No, We’re not talking about the Tabacco Info & Prevention program or Treasury Inflation Protection Services.
I mean Tips; gratuities given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for above average services.
Let me give you an example, from a guy who lives on tips.
I go to a restaurant.
Place my order, eat my food, pay my bill and go home.
I paid a price for that food, built within which is the salary and cost of the food and those who prepared and served it.
Along with that charge are a certain level of basic expectaions of service and quality.
If I come in, the server takes my order, is polite, the food is good and my needs are met then everything went as it should, as expected.
Should I be expected to leave a tip?
Nope.
But if everything went better than expected, if my needs were anticipated and service was extra ordinary, by all means - you’re getting a tip baby!
The exact same goes for us DJs.
We should not expect a tip.
We should not demand a tip and we don’t treat you any less or think of you any differently if you don’t tip.
Tips are never assumed or expected but always appreciated and loved.
DJs do not go out of their way to make your day special just for that tip.
We go out of our way because that’s what you pay us to do.
At least the good DJs do!
That all said…
Make certain to reward the good DJs - reward that good behaviour, that bending over backwards to make sure your event went perfectly.
Reward the DJ who goes above and beyond your expectations.
You are reinforcing that behaviour and encouraging him to do even better for the next Bride.
There is no set amount or figure for tipping DJs as in the wait staff industry.
I will say that my tips have ranged from $5 to $500 and average around $150 a gig.
Does that mean I expect it?
Nope, in fact sometimes I know I could have done much better and even when the Bride or her Father disagree and try to tip me, I’ve politely refused without explaination.
I honestly believe that I’ve turned more down than I’ve accepted.
Please don’t hire me under the impression that I’ll turn down your tips though!
LOL
And don’t feel obligated to give us all your money.
We can tell when $20 is to you what $200 is to the next Bride.
Some families can’t afford to tip, others have money falling out of their pockets.
I’ve had Brides so embarassingly gracious (I’m easily embarassed - hey! I’m humble dangit) for my contribution to their Wedding Day that I’ve caught them digging into their Money Dance or Wedding Gift Envelopes to scrounge up tips.
Please don’t?
I know a sincere thank you and I appreciate that much more.
Don’t get me wrong, I need to make ends meet too but my boss pays me well and I am smart enough not to budget my bills to rely on tips.
Not all DJs are like me and not all DJs should be like me.
Whether you use me, please reward that outstanding service, reward the DJ who provides you with extra ordinary service and went above and beyond.
He’ll thank you and the Bride after you will thank you.
If you tip, tip from the heart and while 15 - 25% is loved, it is NOT expected nor anticipated.
Again, you’re only tipping for extra ordinary services.
You’re only tipping because you want to reward your DJ for his services.
Never tip out of obligation.
If you’re not sure whether to tip, don’t.
If you’re not sure then the service provided wasn’t extra ordinary enough to cause you to be sure.
Have your Groom give a bunch of money to the Best Man.
Or have your Father hang onto it.
At the end of the night, tell them whether you feel they should tip the DJ, or let them be the deciders.
And give them an idea what percentage between none and all of the funds.
Bottom line:
The day is about you.
You’ve prepaid all your balances so you don’t have to worry about anything on your Wedding Day.
You don’t need to be thinking about this on that day unless after all is said and done, you overwhelmingly feel you should.
Then and only then would I recommend you tip not only your DJ but the other vendors as well.
Of course one of the first priorities of the Liberal leaders now that they own the Office, the House and the Senate:
KILL MORE AMERICANS!
And use your tax dollars to pay for it.
Barack Hussein Obama and his side kick Nancy Pelosi are not only raising the amount of American tax dollars spent on abortions in this Nation but they are also removing laws that prevented providing money to other Countries to pay for abortions within their borders.
But that’s not enough for them.
Their hatred of life and of this Country in general is so great that they’ve decided to remove the prohibitions against Embryonic Stem Cell research.
In the face of overwhelming evidence and scientific proof that adult stem cells are more viable and profitable, they still want to use embryonic stem cells.
They not only feel that the laws should allow this but they want you and I, Americans who disagree to pay for this.
It goes without saying, whether I remind all of you, that we need to pray for our leaders.
They obviously need the prayer, the salvation and the wisdom to better lead this Nation.
In the meantime, we need to contact our Representatives and tell them that we don’t support this and that their actions and decisions clearly do not represent us as they were elected to do.
And please, don’t forget God.
While we Rejoice in Him, in all things do we rejoice - we also need to be watchmen and to call to the attention of our brothers and sisters, saved and not, the abominations that embarass, hurt us and that illustrate the hate that the world has for God so that we can repent of it.
Again, REJOICE in The LORD and pray for all of our leaders.
No, the State is not coming to its senses and becoming patriotic, it’s still a liberally blue State.
But we are going down the tubes financially.
Gov. Ritter came into power and his liberal representative crew have added so many social and pork projects that the State can no longer afford to opperate.
They even voted away parts of our TABOR (Tax Payer’s Bill of Rights) which has allowed them to operate outside of the taxpayer’s control.
Colorado is close to $700,000,000.00 short of our budget and coincidentally the liberals have added close to $700,000,000.00 worth of social and liberal programs.
Then these socialists get in front of the media and whine that they’ll have to trim back these programs and benefits in order to make ends meet.
They make it sound like it’s the taxpayer’s fault.
For some reason these folks don’t see the correlation between their increased spending and the increased budget shortfalls.
The only reason we’re not in Mass/Calif type debt is because of what’s left of the TABOR.
It has stopped them short of bankrupting our State.
Massachusetts adopted the universal healthcare program and mandated that every person have healthcare.
They have since gone billions in the hole and have made no attempt to correct the obvious issue.
California, Barack Hussein Obama’s dream State, is literally in a state of bankruptcy.
If a State could go bankrupt, they would.
California has so many socialist programs, taxes its denizens so sharply to partially pay for these programs and suffers mass exoduses because of this that they can no longer afford to pay their bills.
Colorado:
Rather than reverse all the socialist spending and bring our bidget back under control, the liberal leaders have asked civil servants (fire fighters, teachers, police and City/State workers) to take unpaid weeks off.
Let me ask you, if you were a socialist/liberal who agreed with all this spending, all these welfare, medical, educational, social, etc programs that have caused the State to bleed money out its backside…
If you agreed with all this but to pay for it, your employer asked you to take unpaid time off, asked YOU to directly give your money, asked you to take your rent/mortgage, your food and medicine, your kids education and your car payment and give it to the family next door so pay for all these programs…
Wouldn’t that eventually soak into your brain that in order to pay the rent of the welfare family next door, offer them medical you don’t have, give their kids a college education you can’t afford, pay for the heat and food that you can buy this week because you gave up your pay…
Aren’t you finally getting a small slap of reality?
In order for these liberals to give you everything for which you’re asking, they’re going to take everything you have.
Literally.
State and city workers on the news tonight are saying that money is so tight that many will not be able to make their car, rent, medical, food, etc payments and that may cause some to loose their homes and cars.
Our socialist leaders don’t care.
They feel that you should give up of what you’ve earned, everything you’ve earned so that somebody else who didn’t earn anything may have yours.
As Barack Hussein Obama says, “Spread the wealth!”
Colorado is going into the Red, deep and rather than fix the problem, Ritter and his croonies are asking people to dig deep and give up their pay to support his social programs.
The liberal State Lawmakers are even considering (trying to) passing laws/Bills that will cause us to pay a 6 cent charge for plastic bags.
Per bag, please don’t double back, that’s 12 cents!
Contact your Representatives and tell them to face reality, to cut the social programs, to kill the liberal legislation and spend their time and your money on actual issues and needs.
Click a link and call a number below:
Somebody noticed that I usually choose to add my blogs to both my “Politically Inclined” & “Christianity” categories.
He said (far from the first to tell me this either!) that the two shouldn’t be mixed.
I’m not touching the “seperation of Church & State” myth.
Lately I’ve been blogging about our newest President, Baracj Hussein Obama.
He offends Americans both Politically AND Spiritually.
Take abortion:
He’s repealling laws that prohibit us from sending money to foreign countries who’ll use that money for abortions.
He’s increasing tax dollars spent on abortions in our own Country.
He wants to allow underage children to have abortions without a waiting period and without parental notifications.
Abortion is genocide, by definition and Barack Hussein Obama not only supports that but promotes and fights for it.
And that’s just one issue of MANY.
So yes, our newest President offends us as both Americans AND a Christians so when I blog about him, I’m usually double categorizing those blogs.
Black, white, purple, yellow - what does his skin colour matter?
What’s important are his policies.
He is already adding record debt, record gov’t increase, record tax increases and he’s vowed to increase public funding of abortions, of American genocide.
He’s already given his support to anti-Israeli leaders and groups.
He’s clearly illustrated many many reasons not to make a big deal, not to be excited and to dread the next four years.
All this and he’s still only the “President-Elect” for the next two hours.
Imagine how much worse it’s going to get…
God help us.
Pray for our leaders, for those who pretend to lead us and pretend to represent us.
Pray for these men that they repent of their ways and come to love God and this Country.
Pray for these men that they do no more harm then they already have.
Pray for these leaders and representatives in general.
Just Pray!
And so it begins….
Barack Hussein Obama takes Office today as the 44th President of The United States of America.
He’s promised to add, on his first day, more than $1.2 trillion dollars in debt and increase the gov’t by more than 9 million jobs.
That’s the single largest increase in both categories in the history of this Nation, during any Presidency.
And that’s just his first day.
We’re in for a lotta change alright…
All for the worse and it’s all downhill from here!
My condolences to my fellow Americans, the 77% who didn’t vote for BOH and even for those who did.
You had no idea, most of you.
They say there are no atheists in fox holes.
It’s time to find God and join the rest of us in prayer.
We need it now more than ever.
I got an email from a former Bride last night.
Hello Ma’am and thank you for reading and for the emails.
Congratulations by the way, y’all are coming up on three years this summer.
REJOICE!!!
So in her letter she was concerned for me that I talk about my Faith and about Weddings - to future and past Brides - all in the same blog.
She was afraid I may be turning off some Brides.
Does it really matter what my Faith or political beliefs are to a Bride?
NO!
Does she care?
NO!
If it does and she decides not to hire me simply because of my Faith and political beliefs…
Does it matter to me?
Nope!
I’m going to do the same job, give the same effort and my goals are the same for EVERY SINGLE BRIDE:
The Best I Can!
Can I be a Christian and a DJ and blog about it at the same time?
Why not?
As we round the corner of the New Year, more Brides are planning their weddings then are actually celebrating them.
For us DJs this is a chance to recuperate and prepare for the next season.
At my Wedding last night, one of the new guys who had the rare night off decided to come out with me.
I call him new but “newer” is probably more accurate.
He’s been with us for three years and has done more than 200 events.
During his internship and training, he shadowed me a couple of times and has since become one of our better DJs.
Since he had the night off he’d decided that he wanted to take the opportunity to come out with one of the other DJs (me) and see if there were any new tricks, tips or lessons he could learn and apply to his already outstanding performance.
knowing that I’m far from as good as I can be as a DJ, it also gives me a chance to explain out loud what I do - which causes me to either hear how silly something sounds and stop it or realize I can do something better.
It also gives me a fresh set of eyes of another professional who can point out what I’m doing well and what I need to curtail, what I can improve and what I shouldn’t.
It’s good “training” for both of us.
That’s the benefits of a larger, professional and long term company like the one for which I work.
We’ve been around for a very long time.
We train and retrain and the bad seeds get weeded out and left behind.
If you hire a smaller company you risk using a poor DJ who hangs on because there are no better DJs to illustrate his lesser abilities.
He’ll only show you his good reviews and you’ll have no clue he blows chunks until he does your Wedding.
We work at a ton of venues and our vendors do not hesitate to point out our bad DJs/trainees.
That’s good for us because that helps us weed out the bad apples and it’s good for the venues because that keeps them loaded up with only our best professionals and it keeps everybody’s Brides happy.
Overall, the bigger and older a company is, the more training they have and the more DJs they have, those who’ve been around longer to train the younger guys and vice versa, the better the company is.
The better the company the more likely it will be that you, the Bride will have a more successful event.
So last night I DJd a Wedding and little did the Bride know (or really care, right?) that she had two of the better DJs in the Rocky Mountain Region to take care of her.
Both training each other and both making sure that in the process, the Bride benefits from our training.
And that DJ and I are only two of many many DJs who’ve been with the company for years and who love Weddings.
Rejoice in the Lord future and past Brides.
May you and your “husbands” walk all your days with the Lord and may He make you fruitful and multiply.
I recently read an article in which the author had this to say,
“I am a Christian who wants to believe we can live peacefully with islam. Perhaps I’m just naive, but one thing is clear to me. Things I learn about islam in the United States fill me with fear and anger. Things I learn about islam in muslim countries fill me with hope.”
As I read that I thought to myself, “That’s because in the civilized West (United States) we don’t suppress the truth.”
I’ve actually only done one repeat wedding so I don’t have much experience there.
Not being superstitious (I’m a Christian) I can’t say that using the same DJ for both of your receptions is a bad idea.
I may recommend you do EVERYTHING differently the second time around but then again, if the DJ rocked your friends and family the first time, why not have him back?
I mean, he already knows what y’all like and you know you like him, right?
LOL
Yes, I just typed a “LOL” into my blog post but I really did laugh out loud.
Referrals I know something about.
Having been around for as long as I have (In April I begin my 10th year!) I’ve done more than my fair share of referrals.
I fact, this weekend I did the brother of a Bride I did back in 2005.
My owner jokes with me that I don’t do any new gigs these days, only referrals.
On the one hand that’s a dream for an owner, that one of his DJs is simply doing referral after referral weddings.
Oh wait, I need to explain what that is, sorry.
Let’s take what I just told you about me doing the brother of a Bride from 2005 this weekend.
In 2005 I do a wedding.
A few years later, the brother of that Bride decides he wants to get married and he remembers the great time they had at his sister’s wedding.
The brother’s fiancee just happened to be there and agrees so the whole family decides to have me back.
Another case:
The Maid of Honour at a wedding decides to get married and wants me to do her wedding as well.
Even better, I’m at a Corporate Party (Christmas, etc) and an employee comes to me telling me her daughter is getting married in the summer and she’d like me, or some such.
And so my life goes over the years.
I do referrals and referrals and referrals.
Keep in mind that every single wedding is unique.
The music and my “DJ Style” for Jane Bride’s wedding may not resemble what’s played or how I act at your wedding one iota!
Some Brides run a tight reign on the music and on what I say and do at their weddings.
Other Brides just turn me loose.
Some Brides want Country & Western all night and others want Sinatra and the classics.
Some weddings have coordinators and I’m left to stand in my corner and press play when I’m told to.
Other Brides hire me specifically because I double as a coordinator and I can save them a bundle on day of costs, etc.
Let me add here that I can never replace some of the great coordinators but at your event I can run your show for you like a Swiss Clock.
Anywho…
I was saying that no two weddings are alike, even when the families and guests are near identical.
I may play some of the same traditional songs and both families may have the same requests but every Bride has unique requests, needs and desires.
But referrals are great for many reasons:
Somebody has already used me and knows what/who they’re getting.
They know my style and my personality.
Many times I’ve already met you and that takes the mystery out of your entertainment portion of the night.
Another HUGE bonus is that I’ve been around long enough that you know I’m not going anywhere.
My Bride & Groom this weekend first met me almost four years ago and they were able to look me up and request me again.
Many DJs and companies are fly by night, you rarely get to meet the DJ of your event until that day and if you’ve booked him far enough in advance, he may not be around for your wedding.
Some of these characters move between companies, try to start their own or have to flee town so often that it’s embarassing to be associated with them.
I’ve been working for one company, the same company that has been in business since 1985, I’ve been there since 2000.
I average 65 events a year and most of them are weddings.
I’m not going anywhere.
In fact, my first “missed” Wedding was this year (2008).
I broke my tailbone and wasn’t able to get to the event otherwise I would have tried!
So I can say I have a pretty good record of being around, sticking around and showing up.
I’m a good referral.
I wonder if it would be appropriate to follow up with my Brides and congratulate y’all at your one, five and ten (and so on) year anniversaries?
I’d love to know that my Brides are staying married and not needing me again for their own weddings.
As much as I’d love the repeat business, dangit don’t do it Ladies!
ha ha ha
