On Saturday, I DJed a wedding reception.

As per my usual “hmm, I’ve not DJed in a while, I’d better check what to play and that I’ve got everything” pre-DJing tasks were performed throughout the day, which went pretty well. After a quick trip into Brentwood to grab the lights and PA that I’d hired, I headed off to the wedding reception venue, about 15 minutes from home.

All was going well – I’d got there with ample time to spare (I wanted to do that on the off-chance that I’d forgotten something (perish the thought…)) – so much so that, as the post-wedding proceedings were running late (that’s pretty standard in my experience), I was invited in to have some food with my mates (one of whom’s mum was the bride). This was really lovely of them – and had me in a nice happy mood ready to get going with the set.

Once dinner was finally over, it was getting rather late so I needed to get set up asap so that there’d actually be an evening’s partying to be had!

Alas on finally getting the equipment set up, I realised I’d left my laptop at home.

Not too much of an issue, you’d think. After all, I’d got the CD players, my CDs, the amp+speakers and lighting. Why need the laptop anyway, right? Well, imagine this scenario: you have your entire playlist worked out and in an Excel Spreadsheet. You’ve got a list of ALL your songs, with the CDs they’re on in a handy Excel Spreadsheet. Oh and you’ve managed to download a copy of the First Dance, which you didn’t own on CD, and by the way decided not to bother actually burning it onto a CDR.

Now imagine that this is on the laptop that’s at your home, rather than at the gig.

Yeah.

That was luckily the worst part of the evening, although it remained a bit stressy after that: once I’d rushed home and back, I had the laptop ready to plug in – but of course people saw I was back so expected tunes immediately, so I had to find and select songs inbetween plugging the laptop in, getting it all set up nicely to use – oh and rigging the lighting.

At least it was worth it. I’d managed to keep people… er… close to the dance floor all night. Bit of a tricky audience, but hey – that’s what happens sometimes. It did mean that I spent a fair amount of the evening stressing, thinking “Shit, my playlist I spent hours on isn’t working… and neither are these tried and tested classics… what the HELL do I play next?”, though.

Needless to say by the end of the night I was ker-nackered… but bloody glad I was DJing a wedding reception at a nearby town and not, say, 90 minutes drive away. Now THAT would’ve been interesting…

Pat