Alex & Patty – Yep! we got married!

Plan Your Wedding 101 – Part 3

1. Choosing Your Wedding DJ

There’s no doubt that you need music for your venue!! No matter it’s ceremony or reception.

Fortunately I have my ceremony is at Toronto’s City Hall. It provides the essential music with their CD player. ha ha.

And for my reception, I hired Brian from High Five Entertainment as my music DJ of the night.
We had an initial meeting with Brian before the wedding to find out his style and music taste. He provides us a sheet of music recommendation,  a professional contract and a spec for his equipment. Around one month before the wedding, I researched the songs and picked the ones I liked and forward Brian the list of the songs.

I also asked Brian to be my MC for my reception as well. He did a good job and remained professional till the end of the night. (You don’t want to get someone who’s drunk half way through the night!)

So here are few pointers when finding a good DJ:

• Ask for several references
• Ask what type of music they would recommend for certain age of audience. (My guests are all around late 20s)
• Does the equipments (e.g. Speakers), are they suitable for the size for the venue? And is all the equipment digital based?
• Will DJ provide wireless microphone and any special lighting?
• Will DJ also act as MC if requested?

Usually the rule of thumb is you want to find someone who is legit and easy to work with. Because if they ruin the music, they pretty much ruin the night too!

related post:

• Wedding DJ

2. Wedding Cakes

Our wedding cake!

Cutting wedding cake is one of the most important event for your wedding night. Wedding cake also acts as a centerpiece for headtable (or dessert table).

I did quite a few of research to find a cake artist that will make my cake happen. I am very specific on the design and the taste. I found Cindy from The Wedding Cake Shoppe to make my wedding cake.

There are few places that I looked up for wedding cakes. Except a lot of them are not available for my wedding date

Cake Design

Not sure what you want your cake to look like? Well, again, either you get a white cake, or get a cake that the color that goes with your color theme.

Go to Flickr and type in “wedding cake” in the search box, it should show you what people have done for their cake.

When choosing the cakes, it’s better that you do a cake tasting first before you decide. And then show your cake artist the photos that you want your cake to be. You can customize it however you want. It’s your cake that you are paying for. My cake was mango flavour on the top tier and then mocha for the bottom tier.

I ordered 40 person cake because I am not having the cake as main dessert dish. (Our total guest count is 60 ppl) We have a dessert table after the dinner. Now I regret for what I did. I shoulda just make the cake as the dessert dish because no one can eat that much! There end up so much dessert leftover! argh.

My cake was 2 tier and for 40 ppl for $220. So look around and taste the cakes. And do this early because not all the cake artist are available for your wedding date!

3. Final Expense

Everything in wedding all comes down to money, just in case anyone is interested to see my final expense sheet. Please go to my fully disclosed wedding expense post here. Planning wedding is not that difficult, all you need is to take time to research and get the best bang of the buck. And if you have no time, then just hired a wedding planner. lol

related post:

• Plan Your Wedding 101 – Part 1
• Plan Your Wedding 101 – Part 2

Tags: Toronto Wedding & Bridal Resources, toronto wedding blog, wedding, wedding resources