Halloween Party

It's that day of the year when we can all dress up and be the horrific monster we hold inside.  Or for those of you more lighthearted we can be the cartoon character that we always wanted to be.  It's time for a Halloween Party!

I remember when I was a kid going to Sumiton Elementary School in Sumiton, Alabama we used to have a Fall Festival right before Halloween (we also had Christmas Parties and a really cool May Day).  I remember the Fall Festival as one of my fondest memories. 

I got to dress up and bring my little sister Tracy as well as my Mom & Dad (hey you had to have money) and go hang out in the gym at school.  We would walk around to the different little booths that they had set up and play the Halloween games that the PTA had wisely devised for us to spend our nickels & dimes on. 

I remember the bobbing for apples game and the fishing game as well as the one I dreaded as a short guy; the basketball toss.  But most of all I remember the student haunted house that was always set up in the boys locker room.  I can still hear the echos of the scary music, seeing the low lying fog from the dry ice, the headless dude, the vampire in a coffin, a  knife wielding Jason, Michael Myers, as well as the loud chainsaw dude in the shower stalls. Halfway through I went from amused to scared out of my wits. If you make it through there without being scared out of your wits you were lucky or demented.  I also remember the best part, DOING IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Now you know as a DJ I have to mention the Party aspect.  The coolest thing about the whole festival was getting to go into a Disco for the first time. Set in a hallway on the other end of the school.  Authentic mirror ball, black out light, and strobe lights.  The DJ was a high school kid stuck on Prince, Michael Jackson, and Lionel Ritchie.  I loved it because of course I got to dance with some of the hottest chicks in school that night.

I didn't know how to dance at first but I learned how to break dance and do the robot as well as the worm.  I loved the strobe because you didn't even have to know how to dance, just move and it made you look really weird.  We all glowed in the dark to the wonderful black lights as I danced with a tall girl that held me really tight throughout the entire ballad of "Truly".  She is the one that taught me how to hold a woman respectfully during a slow dance, watch the hands. LOL! 

As a parent I know my kids remember all  the parties they attended as they were growing up.  The best advice I can give you, is take part in their Fall Festival, their Halloween parties, and their school dances and they will never forget you. 

Make sure they have a great Panama City style DJ with a lot of heart. Hey, I know a great DJ for your next Halloween party. We wish you a really Scary Halloween.  Later, DJ PorkChop of www.DJPorkChop.com.

Newlywed Game

The Newlywed Game actually does not stem from the 70's television show as we often lead people to believe.  Probably because we play the theme song for it prior to starting this crazy little battle of who knows the other one better.  It actually stems from an ancient Chinese wedding ritual.  I will get into Chinese wedding games later on but for now just take my advice; some are really raunchy.  The Newlywed Game is one of the cleanest and funniest of all the Chinese wedding games.

Now as for appropriateness of this little show and tell about each other, that is entirely up to you.  The game works like this: The DJ ask the bride and groom to the dance floor, ask them to remove their shoes, and take one of the brides shoes and one of the grooms shoes in their hands.  Each has two shoes, one groom shoe and one bride shoe.  They are asked to raise their shoes in the air in response to a series of questions about how well they really know each other.

Phillip & Lindsay Money answer questions by raising the grooms shoe in the air during the Newlywed Game. Must have been the question about washing dishes.  LOL!

The fun begins when the DJ ask a question and both raise their own shoe in the air.  You have to be there and see it but we sometimes find out that they don't always agree on things like the First Kiss, Children, Driving, and household duties.  This is sometime hilarious and even funnier when the bride whacks him in the head with a shoe. Not advisable unless you are wearing flip flops, plus you don't want your groom going to the honeymoon with a headache.

This has been a real fun favorite at the majority of weddings I have performed.  It also adds spice to the toast, by the way I advise you to break the monotony of the dinner and do this right before the toast.  It will give them something to talk about and everyone will be relaxed and in a really good mood after this.

Try the Newlywed game, you won't regret it, and make sure you get it on video too.

Off to do a wedding in Destin Florida.  Look for my daily blog tomorrow.  Check us out at www.DJPorkChop.com.
DJ PorkChop

Why a Professional?

Why do you hire a photographer, a caterer, a wedding planner, or a disc jockey?  Why do we pay others to do things for us during our wedding or event?

Very Happy Newlyweds Mr. & Mrs. DL & Erin Lambert Hired Professionals for their Wedding Day.

I can only speak from my heart when I say that I hire people to fix my car because I don't want to do it myself and I deserve to have a car in good working order because I work hard for a living. Now with that said, when a person hires a professional to do a job they are hiring them for more than one reason but it boils down to one thing "Peace of Mind!"

A MOB or Mother of Bride once said to me "Thank God we had you do all that announcing and stuff, we would have never thought of all that."  Another MOB made this statement "I ain't never seen a Wedding as good as this before. I wish I had used a DJ at my reception."  Now I know this is bragging just a little but in those statements the Mom's make sense.

When you plan for the event or the wedding or party in Panama City Beach or along the Gulf Coast you are most likely either from here or not from here.  Some of your guest are from here or not from here, either way someone is visiting here as a tourist during your event.  Please take into consideration that some have never seen a wedding done the way we consider traditional now along the Panhandle now.  We are used to having entertainment at every event we attend.  Some people, believe it or not, have only seen a wedding unscripted and without a lot of hype. 

A typical wedding here consist of a ceremony, usually on the beach, then a reception to follow.  The reception is sometimes held either in a tent, on a back deck, or inside an air conditioned room and most of the time is close to the sunset for pictures.  The professional service providers aka DJ, Caterer, Photographer, Cake Designers, and Planners have all come together to put in play all the elements of the reception.  With that said, who will implement the plan?  Most likely a master of ceremonies also known as the Professional Disc Jockey. 

Now why hire a Professional DJ or any type of professional for your event.
Let me quote Clarence Carter (if you don't know who he is look it up)
"Let me ask you this, What time of day do you like to make love?"

Now that is a very important question, because without a Professional Master of Ceremonies you better delay that time because you have no one to make the announcements of the Bridal Party, the First Dance, the Cake Cutting, the Father Daughter Dance, the Mother Son Dance, the Bouquet Toss, The Garter Toss, Wedding Games, Party Games, The Last Dance, Prize giveaways, etc, etc, etc......

How do you prepare and serve food to everyone?  Professional Caterer

How do you take pictures and photoshop them to make me look good? Professional Photographer

Who is going to get help me plan, design, and dress everyone for the ceremony? Professional Planner

Who is going to play the music, get all the reception events in order, call everyone's name, get my crowd motivated and entertained and keep everyone from leaving after the cake cutting? A Professional DJ

You may want to get some "Peace of Mind" and find yourself a Professional.   You don't want to be late for the honeymoon.

For a Great Professional Disc Jockey look no further than www.DJPorkChop.com.   Looking forward to celebrating your event with you.

Where to Place the DJ?

Hearing and seeing!  I was once told about a psychological experiment where a person was driving a virtual car and listening to the usual noise inside the vehicle (radio, cell phone, etc.) then a siren would blast and the person would jerk the car toward the noise.  The same type of experiment was done visually where the person was driving and a distraction was placed on the side of the road at different intervals.  Every time a distraction was on the left and the person saw it, within milliseconds the person jerked the vehicle in the direction of the distraction.

Why am I telling you all of this?  With experience comes knowledge and we all know that knowledge is power.  I don't want to harp on how important the music is to the party or reception right now so I will just say that gone are the day when the DJ remains out of sight or seen and not heard.

The DJ today now has improved not only the sound of the system with all digital mixes and reduced skipping and stopping of CD's, tapes, and vinyl with the MP3.  The DJ today has also added visual to the show.

Let me get to the point, stop worrying about all the wires hanging out and making your pictures look bad.  Put the DJ in front of the dance floor to attract the crowd to the noise.

DJ Ting of DJPorkChop.com demonstrates proper placement of the DJ Equipment in front of the dance floor.

If your guest see a blank dance floor with music coming from the corner of the room guess what? They will gravitate toward the sound and the visual of the DJ in the corner and not the dance floor.  Place your dance floor in the center of all activity and make it small.  The smaller the dance floor the larger the crowd will look.  A good rule of thumb 1 ft per person, meaning a crowd of 100 will need a 10' x 10' dance floor.

If the DJ is in front of the dance floor, the DJ will exercise control over the entire event as you hired them to do.  You control the DJ, the DJ controls the crowd for you.  You hired them so you and your guest can dance to your selected tunes so put them in the center and get your moneys worth.    

If you use DJPorkChop.com, we use DJ Skirting and we have a Professional White DJ Facade that has LED lighting in Sync with the music.  If you have hired another DJ, make sure they have a Facade to cover all the wires.  If not, then it is simple, go spend about $10 for a couple of yards of fabric and have the DJ cover up the wires or use the venues table cloths and ask them to place a screen in front of the DJ.  Either way, have your DJ hide wires so they don't get into the pictures.

Hiding wires is not the most important point, the most important point would be to make sure that the DJ is where the crowd will be.  You hired the DJ to do a job and that job entails using DJ expertise to get people to dance.

Don't handicap your DJ by placing them in locations I can testify to: like underneath a house when everyone is upstairs, all the way in the corner, in the middle of a room full of tables and not dance area, outside on a pool deck with no one around.

I am not saying you need a dance floor in all circumstances, just an area with a DJ in front of it specifically set aside for dancing. In all of these situations, we have still performed. However, the event will have a better flow and the dance floor will have stayed busy if the DJ and dance floor are interconnected.

I will testify to this, the best parties we have had where we have kept the crowd dancing all night have been where we were in front of a 10' x 10' dance floor in the center of the room with a crowd of about 120.  The dance floor looked packed and stayed packed all night long.  For examples just look at our website at www.djporkchop.com or check out our You Tube videos at www.youtube.com/djporkchop68.

By the way, if you need a dance floor, we have connections on our links page.

Looking forward to celebrating with you.  DJ PorkChop

Chill & $ave Parties & Weddings

Getting cooler outside! It's never too late to do a wedding on Panama City Beach.  Right now it is late October and we still have over half a dozen weddings planned for the next 2 months of the year along with a few holiday parties mixed in between. We are also starting to book beach weddings for January and February.

Why would someone want to do their wedding ceremony on the beach in cold weather?  To save money!

The point of this, my first blog entry, is to let you in on a little secret: the best time to save money on
your beach wedding is during the winter months.  Most of the tourist business slacks off around the holidays and we in the wedding & event business need you more than you need us. Thus, allowing you great discounts which echo through from the officiate, planner, photographer, caterer, cake, DJ, and venue.  Not to mention the great discounts on room rates right now.  

 First Dance during an October Wedding Reception in Panama City Beach: Mr. & Mrs. Benjamin & Megan Merckle

 

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 I see a lot of client's in October and November and when I asked them why they did their event in the winter they say "to save money" or "no crowds". Regardless of what ever reason the proof is in our bookings.  We have booked more this October than any October we have been in business over the past 10 years.  Why? I can only attribute that to two things - oil spill has subsided and couples are catching on and cashing in.

So, I must recommend that if you want to save money on your next event or wedding in Panama City Beach and the Florida Panhandle area, now is the time to book your event and save.   Chill out with us this winter and $ave big: ask for our winter discount and save at www.DJPorkChop.com