A Day In The Life Of A Wedding DJ In Quarantine
A Day In The Life Of A Wedding DJ In Quarantine: Covid-19 has altered our daily and weekly routines, but working from my home office is not unfamiliar to me. What do my day and weeks look like? Strap in and let do a little behind the scenes with DJ Rob Alberti. My “Cat Alarm” normally goes off around sunrise. That’s when my day starts – with banging on my bedroom door when my cat, “Ember” wants to be fed. I’m up, cleaned up and dressed and Ember gets fed as I sit down to check email over a dry bowl of cereal. (never liked milk in my cereal) and a nice mug of OJ. (no coffee for me). Many people think that a wedding DJ just sits around all week and doesn’t work until the weekend. That’s nowhere near the case for us. You see, that 5 or 6-hour wedding on Saturday might actually be 20+ hours of preparation before we even press play on your wedding day.
With our quarantine DJ life, I don’t get out for site visits or networking lunches with fellow wedding vendors. My trips to Home Depot and Costco are a bit rarer and I miss hanging out with family and friends like I normally would be doing in my downtime.
DJ Morning Ritual
Quarantine or no quarantine, before anything I clear my inbox (I monitor 4 different emails for business), check all my notifications from Instagram and Facebook. In about an hour (or by the time I finally finish my breakfast), I’ve responded to all my emails, go over my TO-DO list and calendar events for the day. New wedding quotes are sent out and I’ve relayed any messages to my team that needs attention.
Each morning when I am in the office, I have a few items that need attention each week. Monday mornings I need to upload images from our photo booth rentals from the weekend, send out surveys to all our events. Tuesday, I would edit all our audio recordings. Wednesday, I’m updating staff schedules, handling payroll for the upcoming weekend. Thursday, I’m updating my DJ laptops and I download all the new music for the week. Friday, it’s banking and bills.
I do a quick catchup on the day’s news via NPR and maybe listen to a podcast as I’m working on projects. (Planet Money, This American Life, Agents of Change). By 10 am, I’m normally wrapping things up in the office with my morning routine and it’s time to move on to some of my bigger TO-DO items.
DJ To-Do Projects
We all have projects to do. As an entrepreneur, that list can be daunting. You see – although I have nearly 20 people on staff to run our events, I am a solo-preneur in the office. I handle the website, advertising, scheduling, quoting, bookkeeping and gear prep for all our events. If you call, email or text us – it’s me on the other end of each and every communication.
I might be writing a blog article about one of our recent events, creating new social media content, scheduling Instagram and Facebook posts. I could be working on client playlists, reaching out to upcoming wedding clients to talk about missing details or communicating with our wedding planners about an upcoming custom lighting installation.
I might be working on a new MixCloud dance set and uploading for everyone to enjoy or reviewing newly downloaded music and checking out the Top 40 playlist and new remixes available for the week.
DJ Storage and Projects
There comes a time late morning or early afternoon, that it’s time to head outside and get some real work done. All the gear from the weekend is cleaned, tested and returned to our storeroom. If we have any repairs, I’ll break out the tools and see what I can do.
For our upcoming events, I’ll go through our pull-list and stage gear, lighting, tools and instructions for all my teams. I’ll have piles of DJ gear, string lights, chandeliers, and ladders staged and ready.
A Day In The Life Of A Wedding DJ In Quarantine
Let Us Help You Plan Your Wedding With Social Distancing
DJ Creative Time
If the weather is good – it’s time to get some exercise in on the local bike trail. I like to take a good hour hike (with pen and paper). My earbuds are in, listening to music and letting my mind wander. I’ll normally come back with a page of notes and ideas for upcoming events, more projects to work on and a clear mind to get back to work.
Quarantine or not – the local bike trail is pretty empty most of the time during the week so I can do a little social distancing and still get my creativity flowing. That’s what sets us apart from the rest of the side-hustling DJs that are not full-time committed to the success of your wedding like we are.
DJ Load Up For Your Wedding
We are not the kind of wedding DJ that loads up a couple of speakers into the back of a Toyota Prius. We’ll normally roll into an event with a utility trailer and truck filled with all the gear (and full backup gear) for your event. Maybe we need to have 3 sound systems, one for your ceremony, one for your outdoor cocktail hour and the main system for dinner and dancing. Maybe we need a set of uplights or one of our photo booths. Whatever your need – we have the room to do things right.
We’ll load up our vehicles and do a double check of all the gear needed before it’s time to head to your wedding reception. For our lighting installations, we might have it scheduled for the Thursday before your wedding day or Friday morning and a strike on Sunday or Monday with a 2 or 3 person crew assigned.
DJ After Your Wedding
Our job is not over even after the last song is played at your wedding. You and your guests will be long gone, but we need to strike and load up our gear and our drive back to the office might be an hour or longer.
Ember will keep an eye on me as I write our blog articles, edit photos and put away gear from the weekend. She’ll remind me to check our Facebook ads and Google analytics so we can get ready to start all over again for next week’s wedding clients.
Before image with empty tent
What Do You Do Now?
Contact Pat today to learn about our pricing and availability for your upcoming event.
We offer wedding DJs, Custom Lighting Design, and Photo Booth Rentals.
Describe your wedding in 3 words so we have an understanding of what you are looking for.
Send us an inspirational image of what you are trying to create for custom wedding lighting.
Tell us the style of music that gets you up and shaking your booty.
Let us guide you through the planning process.
Our stomping grounds are The Berkshires and Hartford CT areas, but we travel from Hudson Valley NY to Boston MA, and Southern VT to the CT Shoreline and Newport RI. Get started today.
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