This past weekend I had the honor of djing Patrick and Olga’s wedding inside the wonderfully styled Paris Ballroom at the Hotel Monaco in Washington DC. The weather was perfect and the family was festive and ready for a fun time on the dance-floor. Cocktail Hour was held in the Athens Room, and dinner and dancing was conducted in the Paris Ballroom.

After an introduction for the newlyweds, they danced to Cesaria Evora “Besame Mucho (Señor Coconut’s Chachacha Remix)”. They had asked me for an upbeat version of “Besame Mucho,” and we couldn’t find anything that was just right. Olga had came across this version, but the song had a distorted and awkward intro that the couple wanted edited out. So, I custom-edited the song for them, trimmed the whole thing down and it worked perfectly. We actually invited out the whole family out during the first dance, since Patrick and Olga mentioned they might be nervous dancing without having practiced something special, and a lot of the family joined in and it made for an enduring moment. I then played a short set of latin music and then we broke for a warm welcome and a special Irish prayer from Patrick’s aunt.

After dinner and some thoughtful toasts, I started with some slow Motown and worked up the energy from there. The highlight of the night was when they asked for a “Second Line,” which is a New Orleans tradition and involved everyone waving napkins over-head and dancing to “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

After that, the dance-floor was solidly packed until the very last song. The two parts of the set that had the best reaction would be Earth, Wind and Fire‘s “September” and the blend between Beyonce‘s “Crazy In Love” into Amerie‘s “One Thing” into Junkyard Band‘s “Sardines” routine, that blend had the whole place jumping.

It was also nice to get a compliment from the from one of the staff members there, mentioning that “most wedding dj’s don’t get the place going like that.”