, she has some direction from the guy. "petrol or diesel?" she fires back at him easily, flashing the pearly whites as she does so. "Diesel, definitely has to be diesel", he answers. "Ok, we have a one tonner over here that might be perfect" she says to him as she heads off once again. "Its not a problem I only have a grand to spend and I've been knocked back twice for credit, is it?" she hears him ask after her, and she thinks, this, this is going to be one, long, day.

Ok so the story is obviously quite contrived and salespeople would bounce a few questions off a prospective customer before giving them any options. But getting some detail before you try for a sale is not what this particular ramble is about. Its apparent that not every car was right for this fellow, and with his last question, its clear that not every customer is right for this car dealer.

News flash. Not every DJ is right for every client or function, and not every client or function, is right for every DJ.

You can follow me on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Party.Sounds.Professional.DJs

or you can pop over to my website: http://www.partysounds.com.au/ and bounce to any of my social media sites from there.