Bahia Belle – Wedding of Yaron and Luis Pruginin-Jaramillo

Client: Yaron Pruginin and Luis Jaramillo
Venue: Bahia Belle
Venue Address: 998 West Mission Bay Drive • San Diego, California 92109
Number of guests: Approximately 60
Services Provided: Wedding DJ and Master of Ceremonies, Wedding Ceremony DJ

Venue Coordinator: Kristin
Wedding Coordinator: Jamie
Photography: Emilio Azevedo Photography

In July of 2010 Yaron and Luis contacted me to DJ their wedding. Being a same-sex couple, I’m assuming that they were drawn to my work through other same-sex celebrations I’ve had the privilege of DJing– everything from weddings to anniversary parties. California is one of the few states with cutting-edge ideals. As such, being an accepting and liberal individual allows me the unique pleasure of working with clients of all inclinations. I’ve worked at the Bahia Hotel, but I had never done a wedding reception in the Bahia Belle, so after they booked we met at the venue to go over the unique needs of the Belle. They really wanted to do some lighting for their wedding, but the Belle has limited electrical outlets, and it is difficult to block sunlight, so we had to omit those from their package.

Yaron and Luis decided to design their own ceremony. Being of mixed ethnicity, they went with many Jewish traditions, combined with a few other ideas. Since I always express that I love implementing different ideas, I was excited about the opportunity to witness their unique ceremony.

At the beginning of their reception, guests met on the second floor to mingle for a bit. After a while, they moved down to the bottom floor for a meal. During this time I worked on the upper deck, setting up equipment for their ceremony. The upper deck of the Bahia Belle doesn’t have an electrical outlet, so I had to run an power cord from the upper deck down around the stairs and into the windows of the middle deck to get power for my equipment. Due to my venue visit earlier I was readily prepared for this though, and set up was smooth.

After their meal, guests were invited to the upper deck for the ceremony.

Seating music: Vitamin String Quartet – The Gay Wedding Collection
Processional: Emmylou Harris – A Love That Never Grows Old
Recessional: Jorge Celedon – Esta Vida

The ceremony started with the officiant (Jamie) talking about how special it was to be present to witness the union, and then explaining the Jewish Huppa and getting guests to help put it together and erect it. The entire ceremony was performed under this Huppa, per Jewish tradition. After the procession, Yaron and Luis were given a lei to wear together.

Several readings took place.

And here’s a picture of the newlyweds right after being pronounced married. They look so happy!

After the ceremony, we went downstairs to the middle deck for dancing. Here’s a picture of the dancing guests doing something similar to the Vibora De La Mar but without chairs.

During cake cutting they did toasts.

Cake Cutting: Frank Sinatra – Love & Marriage

Here’s them receiving toasts from their guests…

…and here’s them thanking their guests.

Afterwards we went back to open dancing until the end of the reception. A lot of the second set was Columbian cumbias, by request.

For their last dance, guests held hands in a circle around Yaron and Luis.

There was a lot of farewells and we needed to get equipment off the boat to make room for another event that was taking place the same evening, but I did manage to get a post-reception shot using my iPhone.

Congratulations to Luis and Yaron, and thanks for the opportunity to be a part of your special day!

Point Loma DJ – The Creative Music DJ

Client: Danna Gunther
Venue: Personal Residence
Venue Address: Point Loma
Number of guests: 35+
Services Provided: DJ and Master of Ceremonies, Video Montage
Catering: Crown Point Catering

Danna Gunther contacted me a while back to DJ her daughter’s upcoming 21^st birthday at her home in Point Loma. Her daughter wanted a DJ, but was concerned about finding one that knew her favorite music. I suggested we meet, and arranged a meeting at their house where Danna, Olivia, Amy (Olivia’s older sister), and Jeff (Danna’s husband) would be present. We met and started talking about music, and by the end of meeting Olivia told her mom that she thought I would be perfect for the party.

While talking with Danna I showed her some other packages that I offer and she really liked the video montage idea, since she wanted to be able to give a copy of a video montage on DVD to Olivia for her birthday. I worked both the creation and projection into the contract, and they signed up.

On Olivia’s birthday, I arrived early and set up my system. I knew it was going to be an interesting night because Olivia’s favorite music wasn’t necessarily dance music, it was more along the lines of Jack’s Mannequin, The Fray, and Citizen Cope. I was told there would be no dancing, to which I replied, “OK, but let’s leave an area open just in case dancing begins.”

Catering was provided by Crown Point Catering, and the food was excellent.

Working with Crown Point Catering

Several guests gave compliments on the music selection, and things went well. It started raining,  but it was light and the guests were enjoying the atmosphere so much that they remained outside! As the night progressed, I started mixing club-versions (redrums) of some of Olivia’s requested songs, mixed with crowd-pleasers and even some oldies and current top-40. Ironically, the first person to start dancing was Danna, the one that had been adamant about the fact that ‘there will be no dancing’! Needless to say, dancing did happen, as I knew it would. While the party was going on, Olivia took a moment to pose with me. She looks amazing, doesn’t she?

DJ Dennis J with the 21 year old Birthday girl, Olivia

After dinner and some light dancing, I made the announcement that we had prepared a special slideshow chronicling Olivia’s life from birth until now, and started the slideshow. The guests loved it. The lycra DJ screen is about 10’ wide, so the presentation was beautifully large as you can see here.

Olivia's Presentation on my new DJ Screen

After the party was over, Olivia and her friends left in a limo to hit up bars in the Pacific Beach area (as any 21 year old would do) and I spent some time packing up and chatting with Danna and Jeff, who said everyone really loved the music and that they will be calling me for Jeff’s 60^th birthday party in a couple years. I took the opportunity to get a quick snapshot of my happy client.

DJ Dennis J with Danna

Thanks to Danna for giving me the opportunity to entertain her daughter’s guests for an evening, and happy birthday, Olivia!

Liberty Station Birthday Party – Rita and Rosalie

Client: Jim Fitzpatrick
Venue: Liberty Station – Luce Court
Venue Address: 2640 Historic Decatur Road
Number of guests: 100
Services Provided: DJ and Master of Ceremonies, Dance Floor Lighting, Video Montage

A few months ago I was contacted by Jim Fitzpatrick to perform at his wife, Rita,(and her twin sister, Rosalie)’s 50th birthday party. Jim and Rita first saw me perform in Liberty Station at the Spirits At Liberty Station fundraiser in October 2009. According to Rita, after they saw me there, they both said to each other, “we have to hire this guy when we have a party!” Of course, all of this was unknown to me until just recently…

Jim and I met at his office downtown and worked out the details. They wanted dance floor lighting (“light it up like a CLUB!” was their request), and also opted for the video montage package. I coached Jim a bit about the type of pictures he should include in the montage, and gave advise about creating it. Jim hit a few snags along the way while creating his montage, and we were on the phone frequently towards the days before the event making sure he had all the details correct. At one point, I even invited Jim over to our house for a consultation and to preview the montage on the actual projector we were using for his event. Needless to say, by the day of the event, Jim was completely confident that the montage was going to go over perfectly.

Jim and Rita selected Liberty Station for their venue, convenient for me since I had obviously worked at the venue before! They set up a tent in Luce Court, directly behind the NTC Promenade main entrance. The entire event was coordinated by Christine Ong, from Encore Events.

Tress Balch, from Happy’s Sushi, catered the party with a total of three stations. One was a sushi bar…

Sushi Bar

and two were hot food stations consisting of delicious items such as appetizers, shishkabobs and fried shrimp.

One of the hot bars

Appetizers and Hot Food

Bar service was provided by Jamie from Event Beverage Solutions. I’ll definitely recommend her in the future because she was extremely personable and friendly. She came over and offered me refills when she saw that I couldn’t leave my booth! Afterwards, when we were cleaning up she also complimented me on the mix, which was nice.

Liquor Bar

For this event, I chose to debut my new Cerwin Vega speaker set, which fit the decor well and provided more than ample sound. As you can see, it looks good. The tops are stylish and thin, yet contain two 8″ woofers each tuned to a different frequency range.

Cerwin Vega Speaker Setup

For cocktails and dinner, Jim left the music selection to me, so I started with some smooth jazz, moved into some ‘rat pack’ 20s-40s, and then transitioned into some easy listening and contemporary music such as Jason Mraz and Beach Boys. Since it was a birthday party, song selections were themed around celebration and wonderful lives.

Before dancing began, we started the video montage. The projector lit up the screen flawlessly, and Jim even remarked to me during the display, saying, “that’s an amazing projector you have.” I always try to explain to clients beforehand that our projector is not the ‘norm’ but it really has to be seen to fully understand what that means. We use an extremely high ‘lumens’ projector so that the whites remain white even over long distances and in low lighting (most projectors are made to be used in very dark settings, and cannot display whites correctly when there is lighting in the room). I took the occasion to get some video of the guests enjoying the video. I think that this video capture will help show you more about how the montage went over than the actual montage itself!

Here’s a shot of everyone enjoying the video montage.

Guests Enjoying the Video Montage

And here’s a short video showing guests enjoying the montage.

<video coming soon>

Now, when Jim and I had met, he had informed me that his wife was 50, but a “young 50″. So, I was thinking 70′s and 80′s would be the night’s big hits. However, before the dancing began, Rosalie came over and asked me if I could start with “Boom Boom Pow” since it was her son Wyatt’s favorite song. When it came time for dancing we started with Black Eyed Peas, then Jim came over and told me to ‘rock this place like a high school gym’.

The set definitely ebbed and flowed. I went through many genres: Uptempo club, 80′s Pop, 70′s Disco, 80′s Funk, Latin (Salsa, Merengue), 90′s Hip-Hop, Current Top40. Guests danced all night long, and the hosts felt that the night was going so well that they didn’t want to interrupt it for the cake event, so they just silently cut cake and gave it out subtly!

And that gesture in itself was the ultimate verification that the night was enjoyed by everyone!

A picture of Jim and his wife, Rita.

Jim and Rita Fitzpatrick

A picture of me with the birthday girls, Rita and Rosalie.

Rita Fitzpatrick and her sister Rosalie

A picture of the host and client, Jim Fitzpatrick, after a job well done!

Jim Fitzpatrick and DJ Dennis J, post-event