Beyond the DJ Booth
Brian B and Joe Bunn tackle questions about the private event DJ industry, share music, gear/gadgets, and stories from their events.
Beyond the DJ Booth
S 2, Ep.6: Wedding Woes, Storage Struggles, and Financial DJ Planning
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What happens when your final wedding gigs of the year don’t go quite as planned? Join us as we share candid stories from the trenches, where the unpredictable world of DJing throws curveballs like vanishing dance floor energy and equipment storage chaos. Joe retells a wedding where the crowd mysteriously lost its groove despite them being happy clients, while Brian B recount the logistical nightmare of battling broken elevators to retrieve gear. We pull back the curtain on the hidden pressures DJs face, providing a rare peek behind the DJ booth.
But the challenges don’t stop there. Brian B dives into a particularly intricate event filled with unexpected dietary concerns, family drama, and a demanding photographer, all ending without the cherry-on-top gratuity. Yet, there's a unique satisfaction in navigating such hurdles with finesse.
Tackling a listener’s question, Joe offers his unfiltered take on financial advice from Dave Ramsey and stresses the importance of realistic financial planning as DJs look to the future. This episode is not just a glimpse into the world of DJing weddings, but a journey through the lessons learned along the way.
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Wedding DJ Reflects on Final Gig
Speaker 1Welcome to Beyond the DJ Booth podcast. Welcome to Beyond the DJ Booth Podcast. I'm one of the co-hosts, brian B, my partner over here, mr Joseph Eagles Bun Jr. Yes, sir, season two, episode six we're batching content. We film about three or four episodes ahead, so if we miss something that's happening current day sorry it's not included, but this is the way we got to do it these days, right, busy people, bro. Well, speaking of busy, yeah, we had some gigs to close out the year. At least I did. I did too, did you?
Speaker 1sort of the last gig of the year for me was december 29th, so before the new year a weird part between christmas and new year's.
Speaker 2No, I was done like the 14th or 15th. I hit six in like two weeks.
Speaker 1So I don't know if you feel this way, but like whenever it's the last gig of the year, I want to hit a home run, like that's my goal. I want to end it on a high note.
Speaker 2That didn't happen here.
Speaker 1Didn't happen for me either. Yeah, so tell me about your last gig of the year. I'll tell it was.
Speaker 2It was a wedding and I intentionally shot the moment that I questioned my entire career. It was just peak dancing and dude, I don't know what was happening. Like it started. Well, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, dance floor was open. Dance, dance, dance party, party, party. It was a long dance set. You know, normally, like I've said on here before, I don't play three hour dance sets. At a wedding I usually play two. And then it just started to die to the point where I was playing and we'd look out there and like people were like almost like talking on the dance floor and not moving, and then it just became less and less people and there was nothing outdoors, like there was no you know other distractions outside of the room. It was bonkers man and it kind of had a resurgence, let's call it the last 30 minutes or so, like it didn't die to a slow death, but it was dying to the point where I'm like surely they're going to tell us to be done, or I can't remember the last time it happened to us was earlier last year.
Speaker 2It was like a rehearsal dinner and the couple was super young and, yeah, the guests were older and it just was a rehearsal dinner, though not a wedding.
Speaker 2I I don't remember the last time a wedding ended when it was supposed to. It was a bad way to end the year. I wanted the exact same thing as you. I wanted to end the year on a high note so that I opened up the next season feeling good. Did the client? How was the review? They were elated. They were elated. She hugged me at the end of the night. I think they left a review. They definitely texted me the next day. Everybody had so much fun Like. I think we're our own worst critics, man. We're very harsh on ourselves.
Speaker 2I want and I guess I expect a full dance floor from the minute I open it. If I have to go through peaks and valleys, if I have to put two ballads in a three-hour dance, set okay. I'll reset the room, or whatever you call it.
Speaker 1You know what I mean.
Speaker 2It just didn't go well.
Speaker 1Were you stressing a bit on the music choices where you're like I got?
Speaker 2to the point where I kind of was you know they had definitely given me some songs. And then, what was strange you remember this right Say Quan like at the end of the night, the groom started coming up and like holding his phone up, and it was almost like he caught a buzz or had somebody in his ear.
Speaker 2That was the first time he was really engaged that whole three hours, that last half hour, and I also think that maybe they were waiting for some of the older people to leave or something right, I couldn't really figure out the semantics behind why it went poorly, but it definitely did not go well in my eyes. Okay, what when?
Speaker 1what you told me like a brief scenario for me, whenever I have something that's off, it's never one thing, it's like oh yeah, you told me, like a snowball Snowball effect, never easy. And I want to share these because I feel like this is the stuff that you don't post on Instagram, right?
Speaker 2Like it's always perfect. Nothing ever goes wrong.
Speaker 1Rainbows puppy dogs, and that's not the case here. So my first bad sign that things were going to well I had hoped this wasn't the sign that this was the start of things. I was hoping this was my only thing, right. But I have a storage facility where I put everything. I remember this, yeah, and I don't know. I mean, you have an office here so you don't have this problem. But there are people who probably do what I do and get a storage unit because they don't have an office right.
Speaker 1Tons. I see people every weekend working on the storage unit so got a new storage facility that's brand new, like this place has been open maybe two months and I went to it because a the price was cheaper, b it was clean like pristine, yeah, yeah. So I moved everything in there and it's in florida.
Speaker 1In florida, I'm on the second floor. That's always a negative. Yeah, I don't like to be up on elevators, but it is what it is. How to do it go in and both elevator banks are down and I'm just like, how am I gonna get my stuff out of here? And I see somebody has put a cart by the stairwell and I'm like, oh my god, I am going to have to bring everything by hand hand carry, and I had a lot of stuff. Thankfully, this is a plug for uh assistance.
Speaker 1Yeah, I have an assistant that helps me roadie in and out, because I can't imagine trying to do this by myself, but I was so infuriated I mean, it's a national brand. Yeah, extra space storage I mean, they got places everywhere. No 24-7 number. I mean I am blowing this facility up on the voicemail just like. How can you do this to people you know? No sign, no way of getting a hold of somebody.
Speaker 2This is just and terrible and I can understand maybe one bank going down but two yeah, just seemed odd.
Speaker 1So we have to hand carry everything down, so I'm already running a little bit behind. I mean, I give myself way more margin than I need.
Speaker 2But still, and you're pissed off, already, already, and I'm sweating.
Speaker 1It's the middle of december in flor it's still hot, right. So I get there. And as I'm thinking about this couple, this couple is in medical school. If you know anything about the medical school field, you don't get to pick your school Like they basically assign you a spot to go do it. I don't remember the guy from Utah I'm drawing a blank on his name, but he ended up having to go to Florida as an example.
Speaker 1Yeah, I know him, jordan, jordan, yeah, yeah, cool dude. So this bride and groom, both going to medical school, got assigned different States. They're in the region but they're not like close. So for a full year they've been in medical school. They got another year to go and they're going to have to live apart for another year while they finish married married apart. They've already lived apart for a year right.
Speaker 1The groom super eclectic with his music, very indie. You can tell he's not a dancer, but he just likes to listen to music. A music guy, though, and I'm like we don't have anything pop on here whatsoever. No party classics. We're talking like Cage the Elephant, the Racketeurs, people like that that. You're like I can listen to it, yeah, but this is what we're playing for. Dancing, this is going to be a struggle bus. He made it sure that I wasn't going to play anything mainstream. He was like I just don't want that and I'm like are your guests going to want that? Like, let's just triple check. Yeah. Yeah, I will say he did dial it in with this crowd. His crowd was definitely that same kind of vibe. Yeah, so we, with the ceremony and this part of Florida, they go on a boat cruise, basically to pictures. For what's supposed to be 60 minutes, it's always 90 plus, because it just takes longer than they think.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, so this is part of, like, the wedding package at this venue? Yeah, they get. What are you supposed to do?
Speaker 1I'm playing for cocktail hour for the guests. This is just for the couple. They go on this cruise lane, so the guests are in there.
Wedding DJ Shares Retirement Planning Insights
Speaker 1They're, you know, eating the cocktail food. This isn't like a Jersey cocktail hour where it's like seven or eight courses deep Right. It's like a Southern one. Let's get going. They come back from the boat. The mom of the bride is irritated at the bride because she didn't put all of her friends at her table. This is about a 200 person wedding, which for that area of Florida is pretty big. Bride's mom makes a stink and says we got to move these tables to make room for so-and-so at my table. This is after the cocktail hour. We've been there for 90 minutes.
Speaker 1Right Dragged out, right she should have gone to the planner and done this, but she waited for her daughter to get back. Yeah, and so we got to wait another 30 minutes for them to do all this Right, and they had a massive wedding party. We're talking 15 on either side, 15, 30 people. I don't know 30 people, even like me. You're probably right, I'm just kidding, I'm the same. My circle is super small, so we line them all up lots of names. The groom goes hey, can I go to the bathroom real quick?
Speaker 1I'm like, okay you couldn't have done this in the you know a little bit of time I've been lining everybody up right so he turns, he goes oh my god, now look, and he has literally ripped his pants the entire way down his leg and I'm like, oh my God, this is just like yeah, what are we doing?
Speaker 2Right?
Speaker 1So I go and I look at the wedding party. I'm trying to size people up going. Who in this wedding party looks like this dude? Dude has an identical twin brother. Who's his best man? What are the chances, Right, Right. So I tell this dude I'm like you're going to be a hero tonight. Yeah, Switch pants.
Speaker 2Drop, drop, trial, pal be a hero tonight. Yeah, switch pants drop, drop trowel pal totally and he did it, he did it, he totally did it not right there. I mean not right there, I mean with the bathroom.
Speaker 1It did it, but I go dude, you just saved this wedding. I'm like you said what did he do?
Speaker 1duct tape up the other no he just raw dogged it, which I thought was pretty cool because people were just kind of like what was happening, you know? But he just sucked it up. I go what a best man. That's what you're supposed to do, that's right. So they come in, we go into the formality dances and I'm noticing that the mother-son dance, the bride's kind of giving the evil eye to that mother and I'm like that's kind of weird. Why is she mean mugging? I don't really understand what's happening. So we get through it During the blessing. This is when the caterer comes up to me and goes We've got about 30 people who have a dietary issue and we don't know where to bring them their meals because they've all moved seats. This is happening while this blessing is taking place.
Speaker 1You couldn't come to me like. I'm like this guy's going to end any second. Now I got to figure out what I'm going to do with these guests. Yeah, so he's like just tell them to come to the pre-function space and we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1So, unplanned announcement that I've never, ever had to make in my life as a DJ All the vegetarians and gluten-free people please report to the ballroom, and I think maybe because they're in the medical field. There was just a lot of them, like there was 30 people or so. So I, you know, I'll say something along the lines of hey, I know we have a lot of people with some dietary restrictions. We've moved some tables, as you probably have seen us do. We need to ask anybody with that condition or that issue to make their way to the pre-function space to get with our catering staff, so we can do the right thing, we get to the toasts, okay, and I figured out what the issue was with the mother of the groom and the bride.
Speaker 1The bride has a sister who's gay, okay. The groom's mom is super religious. So the groom's mom gets up there to give a toast, okay, and she goes something along the lines of like you know, if you stick close to the Lord, and she like emphasizes that, like you stay real close to the Lord, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1Your marriage is going to have a great chance of success, or I don't remember exactly how she said it, yeah, and so the bride literally yells and goes we will. And I'm just like, oh, did we just get into?
Speaker 2like a white trash, like situation right now, like what is happening.
Speaker 1I'm like where am I? I've never had that happen at a wedding.
Speaker 2I'm like is someone going to throw down like what's?
Speaker 1happening. Now we're moving into the dancing and some of the other formalities. I get stuck with one of those photographers who charges by the hour and he's like I'm not going to stick any longer than what my contract says. I've been here all day and the fact that they're delayed and they've decided to take an extra 30 minutes like that's not my fault. So now we got to move every formality, which wasn't many left at that point. There was a cake cut, there was like something else, but we had to slam them all in, and so now I've got three hours of indie music that I've got to mix in.
Speaker 1Right to mix in, right, no breaks. So you know, the first 30 minutes goes great, you know, whatever. But then after about an hour of this, I'm like I have to like, try something else, like there's no way we're going to be able to keep this up for this long, yeah, and anytime I pivoted to like anything current or any party classics, anything, I wasn't getting the choke sign but I was getting like let's move to something else or whatever. And it was just the hardest wedding, yeah, that I've had to do in a long time and it ends the year like that. Yeah, no gratuity. And at the same time I also felt like glad I was on this wedding, because anybody else this would have been a struggle tanked it, you know, tanked it, all these things.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know, I've thought about that before, when either the music became hyper specific or it was some gear thing that you know you had to have all this wireless technology or extra speakers or this big sound or a huge room, and I'm like, dude, I'm so glad I'm assigned to this because anybody else would have frozen so at the end I'm not going back to the storage facility because I don't want to carry all this crap back up.
Speaker 1But you know, again I was like so upset with the storage place because I was like now I gotta pay my guy to help me come back a day later. Yeah, you know, which that, which that's coming out of my pocket.
Speaker 2Right, Like what's going on here.
Speaker 1I ended up telling them like you have to move me to a first floor because I'm not going through this again and I run my business on the weekends. If you guys aren't here for the weekends, what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 2Yeah, so they did, they did Nice.
Speaker 1They moved me but hey, it happens. I'm just putting it out there. We're not all get the all puppy dogs and rainbows right. Sometimes it happens.
Speaker 2I wish they were. I feel like we're. Transparency and realism are the themes of this show yeah, like we've never sat here and been like every weekend we smash parties like it's. Just sometimes it happens. It ain't gonna happen like that every time. What's it a question? Okay, let's do it. You read it, since I I have to turn my head oh okay.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'll do it. It's directed at you actually. This is coming to us from billy rears a few times, all right gary, new hampshire. Question is joe, I know you hate dave ramsey. That's a strong word, but what should we be doing as djs to prepare for retirement?
Speaker 2This is tough man. What's your beef with Dave Ramsey? I don't like the whole. Tell me your mortgage. Tell me your car payment. You're telling me that you spend $5,000 and you only make $85,000 a year. The math ain't math and fuck face, or whatever. He's just a dick. And then also, here's the thing man, Life is super short. I gave a seminar a couple of nights ago and I got super emotional.
Speaker 1I literally showed a picture of my kids at the beginning of this talk a little bit right, I did yeah it's pretty much similar to what I did at pj collective yeah in 2023, but it's like life went by so fast, man, like even you can see it with your little girl, right?
Speaker 2yeah, it's like one minute she was a baby, now she's a five-year-old. To me, like it went by like that, right even my son's, like boom, there were little boys.
Speaker 1I saw you posted on instagram.
Speaker 2Yeah, they were, they're 20 and 17 next week yeah like that's crazy to think about it and everybody says that right, it's just gonna go by the blink and life's super short, right, you don't know how much time you have with your parents, your friends, whatever.
Speaker 2And this dude is telling me you know no credit cards. Uh, instead of going to get a $6 latte and a $4 scone every morning, you should put that money towards your mortgage. Fuck off, man. I mean honestly, I'm not going to do that, dude. I enjoy going and sitting at Yellow Dog Bakery every morning and sitting at the end of the bar and checking my Instagram and eating my damn delicious scone and drinking a delicious vanilla skim latte. Would I have paid off my mortgage four months earlier if I didn't do that every day? Maybe, but I'm just like I don't know that I'm not going to walk out in the parking lot later in the car and get hit by a train.
Speaker 2It's just crazy. People think this dude is like some sort of a disciple. I'm not picking up what he's putting down. So if you follow Dave Ramsey and you're on that path, more power to you. If you're debt free, you're more man than me. I'm not great to answer this question because I'm not doing a good job at it, so maybe you can help us One of the biggest things that we've done as a couple.
Speaker 1we got a financial advisor that helped us kind of get our bearings and, believe it or not, that helped us kind of get our our bearings, yeah, and believe it or not, like it's not that expensive. In fact, we have somebody who, honestly, she does it for free, which is crazy, but she's making money she's making money on the products right right that's how they all work and we've been with her since we've been married
Speaker 1and so we get on there twice a year to just check in how things going let me get that number I will.
Speaker 2Yeah, no problem she's actually a York person.
Speaker 1No, she's in Florida, but she does anywhere You're smart, though Very smart, yeah, smarter than you. Way smarter, way smarter when it comes to this stuff, especially Because I don't really. I mean, I think we talked about this on a previous episode but I don't mix taking unnecessary risks, that I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
Speaker 2I'm not going to watch it and know when to dump it, and I'm not going to listen to podcasts about it. Is there just going to be one day that something catastrophic happens and we're sitting here recording a podcast and I didn't dump it and I lost everything. Yeah.
Speaker 1I can't do it. So this financial advisor, you know she's keeping enough tabs on us twice a year to go. Hey, this is where you're headed. This is what this looks like 20 years from now.
Speaker 1Where you're going to be I mean that for us, is really the one thing we're doing. I would consider my forties my biggest income generating years. I'm trying to put as much as we can into savings, and the wife is too Cause. I mean I don't care who you are. At 75 years old, You're not going to be DJing like you were at 40 or 30. I'm taking that to heart and trying to save some money instead of spending it all.
Speaker 2Yeah, billy, I don't know man Call it professional.
Speaker 1We're not it.
Speaker 2I wish we were better. I wish I had done a lot of things differently, man. I wish I had saved more. I wish I invested in real estate. I wish I owned a building instead of sitting here paying rent Like an entrepreneur is an absolute roller coaster, as you probably know, man, like I've had piles of money and I've been to the bottom and it's just. It's year to year sometimes, yeah, I sure sucked. This year looks unbelievable right, and I had no idea last year was gonna suck right. Completely honest with you, I didn't suck until it was too late.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know it was already happy three quarters through and I'm like, oh, this, this is bad, this year's terrible. So I don't know. Sorry, billy, are we doing any gear or anything, or is this a? I got one thing? What are we at? On time, sir? Yeah, we got time for one. Okay, show me a little something my friend. So we love to talk about gear on here. We didn't really say what the podcast is about, but it's for private event DJs.
Speaker 1We talk about nightmare stories and talk about a little fine, this guy's the king of gadgets. So this is a selfie stick, okay, but it's mag safe thing. I really. I like this is for shooting content, okay, specifically things that you want to have like a direct downward angle on where a lot of the selfie sticks they're at an angle but they're not flat like this oh, I see what you're saying so if you're not watching and you're listening, it mag safes to your phone right, so that if I'm trying to film something with my hands.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm trying to hold it, yeah, yeah, and it's not an angle, because a lot of these don't have the mag safe like this yeah that's cool, which is kind of nice. So if you're trying to film and it still has angles, you can do whatever you want with it but like if you're trying to show a product off or maybe it's got a tripod on it.
Speaker 2For those of you that are not watching on video or you're mixing even and just trying to show things off right.
Speaker 1I just feel like it's a cool, easy tool. And then it also comes with an accessory, which I haven't hooked on yet, with a magsafe like. Okay, so it has the ability and I again haven't hooked it on. You can see the hooks here or this can go on here and be a light.
Speaker 1This way Actually it's this way, I'm sorry, so that that way as I'm filming, but it's also MagSafe, so if I didn't want to do this, let's just say you and I wanted to just we're in the dark for whatever reason. Yeah, that sounds weird. It does sound weird. You literally just hit the button, the power button, here, that way. It's on the side of it, so that that way. But you could also use it like this if you wanted to. Sure, but the idea is that you can change the color, so you can go to whatever.
Speaker 2And darker, whatever. And the 2700, it looks good, 2700 kelvin or whatever it is so anyways, this like price point oh $22.98. Close $30.
Speaker 1Okay, but for the light alone, just alone, and this thing I mean, it folds up pretty nicely.
Speaker 2I bet your backpack is just insane.
Speaker 1I just have a little pouch. I put all these little gadgets in there that I travel with, because I never know when I'm going to need it, so I just take it with me. A little satchel. I would suggest getting this if you're trying to shoot some content real quick yeah.
Speaker 2I like the overhead or the overhands kind of look or whatever.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You always got a good one. Well, everybody, we haven't mentioned it tactfully yet, but just shout out to our brand new sponsor, dj Event Planner. Yes, which stands for customer relationship manager. You manage your leads, your follow-ups, your sales, your portal for your clients to log in and plan their music or their entire timeline. You want to check out djeventplannercom? People over there are sponsoring this podcast and full transparency. I've been using it for 15 years. We haven't even figured out how long Ryan's been using it. He thinks since 06, 08, 17 years. We haven't even figured out how long Brian's been using it. He thinks since 06, 08, 17 years. So, anyway, check out DJEventPlannercom if you are getting more leads than you can keep up with. One more thing before y'all go Leave us a review. We would love to get reviews. Please, on whatever platform you're listening on Apple or Spotify or whatever Leave us a review so more people can possibly find this beautiful podcast or beyond the DJ podcast. I'm Joseph. I'm Brian B. We'll see you. See you next week. Bye.
