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

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