On June 2nd, my life-long buddy Andy will be getting married to his sweet soulmate Lea. On that special day I get to wear two completely different hats: during the ceremony I’ll be serving as a groomsman, while later at the reception party I’ll be the DJ. One thing I can guarantee you is that between those two roles I will be definitely be changing clothes.

Over the past week or so I’ve begun collecting and compiling the music which will be played during the reception. If you think I take an event such as this one lightly, think again. For starters, I’ve downloaded somewhere around 9,000 songs over the past 48 hours. At 4 minutes per song that’s 36,000 minutes/600 hours/25 DAYS worth of music. From those I’ll be picking the best of the best, listening to each one that I select (to make sure it’s not screwed up or mislabeled) and then placing them in a queue. These songs are in addition to the ones I already have in my personal collection — all my old 80’s, party, and dance CDs that I’ve ripped to MP3 over the years. I’ve also been searching the web for lists of “popular wedding reception songs”, ensuring that I have all of those songs on hand as well. While mathematically the vast majority of the songs I have pulled pull will not make it into the four-hour long playlist, I will have all of them with me just in case someone requests one of them. Andy and Lea like 80’s music, dance music, and country music, so I am creating a playlist that contains an equal number of songs from all three of these genres, but with extra songs on hand I can change the playlist on the fly (thanks to the software I’m using) depending on the mood of the crowd and the party.

I’ve only DJed one other event — my sister’s wedding reception. Linda gave me very loose guidelines in which to operate. If I remember correctly, her exact words were she wanted her reception to sound like a “rollerskating rink from the 1980s.” Before the party I loaded my laptop with thousands of Awesome 80’s classics, and (I think) the crowd had a good time listening to them. The only negative moment was when my aunt came over and requested “a country line dancing song.” When I told her I didn’t have any, she said, “how can you call yourself a DJ and not have any line dancing songs?” At the time I thought to myself, well, I guess it’s because they didn’t do a lot of line dancing in rollerskating rinks in the 1980s. But looking back at the situation, I think she was right — and I won’t be caught off guard again. For example, the day before yesterday I downloaded the top 100 line dancing songs of all time. Overkill? Hah! It’s my middle name. But if someone comes up to me next weekend and asks to hear a line dancing song, I’ll be prepared. I didn’t like that feeling of being caught off guard, and it won’t happen again.

Yesterday I got to visit the reception hall with Andy and take a look at where I would be setting up shop. I am really bad at mentally visualizing things. Even while standing in the room it was hard for me to see where things were going to be placed, how the tables were going to be laid out, and so on. I am sure everything will be fine.

So do I worry about things? Yes I do. I worry about my computer crashing during the party. I worry about playing a song that might offend someone. I worry about my hard drive crashing. I worry about lots of things that I have no control over. My goal for the next week and a half is to prepare, check, and double check all the things I DO have control over, and go from there.

I have two more wedding-related posts coming up within the next day or two, covering DJ Software and inappropriate wedding songs. Also, I should clarify one thing — I do not consider myself a DJ. I think real DJs, the turntablists that do real time beat mixing and stuff like that, are incredibly gifted and talented. I’ve been trying to come up with a word to describe the service I am providing — the new term seems to be “eJay”, although in the car yesterday I coined “mp3jay” which I also like. Regardless of the term you use, I have no misgivings that I have any talent whatsoever in the “music presentation industy” — I’m just a guy with a laptop, a bunch of cords, and a ton of music. Rawk on.