Good Morning Sunshine!
The alarm blasted in my ear and awww man, did I want to stay in bed another 10 minutes. It was one of those overcast day where no matter how good you sleep the night before, you still want to continue laying in bed.
I knew I only had about an hour and a half to complete all my morning tasks. Load the truck with all the DJ equipment, take a shower, wake up my 3 year old daughter (who was also suffering from the I-don’t-want-to-get-up-yet disease also), get her to brush her teeth, fix my 4 month old daughter’s bottle, put her in her car seat, fix the oldest’s hair into a pony tail, grab my laptops and folder, get my DJ attire into it’s carrying bag, sit my girls in the truck and drive off to drop them off. (Breathe!)
The oldest goes to school and the youngest to the babysitter. The oldest has to be at school before 7:20 am so that she can catch her bus to her Pre-K school. It’s closer for me to take her to the elementary so she can catch a bus to her school. If I don’t leave the house by 7:00 am, I have to take her directly to her school, which in turn makes me late for work. So I take her to her waiting room inside the elementary school and as we are walking she is happy and ready for the rest of the day. And as always very cheerfully says “Good Morning!” to the lady in charge of them who is also very happy to return the happy morning wish.
The day before, Thursday, I left my tuxedo at the cleaners, on Gessner and Hammerly, and and I was positive they would have it by Friday during lunch. As you can guess, it was one of those days and when I drove to pick up my tuxedo, during my lunch hour, they told me that the machine was broken and that they would have my clothes ready by 5:30 pm. Well that’s not good, I had to be at my event at 5:30 pm which is off Clay and Hwy. 6 (30 mins away with traffic) to set up the equipment for the wedding.
Ok, what do I do now? Since it’s a Friday, I am dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt. Not the way you want to see DJ at a wedding. I look in the truck to see what I have in my tuxedo carrying bag and to my surprise, it’s no where to be found. OK, should I start to panic now or leave work and go home to pick up the stuff?
That morning, on my way to drop of my daughters, my power breaks decided to stop working and at that time I panicked and pulled into the closest gas station, which is off 249 and Antoine. I called my mechanic and he told me it would be the break booster or something in that area. I opened the hood and saw one of the vacuume lines cut in half. My quick thinking reminded me that I had my DJ equipment in the truck and in there I carry good ol’ trusty duck tape. Taped the hose, and the breaks felt like new. But, I knew this was only a temp fix.
After hearing that my tuxedo was NOT going to be ready, I headed down Gessner to buy the necessary parts to fix my brakes, even though they were functioning correctly with the temporary fix. They did not have the exact hose I needed because it was molded into a certain shape. But they had a hose of the same diameter that would fit into the two openings it went to. I put it on, and brakes did not work as they did with the temporary fix. More frustration, added to my lovely day. I ended up just driving it like that. Why didn’t I just put in the temporary fix back, Long story short: because I tore it up thinking I was not going to need it.
OK, so now I have no clothes, no brakes and no idea what to do… that is, until my wife calls and says she is going home to get some stuff because my oldest daughter wanted to spend the night at her grandma’s. Lucky break #1. So I tell her to pack my business suit, a white shirt, and I had already placed my shoes, ties and bow tie into the bag. She drove that to me at work and I was feeling good except for my brakes not working correctly.
My wife drops off the suit, I leave work at 4:20 pm, drive to the cleaners and they have my Tux ready, I drive from there to my event and it traffic was extra heavy so I am starting to get nervous about getting there after 5:30 pm. So I drive up to the place right at 5:20 pm and find out that there was going to be a band playing the following place at the restaurant and they wanted to leave their equipment there. Not good.
The Wedding Reception
The place is a restaurant called Flor de Cuba, and it gets my recommendation because the food was delicious. Very tasty and the service there was top notch.
It was a small party of about 50 people tops. The couple arrived from Clear lake, during traffic hours, at about 8:00 pm when they were scheduled to arrive at 7:00 pm. But, it being a Friday, there were only a couple of guests at 7:00 pm and like I said traffic was extra heavy.
We were able to do everything as planned, but not at the times we scheduled.
It was supposed to run:
| 7:00 | Arrival of guests |
| 7:10 | Arrival of Bride and Groom (Juan and Brandy) |
| 7:15 | Grand Introduction |
| 7:20 | Buffet Lines are formed |
| 8:00 | Cake Cutting |
| 8:05 | Best Man’s Toast and Thank you speech from Juan and Brandy |
| 8:10 | The First Dance: I Do (Cherish You) by 98 Degrees |
| 8:15 | Open Dancing |
| 9:00 | Bouquet and Garter Toss (we actually only did a Bouquet Removal and Toss) |
| 9:20 | Honeymoon Dance (Bachata Songs) |
| 9:25 | More Open Dancing |
| 10:50 | Last Dance (Same as first Dance) |
By the time we were ready to do the bouquet and garter toss we were back on schedule. The low guest count and a smaller amount of initial dance time allowed us to get back on track.
Wedding Music
Juan requested that the majority of the music be Bachata, then Merengue, Salsa and Reggaeton and little to no Hip-Hop. So I took that into consideration and it actually turned out that the guests wanted more Merengue than Bachata. It was a small group but everyone was dancing all night long. Even the waitress got invited to dance by some of the guests.
The garter removal was fun and all the men in the room got up and participated, so that was very successful. Of course I proposed that the Juan, the groom, remove the garter, without using his hands, and he was glad to try it out. Brandy, the bride, let out this smile that I had never seen on her. The guests enjoyed and clapped loud as he raised the garter in success!
By 10:45 Juan was ready to go and enjoy the rest of his nigh. ;)
Needless to say it was a long, but fun day and everything worked out great. As always there were some issues that needed to be taken care of but, I received thanks from the Brandy and Juan and a few of the guests, so it was a successful wedding. All this while wearing two different type of Stacy Adamns’ shoes. Use your imagination, but most of the guests never saw the different shoes.
Happy planning.
—
Francisco H. Perez
“Simply Frank”
Your Bilingual Hispanic Wedding DJ