2 Important Things a Great DJ Excels in Doing

There is more to DJing than just mixing songs or making playlists. It takes more than that to lead your guests through the entire evening smoothly and entertain audiences at weddings and parties. One good quality of a good DJ is not only do they have a wide database of music to choose from but they know which excellent songs to use when detecting the temperament and mood of guests at an event.

A professional DJ is adept at knowing the right place, moment, and mood to play particular songs. The best DJ is one who is creative enough to know his or her audience and the environment they are DJing. So, to be able to find great DJs from the amateurs, we have listed some tips below so you’ll be sure before you secure the services of a DJ for your wedding.

 

 

  • Reading the Room

A DJ who knows what they are doing, they can read the room and can play songs that induce particular emotions in the guests. A professional DJ will have years of experience with this, so it’s something he or she can easily do.

 

  • The Perfect Time to Play the Perfect Songs

A good DJ knows the right time to play certain types of music. The DJ has control and he must make sure he or she exceeds the audience’s expectations. The DJ must know how to read the time and moment to entertain each and everyone at the wedding venue. Exceptional DJs are those that know exactly what to play and when to play it.

 

If your Chicago wedding is right around the corner and you need a DJ who has perfected the points in this article, Paul Michaels Events would love to talk to you.

We promise to make your wedding a truly fun and memorable celebration. We have the talent, skills, equipment, passion, and drive, and we’ll bring them all to your wedding ceremony and reception!

At Paul Michaels Events, we are committed to providing the right music and entertainment for your event and making sure everyone has a wonderful time

Simply click here to contact us or send us an email here: [email protected]

Casandra and Dan’s Wedding Reception at Chevy Chase Country Club in Wheeling

For our first wedding of 2019, DJ Ian and DJ Brian provided Wheeling wedding DJ and Uplighting services for Casandra and Dan at Chevy Chase Country Club.

Casandra and Dan were such a fun couple to work with throughout the planning process, where Paul got to know exactly what they wanted (and of course, what they didn’t want) for their wedding in order to make their dream day.

We also worked with Niki of Clover Events to make sure that everyone was walking in lock step to deliver for this awesome couple.

As evidenced in Casandra’s review online, we definitely blew away their expectations and made their wedding day a blast and worry free for them!

As part of the wedding, we even used our dancing on the clouds add-on which was an incredible add-on for that extra special surprise to all of Casandra and Dan’s guests (sorry, we don’t have any pictures of it!) 

Check out the pictures below for a quick recap of their wedding!

Services by Paul Michaels Events: Wheeling Wedding Reception DJ, Wheeling Wedding Uplighting

Vendors we had the pleasure of working with:
Venue: Chevy Chase Country Club
Photography/Videography/Photobooth: Fred Fox Studios
Floral: Love&Flowers in Wheeling
Cake: Lovin Oven Cakery
Planning/Coordination: Clover Events
Decor: Satin Chair

 

Check out some of our candid pictures below and feel free to tag yourselves on social media by clicking here! The pictures below were taken by us, and not by the event photographer. 

Liz and Al’s Wedding at Hilton Chicago Oak Brook Hills Resort and Conference Center

What a fabulous way to start the wedding season for 2018! We just had a blast celebrating with Liz and Al for their beautiful wedding in Oak Brook. 

The couple held their ceremony at the hotel (in a different room) with a beautifully decorated room, with decor provided by Elegant Event Lighting. 

For this wedding, we provided full room up lighting (working in coordination with some uplights provided by the decor company), an animated name in lights monogram (see the video below to check out how awesome this looked), and our awesome dancing on the clouds effect as well (again, check out that video below) paired with a custom edit of the couple’s first dance song (where we removed a part of the song they didn’t want to hear). 

For anyone who hasn’t read out other event posts, something that sets us apart from other DJ companies is how we build a personal relationship with our clients and want to make sure we’ve done everything to make the event perfect for that client, as opposed to providing a cookie cutter service. 

Liz and Al’s Name in Lights Projection:

Video of Liz and Al’s First Dance: 

Check out the pictures below for a quick recap of the night!

Services by Paul Michaels Events: Wedding Reception DJ

Vendors we had the pleasure of working with:
Venue: Hilton Chicago/Oak Brook Hills Resort & Conference Center
Photography: Noelle Adams Photography
Florist: Little Shop on the Prairie
Quartet (Ceremony): Fretless Strings
Decor: Elegant Event Lighting

Check out some of our candid pictures below and feel free to tag yourselves on facebook by clicking here! The pictures below were taken by us, and not by the event photographer. 

Nikita and Bob’s Wedding

DJ Paul with Indian Wedding Couple at Bolingbrook Golf Club

The beginning of the 2017 wedding season is off to an incredible start! Just recently I provided Chicagoland wedding DJ and Ceremony services at Bolingbrook Golf Club for Nikita and Bob for their Hindu/American Mixed wedding!

This 400 person wedding involved quite the setup and planning on our part to ensure the day went off without a hitch. Myself and Assistant Jon worked all morning with an extremely large setup to make the wedding flow as smooth as possible. We had our main room setup which was first used for the ceremony. After the wedding ceremony concluded, all guests were moved to the hallway/foyer area where we had a cocktail hour system wireless piping music from the main DJ system to the hallway. During this time we did a ‘room flip’ to convert the room into the reception hall instead of ceremony hall.

We weren’t able to catch any pictures of it (but maybe I can get some from the photographer at a later date) but at this wedding we used the very cool dancing on the clouds effect. Nikita got to literally be on Cloud 9 for her first dance with her husband Bob. As you can see in the candid pictures below, we had a packed dance floor from beginning until the very last song. This is especially impressive due to the amount of guests we had at this wedding.

Nikita and Bob: It was truly an honor to work with you and have you be referred to me. I had a great time getting to know you both throughout our planning sessions and video chats! Hope you had a great time in Tokyo on your honeymoon!

Vendors we had the pleasure of working with:
Venue: Bolingbrook Golf Club
Decor/Floral: Yanni Design Studios
Photography: Timothy Whaley Photo
Cake: Milettes Cakes of Plainfield
Photobooth: Photobooth Time
Day-Of Coordinator: Camille Victoria Weddings

Check out some of our candid pictures below and feel free to tag yourselves on social media! The pictures below were taken by us, and not by the event photographer. Click here to see the facebook album which includes some of these pictures!

Alissa and Justin’s Brookfield Zoo Wedding

Happy Wedding Couple with Great Wedding DJ Entertainment Brookfield Zoo Lyons

I just completed another wedding at Brookfield Zoo assisted by DJ Terry for my friends Alissa and Justin who said “I do” at the Zoo!

The story of how I know the couple is actually one of the more interesting ones. I met Justin my freshmen year of high school (which now seems like it was ages ago) from a youth group we were both involved in, and I met Alissa in college at Bradley University. When I saw the two of them were dating, I felt like my worlds were colliding! This is the world of online dating, and I am fully supportive. 🙂

Their ceremony was one to remember since it was in the underwater observatory for the dolphins. They had the chuppah (Jewish wedding tradition) set up and right behind the couple there were literally dolphins swimming in the background! How amazing is that?

For cocktail hour, the couple and their guests moved to the primate house and got to see some very cool animals up close! After cocktail hour, everyone moved to the discovery center for the reception.

As a special effect, we used the “Dancing on the Clouds” effect during their first dance which was a surprise to nearly everyone (Justin only found out about it the day before the wedding). The effect looked amazing, but sadly we don’t have any pictures of this since both Terry and I were busy at the time. If I can find some pictures from guests or from the professional photographer, I’ll try to include them later.

Everyone danced all night and we had an absolutely packed dance floor until the very last minute (including when Justin’s shirt came off!)
Alissa and Justin – Thank you for letting me have the honor of not only being your DJ for your wedding, but also a friend through the years.

Vendors we had the pleasure of working with:
Venue: Brookfield Zoo – Brookfield, IL
Photography: Concept One Photography – Bloomingdale, IL
Florist: Shamrock Garden Florist – Riverside, IL

Check out some of our candid pictures below and feel free to tag yourselves on social media! The pictures below were taken by us, and not by the event photographer. Click here to see the facebook album which includes some of these pictures!

Krystina and Dan’s Wedding

Royalty West Banquet Willow Springs Wedding DJ with Couple

We just completed a Halloween themed/masquerade wedding this past weekend for Krystina and Dan for their wedding at the Royalty West Banquet Hall couldn’t have been more perfect for them. This venue actually has a little bit of that “castle” look to it, which was awesome during Halloween. To enhance the room’s ambiance a little bit more, we used uplights to be able to give the room a really warm purple glow. Again, tying in with the halloween theme, we used the “Dancing on the Clouds” effect for their first dance which looked totally amazing and shocked everyone in the room (check out the pictures below). Krystina and Danny were definitely dancing on “Cloud 9”.

This wedding was considered a room-flip wedding for us, meaning the ceremony and the reception were in the same physical space. During cocktail hour all the guests went toward the back of the room to the bar where we used the wireless satellite speakers add-on  to ensure everyone in the back of this very long room was able to hear not only the music, but also announcements.

This was again another wedding where we worked with a photographer from Jolie Images (in this case Dimitri) who, as always, did a great job.

Check out some of our candid pictures below and feel free to tag yourselves on social media! The pictures below were taken by us, and not by the event photographers. Click here to see the facebook album which includes some of these pictures!

Melissa and Joshua’s Wedding

Hilton Lisle Naperville Best Wedding DJ Blog Cover

Along with Assistant Joe’s help, I just completed Melissa and Joshua’s Naperville Wedding at the Hilton of Lisle/Naperville. Their ceremony was held at the DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church in Naperville. There were a few technical difficulties with the building (apparently the building had a power outage just hours before we got there), but we worked through it and got creative in order to make sure that the wedding was not phased by the issues and we pulled off a wonderful ceremony which was co-officiated by Reverend Denise Tracy and Melissa/Joshua’s friend, Brandon. The ceremony included items from both Melissa’s and Joshua’s background, including the San San Kudo ceremony (Japanese) and the glass smash (Jewish) traditions.

Back at the Hilton we were able to get the room looking wonderful before anyone arrived. For the reception, we had three rooms (combined) in an L shape which worked really well to make sure we had a large dance floor, a nice bar area, and a seating area. We used full room uplighting, as well as a monogram/name-in-lights add-on at this wedding as you can see in the pictures below. Melissa and Joshua worked with me to decide exactly what they wanted their name in lights to look like beforehand. During the venue site-walk before the wedding, I had a feeling that the room where all the tables for dinner were located would seem a little more empty/less exciting than the other two rooms, so I recommended the name-in-lights add-on, which turned out amazing!

We also (as can be seen in the pics) used the dancing on the clouds effect. This was a complete surprise to almost everybody except immediate family. The effect turned out great and everyone loved it!

We had Dave from Jolie Images (who I’ve worked with many times) as the photographer for the entire day. He took some really great shots of everything from group line dances to the horah as we had a packed dance floor from beginning to end!

Congratulations again to Melissa and Joshua! Thanks for having me be a part of your very special day!

Check out some of our candid pictures below and feel free to tag yourselves on social media! The pictures below were taken by us, and not by the event photographers. Click here to see the facebook album which includes some of these pictures!

Beth and Alex’s Arlington Heights Wedding at European Crystal Banquets

European Crystal Banquets Arlington Heights Wedding DJ with Happy Couple Blog Cover

Assistant Justin and I had a blast celebrating Beth and Alex’s wedding this past weekend at European Crystal Banquets in Arlington Heights, IL. Beth has been a personal friend of mine for years, and it’s always an honor to be able to provide DJ and Entertainment services for friends of mine and to make their special day as amazing as possible. I brought Assistant Justin to help out for this wedding. For this wedding we used the Dancing on the Clouds effect for Beth and Alex’s first dance. The “shock and awe” factor was truly awesome for their wedding since Beth and Alex took my advice and told very few people. In fact, they hadn’t even told their photographer or videographer ahead of time (I of course told them so they’d be prepared to shoot pictures with the effect). We worked with Noellia from Essense Photo and Video who was really easy to work with and did a great job capturing the day’s events.

Check out some of our candid photos below (taken by myself and Assistant Justin)

Heidi and Adam’s Wedding

Heidi and Adam dancing on the Clouds

I recently (May 2015) was able to be the Wedding DJ (with Assistant Amir helping me out) for Heidi and Adam, a really fun couple from the suburbs who’ve been together since 2010!

Heidi and Adam had their ceremony at the beautiful and well known Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, and then we had the reception at Room 1520 in the West Loop of Chicago where we kept a packed dance floor until the very last song!

Heidi and Adam’s friend Aaron played live music (acoustic guitar) for the cocktail hour which I thought was great (I always love it when friends can be involved in different parts of the wedding). We were really lucky to be working alongside such great vendors such as Eric Gee of Eric Gee Photography, as well as Helen from Blue Plate Chicago who handled most of the decor and catering.

This was the first wedding of the year to have the very cool “dancing on the clouds” effect as can be seen in the pictures below.  The entire room was shocked and blown away by this effect.  I love doing this because it’s such a unique thing to see at weddings these days, and if it’s kept a surprise from all guests (in this case, no one knew about it other than the other vendors) then the “wow factor” is really great.

Heidi and Adam: I really loved working with you to make your dream wedding come true, and I look forward to seeing you again at another wedding! Congratulations again!

Check out some of our snapshots from the wedding, and feel free to tag your friends! Note: These are not the pictures from the photographer, Eric Gee Photography.