It was a rainy night in Seattle as I arrived for Joe and Carey’s Lake Union Cafe wedding reception. I was referred to them from another couples wedding that I DJ’d in 2012.

Lake Union Cafe Wedding 2014 – Joe and Carey

Their 200 expected guests started arriving to the Lake Union Cafe around 3:45 PM. The wedding reception was scheduled to start at 4:00 PM but since I usually arrive annoyingly early for events, sound and lights were ready to go and so was the upbeat, top 40, classic rock mixed with a few oldies – background cocktail hour music.

I invited all the guests to take their seats around 4:45 PM for the bride and grooms grand entrance. They were introduced to “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve with loud cheers and immediately opened up the dinner buffet.

After the wedding party and family tables were invited to go through the buffet, there were 21 remaining tables of other guests numbered 0-20.

Lake Union Cafe Wedding Interactive DJ

Since I was given the go ahead to send tables through the buffet in an interactive way, I decided to randomly pick table numbers. The guests really go into it offering bribes and doing other crazy things to get me to release their table next.

The dinner background music stayed with the same mix/style as cocktail hour music but more songs from slow to mid tempo range were played.

There were four toasts given at the end of dinner with the final toast ending with a fireball shot for everyone that wanted it.

They chose to not go with the traditional cake cutting ceremony instead inviting guests to grab ice cream bars from an ice cream cart that was brought in.

Guests were also invited to take part in the photo booth.

Dancing also started a bit with the music transitioning from dinner music to “lets get ready to party” music. The dance floor hadn’t officially opened yet as we still had to do the special dances so I didn’t play all the crowd favorites yet.

About 30 minutes later, it was time for Joe and Carey to enjoy their first dance together as husband and wife. I cleared the dance floor and the lovely couple took to the dance floor with “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head” by Dean Martin. The parent dances followed which they did together to “The Way You Look Tonight” by Frank Sinatra.

Lake Union Cafe Wedding Dance Party

There was no bouquet or garter toss on the agenda so the rest of the night was a dance party.

Bon Jovi, Black Eyed Peas, Journey, Macklemore, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga were just a few of the many different artists that were played. There was even a special time when a request for the Notre Dame Fight Song came on as part of a tradition that the Groom and his groomsmen were a part of in college.