Skip the DJ? How to Plan Smarter with Coordinators, Playlists, and Vendor Timing | Wedding Q&A

Well, hello, lovely humans, and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern-day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time-consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way, because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with all of the I was going to say constituents. They're not constituents. The people over in the Master Plan course and answer your questions in lifetime. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the Master Plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. Okay. Audrey wants to know, could you please elaborate on how to best coordinate and execute a wedding in collaboration with a wedding planner? I have a wedding planner and I want her to set up to satisfactorily bring my vision to life during my wedding. For context, I'm curious to know the average wedding planner's communication with the bride and groom— emails, calls, texts— what a wedding planner needs to know from the bride/groom for success, a wedding planner's schedule prior to the wedding, etc. I know I will be the only one concentrating solely on my wedding as planners often have more than one event, so I'm curious as to what the job entails from your end of things. How many weddings are you j— juggling at once on the daily? How much time do you spend on a particular wedding, etc., in order to not bombard my wedding planner with too many superfluous details? Audrey, you get a gold star for using the word superfluous. I love it. Okay, unfortunately I do not have a solid answer for you simply because it varies per planner and it varies per event. So what I want you to do is I want you to very carefully read over their packages and ask very pointed questions. What's an acceptable amount of times for me to contact you? What's an acceptable way for me to contact you? When I'm working with a client, um, I'm really bad at texting. Like, I'm like, I'm— I will read it and be like, yeah, that sounds good. And I would just won't reply. Since iPhone has added the thing where you can like mark something as unread for an iMessage, that has changed my life. So for me, I always ask clients, like, do me a favor, just email me because that way I can, um, I can keep it there. I'll have a nice paper trail. I can pass it off to an assistant should they need to see something or read something. A text makes it a lot harder to track. And I try to let my, my clients know my communication boundaries. So you can, you can email me after hours. I will get to you when I can, usually within business hours. Of course, when we're working a lot, we have a lot of events on the weekend. So I try to set what those parameters look like because for the most part, what we do is we just have to be available when the client is right, because most people work 9 to 5. So our meetings are usually evenings or on weekends, et cetera. But my admin hours are normally during weekdays, during weekday hours. So, um, there is not a usually. I can give you for context what I do. Um, let me go back over the questions that you have. So I'm not missing anything. I typically do emails. I am more than happy to jump on a phone call with a client too, though, if it's in between meetings and they need like 10, 15 minutes of my time, you know what I mean? If it's like, actually, this would be a lot faster if we just jumped on a call. I don't mind doing that. I'm happy to do that. It's not like my phone is a no-go altogether. It's just the texts get lost. Oh, I had one client who would send me voice memos and I was like, please don't, please don't. And then I just lose all of it. Then all hope is gone. So that's kind of how I treat it. Meetings are where we handle the bulk of the information, where I handle all of the assignments that I'm giving to the client— assignments— and I tell them what I'm going to be working on in between now and our next appointment. I am available for email, as many emails as they want to send. If it gets to the point where it's a little lengthy, I'm like, hey, a 10-minute phone call might save us a whole lot of time if you just want to jump on a call. And then texts are usually a no-go for me. So yes, you'll be the only one concentrating on your event as intensely as this. However, us as planners are really good at knowing the right questions to ask to get the answers as quickly as possible. So we don't necessarily need to spend as much time on the event. Does that make sense? So I mean, that's obviously how this, this course crystallized, because I know all the steps that you're supposed to go through to plan a successful wedding, and that's how we were able to create this course. So while yes, you will be focusing on it way more than a wedding planner will, just time-wise, they're able to distill down the exact information that they need from you in order to make your event successful. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to, and you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie, actually, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the Master Plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources along the way. Join me and my virtual clients over in the Master Plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me, and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out at wolferandco.com TMP. That's wolferandco.com TMP. Listen, wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst. And the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to weddingpriorities.com. Uh, Gracie said, I'm not planning on hiring a DJ for my wedding. I would prefer to use my own Spotify playlist instead. Brilliant. I've been to a couple weddings this year and honestly wasn't too enthusiastic about the DJs, so I'd rather avoid having one if possible. That said, I'm open to hiring a DJ if it turns out to be the best option. I've created 4 playlists that I'm still working on: one for the ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, and one for dancing. The venue I've booked has a sound system and microphones available, available for both the ceremony and reception, so I'm not concerned about renting equipment. My main concern is making sure everything with the music and mic usage runs smoothly. That would be my main concern as well. I'm planning to have my mom or friend handle the music during the ceremony, and then one of my bridesmaids will take over for cocktail hour and the reception. What I'm unsure about is how to manage everything else that a DJ typically does, like announcing when open dancing starts, calling out table numbers for dinner, and making other key transitions and announcements. What are some ways I can make sure these parts of the event go smoothly without a DJ? Or realistically, would it be better to just hire a DJ to ensure everything else— or ensure everything runs well. Okay, couple of— one flag, yellow, yellow flag that I saw. We don't— I don't want your mom running the music because then she's not going to see you come down there, right? She's gonna be so hyper-focused on pressing play that she's gonna miss that opportunity. So I would say, and literally anyone else, like, grab someone from the background, be like, can you just press play when I, like, step up right here? We've seen plenty of events be successful without DJs. DJs are my favorite. I've— you've probably heard me say it before. Um, they're just the unsung heroes of wedding day because they do so much and they help to guide an event. I do think it's possible to run a successful one without a DJ though. With that being the case, I do think it's important to maybe select an MC. So, um, a master of ceremonies, someone who will do a little bit of gentle directing on the microphone. Now, I typically don't have a DJ announce tables for dinner. I find it to be a little, um, I was gonna say intrusive, but that's not quite the word. Most of the time when, when guests are at their table and they're communicating, they're really enjoying the conversation. They don't want to stop every time the DJ jumps on the microphone to hear if their table number's being called. So if there's a catering service that could walk around and potentially tap on tables to like, hey, you guys are allowed to go next. This is also something that we as coordinators and planners do. Every time we're like, we will step in and do this. Don't worry about it, DJ. We got you. So I think the best bet would be for you to have a master of ceremonies, an MC for the, um, for the event, if possible. Um, I do like Spotify playlists. I do like that you can fade in and out of songs. That's a feature that you can have with Spotify playlist. We also have a music guide from my favorite DJ in Southern California. Do you have it already? Yeah. Okay, good, good, good. Cause he has all the, I think he's all the hacks in there and like how to do it really successfully. So I think you're good. I think you're okay. Have, um, less prominent person do the ceremony music for you. I think a bridesmaid could be a great option if you can find someone outside of the wedding party. You might find that the bridesmaid's a little torn between wanting to be with you and then wanting to take care of music. So there's one person, and usually I like someone super gregarious, you know, someone really outgoing. There is this one, um, group um, like an old group I used to run, obviously, when we were back in California. And there's this one guy who always emceed events. He didn't do it professionally, he just was kind of funny, he was really dry, his timing was perfect. So he— that kind of person would be great to handle this if you want a little bit more announcement style stuff. But, um, the only things you would need is, yeah, maybe open dancing, but you could also have the photographer. You could do the fake photo— not the fake, I mean, it's still a real photo You get everyone out onto the dance floor for a group photo, have the photographer encourage everybody out, like, all right everyone, let's take— we're taking a picture. Ideally they're standing on a ladder or something high so we can get everyone in it. And then whoever's in charge of music starts a song while everyone's out there. So you can do a normal photo, you can do a silly photo. It also is a really sweet photo because it's the only one that you're going to have with everyone in it, or ideally everyone in it. And then when the music starts, everyone's already there and they're like, oh snap, we might as well just stay. Um, my wedding isn't until June 2026, but I feel like I'm missing vendors, or maybe that I'm forgetting details. We have booked the venue, caterer includes alcohol, photographer, hair and makeup. We aren't hiring a videographer, DJ, or florist. These, uh, these things we are DIYing. We need to get desserts, but I'm going to order a cake from a small bakery and then do more affordable desserts from somewhere like Costco. We love Costco. Most of the decor is coming from the venue, and I'm going dress shopping this weekend. Other than those items, who slash what am I forgetting? I feel like I'm not stressed enough. Oh, I'm so sorry. That's a horrible feeling to be like, I should— I should not be okay. Like, I should be less mentally stable than this right now, right? The good news is, because you've given yourself plenty of time, you are doing everything on time as far as I can tell. There's not much that I would be worried about at this particular stage. If you want to start thinking about stationery, or if you want to DIY any signage, you can. You have a whole year, friend. Like, I would just say embrace the fact that you're not stressed right now. If you are going through the checklist and you're looking at those checklist items, you are, you're nowhere near finishing some of those because you kind of have to wait on some of those line items until you're much closer to the event. Right. So enjoy it while you can. And you honestly, the long, with the longer engagements, sometimes it'll feel like you're taking a month or two off and you're like, this doesn't feel right. Like I'm supposed to be, Hollywood says I'm supposed to be stressed, like pulling my hair out. This doesn't make sense. If you are not experiencing that, you do not need to invent reasons to experience it. That's why the checklist exists. So go and take a look at that. But it sounds to me like you were doing just fine. If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the Master Plan community over at themasterplanwed.com. I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a 5-star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about sometimes. And until next time, bye guys!