I truly can't write an introduction that will do this week's DJ Diary any justice. Victoria and Aaron were married at Mint Springs Farm on July 4th, 2015. While everyone else was watching fireworks in the rain, Brad Ford was getting to light fireworks on the dance floor with this great group! From choreographed dances, dance circles, and playing Salsa and Island hits, this night was one we all wish we had been able to to attend!
Wow what a great time! Let me introduce you to Victoria and Aaron Zambrano! Victoria's family were primarily from Trinidad while Aaron's family were primarily Peruvian. The beautiful thing about this wedding was the that the guests came from all over. Victoria's father Errol spent the first few minutes of his welcome saying hello to everyone in their native tongue. I have been a part of many multi-cultural weddings but I can tell you that despite how far, geographically, this wedding reached it was one of the most warm and welcoming ones I have been to. So let's talk about this beautiful day at Mint Springs Farm.
Let me begin by saying that I was intrigued that one of the requests was the Hustle. It's been a minute since I've played that. As I walked into the reception barn at Mint Springs I found all the groomsmen holding up a phone learning the Hustle. I knew that this was going to be serious! The ceremony was beautiful and Aaron's dad, Carlos have amazing things to say. We moved into the reception by announcing the whole wedding party to "Forever" and the party did NOT disappoint. They were ready to dance before we even got to dinner. The special songs were "All of Me" for the first dance, "What a Wonderful World" for father daughter and "First Lady In My Life" for the mother son. The part I was really looking for was the open dance tonight. Because of the multi-cultural aspect of this wedding I had a lot of new music to sink my teeth into. Aaron's family helped me pick some great classic spanish songs and I actually had a nice selection of music from Trinidad from a previous wedding.
The music from Trinidad is Island music first of all. It's very diverse but all of it has that Caribbean flare to it. The music ranges from Reggae, Calypso, Soca Music which is a offshoot of Calypso that has more funk and soul to it all the way to some African or Indian rhythms. The bottom line is that these songs feel great and are amazing to dance to. Some of the big crossover songs (artists) you would be familiar with are The Baha Men (who let the dogs out) and perhaps you know "Hot Hot Hot" by Buster Poindexter; which, by the way, was a huge dance floor moment for this wedding. For those of you interested in learning more I'll go ahead and list some of the songs I had in the playlist. I played "M.O.R." or Ministry of Road by Machel Montano, "Mor Tor" by Rikki Jai featuring Machel Montano, Carnival Tabanca by Bunji Garlin, and Dutty Wine by Tony Matterhorn.
The Spanish music was centered very much around salsa. Many of the guests were very good dancers and you could tell that they had been dancing since very young ages. On a sidebar I think that teaching your children to dance is a great way to teach and preserve heritage or culture and I strongly wish more families would do that. Our Spanish selections, while not necessarily being Peruvian, were diverse. There were some slow to mid-tempo salsas ranging up to full on club songs. I'll list a few of these as well. I played La Conciencia by Gilberto Santa Rosa, Danza Kuduro by Lucenzo featuring Don Omar, Bailando (spanish version) by Enrique Eglesias all the way to several songs by Pitbull. Pitbull is Cuban and many of his songs fit in so nicely with the classic Spanish songs. As a matter of fact I chose the last song to be "Give Me Everything Tonight" by Pitbull.
As you can imagine the dance floor was amazing ALL night long. But if I were to pick a few BIG moments I would have to say that the groomsmen pulling off the "The Hustle" was a huge one. As I mentioned they were rehearsing in the afternoon and when it came time to get everyone on the floor the guys did not disappoint and by the end they even had a lot of the guests on the floor doing it with them. This group loved to do dance circles where everyone took turns getting in the middle. One of my favorite moments, although he may disagree with me, was when I got Aaron's father Carlos into the circle. Not letting his fellow "dad" down Victoria's father ran into the circle and the two Dad's tore it up together! There were too many moments to mention them all but I have talk about the end of the night. I asked everyone to join Aaron and Victoria on the floor for the last dance, which as I mentioned was "Give Me Everything Tonight." The floor was PACKED! When the song ended I began to give exit instructions and I'm just getting yelled at and heckled from the floor. These families were NOT going anywhere without one more song. Insert DJ panic moment! I didn't have anything ready. I started asking what they wanted and kept getting a ton of requests, many of them in Spanish. Last second I just threw on "Starships" by Nicki Minaj and grabbed my GoPro. I figured we could get some good "jumps" on this song. They didn't disappoint and as I wound my way through the bodies to get good shots I started noticing that they had formed yet another dance circle but this time I was in the middle of it. NOT GOOD. I play the music....! I tried to wiggle out of it but they weren't having it and I'm heckled yet again. One of the guests even grabbed my GoPro to film me all by myself in the circle. I was trapped but I wasn't going to do this alone. This was NOT my day so I grabbed Aaron and Victoria and pulled them into the circle with me and we jumped out that last chorus.
I can't begin to tell you how much fun this wedding was!
I can't thank Aaron and Victoria enough for letting me be a part of it and I'm honored to have spent that time with two great families.