Joanna and Andrew contacted me in January 2017 with the intention of hiring my evening services for their wedding at The Mere Golf Resort and Spa in Knutsford. I had an initial conversation with Joanna where we spoke of what she was looking for. She wanted an upbeat party where their guests could dance the night away. In my usual conversational style we began talking about personal music tastes. It turned out Joanna and I were have a very similar passion, not just for music, but for the crafting of words. Joanna is an English teacher in a secondary school. Having spent 12 years in teaching myself we connected on the common ground of our love of stories through song and poetry. We spoke about Disturbed’s viral cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence and I opined how I both loved and hated it. Loved it for it’s incredible musical composition but hated it for (in my opinion) it’s heavy handed treatment and misunderstanding of delicate subject matter (sceaming the words “BUT MY WORDS LIKE SILENT RAINDROPS FELL!!!!!” always strikes me as quite ironic).
We came off the phone and Joanna contacted me the next day to tell me she wanted to discuss having me at her wedding for the full day. The initial conversation had so resonated with her we knew there was a deep bond between us. Consequently Joanna and Andrew upped their budget and purchased my full day package which meant I was with them from the ceremony to the final dance.
I learned It Must Be Love by Madness for their walking down the aisle song and complimented this with other songs of Joanna’s choice. Generally speaking most brides and grooms are happy to leave song choices for the ceremony with me. Such was Joanna’s love of music that she hand picked them herself, changing her set list several times to get it exactly right based on what she wanted but also with advice from me who has the experience of how wedding ceremonies work.
We moved into the drinks reception before kicking off the evening. It was a pleasure to host a packed dance floor with upbeat tunes, everyone up and dancing from the very start. I had learned My Destiny by Lionel Ritchie for their first dance and Joanna even joined me on stage a little later to sing Rotterdam by The Beautiful South. You can see a little of that footage in the video above. I also DJ’d for them into the night before finishing at 12am.
Joanna and Andrew were so pleased with my services that they left me a long 5 star review on facebook. Joanna also took the time to leave a video review for me which is below.