Kaleidoscope Events

Classy Wedding DJ + MC Services

5 Pre-Wedding Detox Ideas

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Enhance your skin and energy with these 5 surefire ways to clean out before your special day. These will assist in driving toxins out and balancing your system. Of course we’re not health advisors, but these have been proven to give your body the boost it needs. As far as length, do whatever works for you, whether it’s a couple days, or even a week. We suggest using a juicer for best results.  

THE MASTER CLEANSE

It is suggested that you drink 6-8 glasses of this while fasting from food. So get out your 8 ounce glass and add these to it:

• Mix 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice

• 2 tablespoons of pure maple syrup

• 1/10 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

GREEN DETOX DRINK

Get that digestive system moving! Mix the following ingredients with water and puree in a blender.

  • 3 carrots
  • 3 kale leaves
  • 2 celery stalks
  • 2 beets
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 turnip
  • ½ bunch of parsley
  • ½ bunch of spinach
  • ½ cabbage
  • ½ onion

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7 Tips for Dance Floor Song Selection

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So many couples wants to know if they should do the “chicken dance” or play “YMCA”. And it’s a good question.  So allow us to set you up for success. Here are seven ways to choose great music for the reception.

(1) Choose a Blend of Musical Styles – Naturally your reception will contain a slew of many different ages. A wise move is to choose songs that compliment these varying demographics so that all guests feel like they are a part of your special day. This is hard because it requires setting aside your immediate desires for those of your guests, but we promise you it’s worth it.

(2) Launch the Dance-Floor With Oldies  – For the first opening dance floor set, consider starting with older songs (Beatles, Chubby Checker, 60s, Motown, Disco) to draw the older guests. This helps release the tension in the room and allows for the upcoming modern dance songs to be embraced.

(3) Use Medium to Low Songs for Cocktail Hour & Dinner Music – Non-Danceable genres like Indie Rock or swinging Crooners are suited well for the dining phase of the evening. This is where conversations are starting and people are getting comfortable. So make it easy on them so they can hear each other and dine in a classy fashion.

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How Many Songs Should I Request?

requestsAs a bride and groom, you should be able to request as many songs as you want. The reason? It’s YOUR party! Some brides create a lengthy list because they’re afraid that the DJ doesn’t understand their preferences. But is it necessary to come up with a list of 50-100 dance songs for your DJ to rely on?

The short answer is, “No.”

Here’s why: when it comes to the dancing, your DJ’s primary job is to 1. Know your tastes and 2. Read the crowd. What songs are you actually dancing to at your wedding? What are your guests dancing to? What are they not dancing to? What songs is grandma tapping her feet to? This is what it means to read the crowd. If your DJ can’t do this, you might as well save some money and press play on your favorite Spotify Playlist.

The number one reason couples feel like they need to make 100-200 requests comes down to one thing– a lack of trust in their DJ.

Let’s approach this from a logistical standpoint. Over the course of 3 1/2 hours of dancing, your DJ will likely play around 60 songs. Let’s assume that you don’t want to pre-script all of the songs ahead of time. So then, what percentage of these 60 songs should be hand-selected by you and your fiancé?

In college, I’d often write a 10 page essay and my professor would always say the same thing- “This is good, but edit it down to four pages.” The process of editing was painful, but it always resulted in a better paper. This is the exact advice we give our brides and grooms.

Edit your 100 requests down to 35. It will allow for all of your “Must Plays” to be heard, but it will also give time for two more important occurrences: 1. Guest requests and 2. Time for your DJ to read the crowd.

With this said, our advice is simple:

Choose a DJ you trust, and give him or her around 35 songs that you can’t live without. Then, let him/her do the rest.

If you’re curious about what types of songs to request, see our 7 Tips for Dance Floor Song Selection to get educated in a jiffy.

2015 Wedding Trends

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One of the interesting things about being a Wedding DJ/Planner is the opportunity to observe the change in wedding trends from one summer to the next. Here are some of the trends from this summer, based on weddings that Kaleidoscope has done:

The Ceremony:

-Let’s start with the ceremony. Obviously, it isn’t a wedding without the ceremony. But, what we have seen this summer is that Ceremony time has been “short and sweet.”  More and more, brides and grooms are telling us that more is less when it comes to the ceremony. They want it to be meaningful and compelling, but they also want their guests to not have to sit through more than 20-25 minutes of Ceremony programming.

-Unity Elements: We see much less of the classic Unity Elements than we used to. Instead of doing the Unity Candle or Unity Sand, couples are opting instead for other, less common options. These are the three things that we have seen more and more of this season: 1. The Unity Knot, 2. The Unity Tree, 3. Unity Wine. As a side note, drinking two different types of wine mixed together doesn’t sound delicious, but the symbolism is nice…

Cocktail Hour:

-We have seen an uptick in the third-site cocktail hour. What this means is that many people are having their cocktail hour in a site that is different from where the rest of the reception will take place. For instance, if your venue is indoors, do your cocktail hour in a scenic spot on the grass outside of your venue. How do you get the people out there you ask? Ask your venue if they can/will set up a temporary bar in the location where you want your Cocktail Hour to be. Just to clarify, this is still at your reception venue, it’s just not inside of the venue where the dancing and dinner will be.

-Activities: We’ve seen a lot more weddings that offer activities for the guests. Here are what we see: Corn Hole, Ladder Ball, Giant Jenga, Spike Ball, and many other random lawn games. Guests like these, and it creates a casual and fun BBQ vibe, if that’s what you’re going for.

Dinner:

-Family Style: 75% of the weddings we do offer Family Style dinner. It is insanely popular in the Barns especially. Beware though, it is often times the slowest form of serving dinner in our experience. The second most popular form of dinner is buffet style, but it isn’t nearly as popular as Family Style.

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A Guide To Radically Lowering Stress on Your Wedding Planning Journey

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Planning the biggest day of your life can be incredibly stressful. If you are engaged, you likely resonate deeply with that statement. But, here are our top five tried and true strategies for reducing stress leading up to your big day:

1. Exercise
This is a solution that you have likely seen before all over the internet, but for good reason. According to Dr. Peter Salmon, studies indicate that “aerobic exercise training has antidepressant and anxiolytic (anxiety reducing) effects and protects against harmful consequences of stress.” One reason that exercise may be avoided is that time is a sparse commodity in your life. But, recent studies also show that if intensity is high, workout duration can be as little as 20 minutes. Check out this article in lifehacker for more on how to have a 20 minute, high intensity workout.

Being a wedding vendor can be stressful as well, as it is incredibly high pressure (we are dealing every week with the most important day of people’s lives). So what I do for my exercise regiment is Crossfit. It takes an hour each day at the gym, but it is the best way that I have found to quickly get in shape and relieve stress/anxiety.

2. Adopt a Sabbath
In the Old Testament, God gave his people a Sabbath rest. It was one day each week when work was not just discouraged, but disallowed. Whether you are religious or not, consider taking a Sabbath rest from wedding planning each week. Devote one whole day to the rest of your life. And most importantly- Don’t think or talk about wedding plans! This is your day to restore balance in your life. Tell friends and family that you will cease to work on the wedding each Monday. Don’t respond to vendor emails (unless it’s critical) and do something active that you enjoy. If one whole day is too much, consider taking one afternoon/evening each week as a Sabbath.

3. Maintain a date night with your fiancé
This goes hand in hand with the previous idea of Sabbath, which stems from the fact that balance in life can quickly erode when one is planning a wedding. Not only does your entire life revolve around your wedding day, but your relationship with your fiancé also can unhealthily revolve around your wedding day. On your weekly Sabbath, consider going on a date with your fiancé each week. The only rule: don’t say a word about the wedding. Seriously, not a word. Wedding plans are fun at first, but after a few months your relationship can literally become poisoned with plans. Make it a priority to have at least one date night each week to restore sanity and romance to your relationship. Your love life is not a machine with the desired outcome of a wedding. But, your wedding is the fruit of your loving relationship with the person whom you want to spend the rest of your life with. Remember that.

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Vision (Part 1 of 2)

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We do so many things in life without a vision, but the things that we do well, we do with vision. At this moment in your life, you are planning a wedding or an event. What is your vision for that event? Can you articulate it in a single sentence or statement? If not, chances are you don’t have a concrete vision for your big day. We are here to help you formulate your vision, but before we do here are three advantages of having a clear vision for your wedding:

1. Success can be clearly defined. If you are planning a wedding, you need to know what your goal is. What do you want people to walk away saying? If they walk away saying what you want them to say, then success is achieved. For instance, many weddings that we here at Kaleidoscope do are “fun” weddings. People leave the wedding saying “that was the most fun I have ever had at a wedding.” That is no accident. When a bride and groom’s vision is to have fun, we specifically alter our entire planning course to promote their particular vision. Other weddings that we do are extravagant. At extravagant weddings, people walk away saying, “that was the nicest wedding I have ever been to… they truly didn’t cut any corners.” One of the weddings that we did recently was very laid back. We altered the entire reception to feel more like a backyard barbecue than a wedding reception. When we have a clear definition of success, it becomes easy to assign metrics to our special day because people actually leave saying exactly what we want them to say.
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Lazy Sunday Recipe (Mean Green Juice)

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Here at Kaleidoscope, we are all about health. That means a lot of fruits and even more veggies. One way we like to get a lot of our vegetable servings is through juice. Here is our favorite juice recipe:
Just wash each of these, then turn on your Breville, Champion, or favorite blender and throw these in there:

1 Cucumber
4 Celery Stalks
1 Apple
6-8 Leaves of Kale (If you buy it in a bag use a couple handfuls)
1 Lemon
1.5 inches of Ginger

Drink this to stay healthy for your big day! :]