The "T" Word

Tart? Terrible? Tanzanique?
The "T" word here is trust. There is a lot of trust involved in hiring a DJ for a life changing event such as a wedding. It's the same trust that is involved when you hire a photographer to capture your memories as images for you wedding album. In speaking with a photographer friend, he brought up the subject of insurance. Another colleague had recently taken several memory cards full of photos when during dinner he checked them and realized that one of his cards had failed. Photos and memories now lost forever, due to equipment failure. I recently too experienced a failure, but due to the venue. We blue a fuse due to the decorator having lights on my same circuit, when I was assured by the venue's event manager that everything would be fine and we wouldn't have a problem with it. We were down about 5 minutes, and when the manager wanted to unplug and switch me to another circuit later, I told him 'no'. That at that point in the evening, I was the priority (entertaining the crowd), and not the decorative lighting.

This is where the advice portion comes into this short article...
When you contract with a service or vendor, ask them about back up plans, equipment, and reliability. At the same time, the vendor is trusting you, the client. We're trusting that (and in my case) the check that you wrote us two days ago won't bounce. Even worse: the check you'll probably not remember to give us at the end of the night will be legible and be able to be cashed. I had a recent event with a similar situation. In my contract it states paid in full 48 hours in advance. This should lighten the stress of the evening and the awkward asking for a check at the end of the night.
Make sure you trust your vendor or contractor will be able to perform their duties within the scope of what they can control, and make sure that they won't be ready to pack up their gear before the event starts because they don't believe the client hasn't fulfilled their portion of the agreement. It comes down to rapport, trust, and doing your homework on /with your vendors.

Until next post,
Stay strong and remember "let's talk about it" doesn't mean "no" , it might mean "we can't afford it."


Mr. Plaid