Last night at Horsley Towers in Surrey we signed of for Christmas with a phenomenal night at Heather and Dan’s wedding reception on our first visit to this venue.

Groom Dan who had booked in very late on after being let down by another company had previously indicated that they would like to get things started off as early as possible so with this in mind we arrived half an hour earlier at 4pm to get familiar with the venue and set up. I always tell people its important to end on a high and sometimes with an early start the night can be too long, so I overloaded Heather and Dans playlist with endless floor fillers to suit their music tastes for this marathon night. Little did I know at 630pm that the strong winds outside would be nothing in comparison to the storm that was about to blow through the Charles Barry room for the next 5 hours.

For DJs reading this access into the Charles Barry room is reasonably straight forward, you can park around the back of the building, there are about half a dozen steps and your more or less into the venue with the function room nearby, Wedding Breakfasts don’t take place in this room so you can set up as the meal is taking place. Its a lovely room with a fireplace and two alcoves you can uplight and a blank wall which we used a rippling water effect light on, the disco sets up at the far end in front of the curtained window, this also looks very effective with a couple of uplighters. There is a parquet dance floor included as standard in the room and a couple of cocktail tables. Its a bit of a blank canvas that you can really dress up and smoke can be used in very small doses, I’m glad to report there is no sound limiter in this room.

So with the first dance brought forward half an hour the first dance took place just before 7pm introduced by resident Toastmaster Steve Eggleton as the new Mr & Mrs Callaghan took their first dance to “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers.

And from that point onwards it was literally the quickest 5 hours I’ve ever experienced on a night that included 80s Pop, 70s Disco, R&B, Soul, Dance, Garage, Rock n Roll and Motown …there were plenty of guest requests throughout the night to add to Heather and Dan’s playlist, the whole evening just flowed perfectly from start to finish with one of the most animated crowds I’ve seen to date …and all on a long Sunday night 2 days before xmas eve when sometimes people may have held back. Not tonight, this WAS their Christmas Party !

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Spirits were high right until the end, the evening ended with a trio of the couples requested Xmas songs plus the grooms favourite Wyclef Jean track …before the night ended on a huge high with Frank Sinatra. We even sneaked in Van Morissons “Moon Dance” as a little encore before winding it all up.

Some of the many highlights for me were the grooms reaction to hearing Wyclef Jean, the couple who decided to sit in the fireplace for a photo opportunity, the girl who thought it would be really funny to remove my hat then grab the microphone and start a duet with her mate to “Rhythm is a dancer”, my spare “flat cap” doing the rounds amongst the crowd (although the girl that started that said to me “who actually has a spare cap” hat – she’s probably right lol) …and just the general vibe amongst a great group of people.

I don’t think I’ve seen so many fun loving females in the same place at the same time driving the party and cutting their shapes but there was one particularly animated character that stood out as a definate ringleader (left) …she owned the floor and there was never a dull moment …although if shes reading this I should take the opportunity to apologise for mincing my words about your height when you came up to request “Greatest Day”. Its not the first clanger I’ve ever dropped and suspect it won’t be the last, so moving swiftly on and eager to divert away from that I made sure Take That was the next one and was relieved to hear her shout “I love you” in appreciation of the play, looks like I got away with that one 😀

Could honestly blog on about this one for ages but to keep it straight to the point and simple it was an awesome night and a pleasure to get the job after the couple had been let down in November, it was most definately a case of “anothers mans loss” …without a doubt a huge highlight of 2013 !

All that remains is to say a final huge congratulations to Heather and Dan and all the best for Christmas, 2014 and the future.

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