Spencer Weddings | Sacramento, Folsom, Roseville DJ Entertainment

On January 26, 2011, I received an email in my inbox letting me know that Spencer Weddings and Entertainment has been selected to receive the prestigious WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards 2011 for Wedding DJs! You might have seen other vendors posting this award as well, but what does it really mean?

Recognition for the Bride’s Choice Award is determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 750,000 WeddingWire newlyweds. My very own past clients are among those that shared their experiences, their memories, and the moment they considered “most fun” during their reception with the world. In addition to my past clients that have posted to WeddingWire, you can read feedback surveys from many other couples on my Feel The Love page.

Receiving the 2011 WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Award means that I stand among the top five percent of wedding DJ professionals in the WeddingWire community, representing quality and service excellence within the wedding industry. Awards were given to the top wedding professionals across twenty service categories, from wedding ceremony and reception venues to wedding photographers, and were based on the overall professional achievements throughout the past year.

“WeddingWire is honored to celebrate the success of the top-rated wedding professionals within the WeddingWire community,” said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “With the annual Bride’s Choice Awards program, WeddingWire has the unique opportunity to recognize the best wedding professionals across the US and Canada. We applaud Jason Spencer of Spencer Weddings and Entertainment for his professionalism and dedication to enhancing the wedding dj, creative planning, and entertainment experience last year.”

Personally, I am honored to have received this award two years running for a variety of reasons. If for no other reason, I (officially) just started the boutique entertainment service model in January 2009 after fourteen years in the wedding industry. That means that in both years I was eligible to receive the award, my couples have voted me among the top wedding entertainment in the Bay Area. And it’s true – there are over 284 local listings in the Wedding DJ category, and just 37 of us received this award.

Thanks again to all of my clients, vendors, friends, and family for their support since the very beginning of this venture. I look forward to many years of creating magic and memories!

Be sure to visit my WeddingWire Storefront today:
www.weddingwire.com/SpencerWeddings

Recently, I decided to do the time warp again and see the Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS) at The Retro Dome in San Jose. Now before you think I simply attend parties for rich weirdos, I still saw great movies like Airplane and Naked Gun in this same theatre. Oh, and who can forget the Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory with one of my favorite actors, Gene Wilder.

Many moons ago, when I was in high school, I was in theatre (theatrical lighting design to be exact), and would go with a group of friends to see RHPS on regular Saturday midnight showings at Camera One in San Jose. That’s where I was introduced to the audience participation element of the show. For those unfamiliar, this is where you interact with the movie by one of three means:

• Saying certain lines at certain times during the movie
• Throwing a variety of props during the movie
• Being a shadow cast member that acts out the film on stage

It’s the first one that prompted me to write this post. It’s been nearly 13 years since I last saw the film in a theatre, so I had prepared myself to encounter new participation elements, specifically the lines spoken by the audience during the film. That’s when I was able to relate this experience to my own line of work as a wedding master of ceremonies.

In Peter Merry’s book, The Best Wedding Reception…Ever!, he says one of the roles a wedding Master of Ceremonies should have is keeping “the attention focused on [the bride and groom] instead of stealing the spotlight.”

I couldn’t agree more. And while several audience members were not the MC for the evening, they certainly had their way of stealing the spotlight. They would simply trample everyone else around them that would be speaking their generally accepted participation lines.  These individuals had their own, often extended, versions of the lines and would speak VERY LOUDLY to get them heard. Hearing one individual force his lines so much, it brought me to another part that many wedding industry greats have been preaching over the years: Polish.

Sure, anyone can speak scream the lines. But can that person deliver the lines?

I’ve been making announcements as a DJ since 1995. However, it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I learned what it means to really be a wedding master of ceremonies.  It’s more than the grand entrance of the wedding party or introducing the first dance. Anyone can do those things, but it’s how you do it that makes the difference.

Mark and Rebecca Ferrell lead a Master of Ceremonies workshop where they teach people how to rehearse and then rehearse again and again. Many of my closest colleagues have taken this workshop more than once.  Everyone that takes it realizes that they didn’t have a clue what they were doing in the past. I look forward to Mark and Rebecca returning to the San Francisco Bay Area for future workshops.

I’ll end on with a few notes. First, make sure that you take the time to meet with the individual that will be your MC and DJ the night of your wedding or event – Don’t just make the decision over the phone! If possible, see some raw footage of them performing (remember, it’s a “no-no” to ask to see them at another wedding). Second, ask the person you are meeting with what kind of training or education they have – then listen for things that make sense. Also see if they mention continuous education, such as Mobile Beat, ADJA, or Wedding MBA.

And the world can be a better place…

It’s the end of another holiday season, and while I failed to see one of my favorite holiday movies on TV this year (Trading Places), I did get to see Scrooged. At the end of the movie, Bill Murray gives quite the speech. The full scene is above, by the important parts are transcribed below [starting around 5m 47s in the clip]:

“It’s the one night when we all act a little nicer.
We…we smile a little easier. We…we…share a little more.
For a couple of hours we are the people we always hoped we would be.
…
And if you give, then it can happen, the miracle can happen to you.
It’s not just the poor and hungry, Everybody’s gotta have this miracle!
It can happen tonight for you all!
…
It can happen every day! You’ve just got to want that feeling!
And if you like it and you want it, you’ll get greedy for it.
You’ll want it every day of your life! It can happen to you!
I believe in it now.
I believe it’s gonna happen to me, now. I’m ready for it!
And it’s great. It’s a good feeling.
It’s really better than I’ve felt in a long time.
I’m ready.”

What this means to me

As I embark on my third year running a solo-operation and reach my sixteenth year as a wedding DJ and Master of Ceremonies in February, I look back at all the things my wife and I have done to try and make the world a better place. One of those ways is through donations to charity. Spencer Weddings and Entertainment is happy to be a wish granter as part of Wish Upon A Wedding. They granted 13 wishes in their first year – amazing!

However we make sure to donate to other non-profit organizations as well. We generally try to pick ones that mean something to us personally. Having that emotional tie make the money seem like so much more than a donation – it feels like that miracle might happen for someone else. Here are the organizations we pledged to this year:

RAFT – Resource Area for Teaching

RAFT was founded in 1994 here in San Jose, California and believes that hands-on teaching is the best way for our children to learn, so we provide teachers and community groups with creative tools and materials to promote hands-on learning in science, math, technology, and art. As many of you know, my graduate degree was in education media design and technology. The mission of RAFT is very near and dear to my heart, and many of my local friends working in education utilize their services every school year.

VH1 Save The Music Foundation

The VH1 Save The Music Foundation’s core mission is to restore instrumental music education programs, ensuring that every child has access to a complete education that includes the benefits of music instruction. Having grown up playing a variety of instruments, I understand the power of how music can connect students to a more authentic learning experience, regardless of the curriculum focus. Rhyming design and musical methods can enhance memory retention of all sorts of topics.

Acterra

Acterra is one that my wife found while volunteering with with the Taproot Foundation. They are based locally in the San Francisco Bay Area, and are focused on creating innovative local solutions for a healthy planet. One way that you can volunteer your time and become involved is to take part in habitat restoration in a preserve or watershed project.

Surfrider Foundation

I suppose that technically this one belongs to my wife too. She got her start in non-profit while working for ocean conservation, and became good friends with people at Surfrider. The foundation serves to protect our oceans, waves and beaches.

Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption

114,550 U.S. children are in foster care, waiting to be adopted. They have been removed from their homes as victims of child abuse, neglect or abandonment and are left without a family. The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption works on behalf of these children, because we believe every child deserves a permanent home and loving family. I have a feeling we will be giving to them again, but more on that in a future post.

Did I forget to tell you?

I’ve been hiding a secret for the last forty days. It was the Saturday before Thanksgiving when my mom, just 61 years old, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Yeah, that’s a nasty one. She wasn’t there three days and they already had started chemotherapy cocktail treatments. Mom spent Thanksgiving in her hospital room. A month later, she spent Christmas there too. She did a bone marrow biopsy twice in just under two weeks. Yesterday morning she had a transfusion, and then after thirty-eight nights spent in the care of wonderful nurses and doctors just a mile from her home in Gilbert, Arizona, Linda Spencer — my mom — was able to go home.

Today she has two doctors appointments. Next week she will return to the hospital for a second round of chemo. We’ll do it all over again, and a total of four rounds will be fought with the deadly cancer. The goal, of course, is to destroy all the bad cells and get the good ones growing again, sending the disease into remission.

The main reason I’ve hidden this secret for so long is because I don’t need a daily reminder from my nearly 600 friends on Facebook, in phone calls, or via email that I’m 700 miles away and can’t really visit her. She actually has told my bother and I not to visit. Still, I call her every other day, and quickly learned that you have to be among the first three calls of the day or she becomes frustrated repeating information. The days when I miss that window, I call my father instead.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Traditionally, the twelve days of Christmas would begin on December 25th and run through January 5th. Some people like to start on December 14th and run through Christmas Day. The remainder of this story is about the latter, and the real reason for this post.

One day, a big basket of goodies arrived in my mom’s room. It had popcorn, movies, candies like you might find in a theatre…it was the real deal. The card that came with it simply said: “To Linda and Ron, From Your Friends”

As the days continued, a new basket would appear, each with a different set of treats. Each one must have been valued at $35 or more. Regardless of the contents, the card was always the same. “To Linda and Ron, From Your Friends”

There were so many gifts at one point – some that my mother wasn’t even allowed to have in the room – that my father took them home. Everyone at the hospital felt that they must know some really great friends, because her room was certainly the most decorated with all the gifts and cards that arrived. The only problem was that my parents didn’t know who their “friends” were.

Then on the morning of Christmas Eve, the department manager at Lowe’s in East Gilbert asked my dad if he would be visiting my mother in the hospital. He said that he’d love to tag along and say hello, and that if 2pm would be okay. That’s when some of the puzzle pieces began to fit together.

Sure enough, at 2pm on Christmas Eve, there were about fourteen employees from my dad’s store that appeared in the hospital. Bear in mind, my mother had only met one of these individuals. Her name was Chris (she works in Installed Sales), and they only knew each other from playing bingo in the casinos, and even then it was a casual acquaintance.

Apparently it was some years ago that Chris and her family were having a rough time. They started receiving gifts for twelve days before Christmas. They never knew where the gifts were coming from until about five years later. A member of her church accidentally let it slip during a conversation.

It was Chris that went to the her manager, the store manager, my dad’s direct manager and others to see if they wanted to be involved. Everyone that she mentioned it to knew my dad, even though he only works part time at the store, but everyone wanted in. They only needed twelve people, but several individuals doubled up for certain days because there was that much interest in helping out. Bear in mind, this wasn’t Lowe’s, but employees that work there. And it all started with Chris.

Thank you, Chris. And thank you to all the employees that helped my parents get through this first step a little easier.

We lost my mom’s sister to diabetes (among some other complications) just 15 months ago. We are not even close to out of the woods, and the doctors said that if the chemo doesn’t work and we can’t find a marrow donor, we would have about 3 months to 5 years. It sure put a few things into perspective for me, and makes what seemed like big issues seem just a tiny bit smaller.

The bottom line

Love your family. You don’t know how long they will be around to hear you say it. There’s also still a lot of good people in this world. Hopefully you are one of them.

Have you seen this video from William Castleman?  It’s a wonderful time lapse of 2010’s Winter Solstice lunar eclipse.  I’m actually quite glad to come across this video, because here in San Jose, California, it was cloudy – just enough to lose site of the moon when it was ready to peak at full red glory.

Why was I happy to see this video?

While total lunar eclipses are common (the next will be on June 15, 2011), having a lunar eclipse on the date of the northern winter solstice is incredibly rare.  Geoff Chester or the US Naval Observatory researched a list of eclipses going back 2000 years.  He says, “Since year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 DEC 21… Fortunately we won’t have to wait 372 years for the next one… that will be on 2094 DEC 21.”

Whew.  That’s good to know.  Hopefully I’ll make it to 117 years old to see it.