As a bride-to-be, Jessica Spence was taking extra care to note the details at a friend's wedding recently.
One thing that stood out to her was an idle-looking DJ who hit a few buttons on his laptop and appeared to take the rest of the night easy.
"I swear to god, the DJ was playing Solitaire throughout the dinner and cocktail hour," Spence noted in an online forum at wedding-planning site TheKnot.com. "It seems sort of silly to pay someone a lot of money to sit at a laptop and put on songs when we can do the exact same thing."
CNET News.com reckons iPods could be about to make DJs redundant at wedding parties.
Of course, if it was that easy, the tape player could have done it ages ago.
I did 3 family parties last weekend and each one was incredibly difficult. Very few people wanted to dance but I, as the DJ, had to plough the middle ground between background music and stuff people could dance to if they wanted to. Parties where very few people dance are harder to DJ than parties where the floor is full every night.
Even if you know everybody's music tastes it's hard to find the music that will get them dancing. And next to impossible to guess days in advance.
Every booking I've DJed where the Bride and Groom have dictated all, or the majority, of the music has been a disaster (well, with one exception). They never choose the big crowd pleasers like Rock DJ, YMCA, Grease Mega Mix, etc...
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