Cheap wedding music in NYC: The iPod wedding

When H and I sat down and talked about a wedding scenario that would include more than just the two of us and two witnesses, we came up with two music scenarios

1) an informal backyard wedding with bonfire and sing along (we have a lot of musician friends and sing along are a big thing in my family)

2) an informal wedding in NYC entirely d.j.'d by an ipod, with a karaoke after-party.

We couldn't pursue option 1) for many reasons so we proceeded with option 2).

Bands v deejay v iPod

My father is a blues musician. He has been in bands, more or less, my entire life. I grew up knowing how hard a working musician works to get relatively little pay. I realize that unless most small time bands pick up the occasional wedding, they are at the mercy of the bar gig. Bar gigs come fraught with people skimming off the cover,rock-bottom per-hour pay and various house policies that can hit a band where it hurts. Knowing all of this, and having great sympathy for small-time bands throughout NYC, I chose my iPod. Why? The average cost of a NYC-area event band, at the time they we were looking, runs between 3-6k on a Saturday.

With the decision to not hire live musicians came a new anxiety. "People won't dance". Crowds respond to bands very differently than to canned music.I had recently been to several weddings that were deejayed fairly well and still, no one was really dancing. The minimum cost of deejay in this city is 2K, on Saturday the cost is considerably higher than that. At over 1/4 of our budget, we decided a deejay wasn't worth it.

There might be some cheaper live music options out there. I just didn't find them.

...but how will people dance?

Between reminding us of an iPod's inability to anticipate and react to a crowd, and the machine's 1-2 second delay between songs a few guests insisted that people would want to and would not be able to dance. We resolved these anxieties by simply not providing specified dancing time. We programmed music that people might spontaneously dance to (something that frequently happens at our house parties), and provided them space, but did not declare and after-food dance time. That alleviated our dancing concerns immediately.

People did spontaneously dance, so it all worked out.

Playlists for each event

We knew we wanted a mix of happy songs that our friends and families really liked. This meant, really, a mix of the quirky and classic. We pulled a lot from Motown, musicals, friends playlists, and my Dad's set list. Turns out, we had a lotof the music already. We banned the following:

a) break up songs (sorry Adele. I like 21, though)

b) songs about knowing the bride when she rocked and rolled

c) this might sound strange - but we did not include songs that we dislike....something that bands have discouraged me from doing the past "your guests will like it". Maybe, but I'm the one who will remember it. Frankly, there are plenty of other songs on the list that they like and they get to program karaoke.

With that, we broke the songs into four playlists

1) Welcome/after-food mingling playlist - this list included our happy, slightly louder music, interspersed with songs that people might want to dance to

2) Eating music - slightly quieter, but bouncy music suitable for eating and chatting

3) First dance - our friends asked for a first dance

4) Mother-son dance - because we knew that H's mother would really, really want this.

Since we didn't have a procession down an aisle, we didn't play music during the wedding ceremony or have wedding ceremony playlists.

We made back-ups and a checklist

My iPod had all of the playlists. We couldn't afford to duplicate the songs in total, so H downloaded the first dance and mother-son dance songs onto his iPod. We made a checklist of things we needed to bring to the restaurant and double checked it on the way out the door the morning of the wedding. We decided that if my iPod kicked it, or was lost we would revert to the restaurant's canned music. We heard a little bit of the the restaurant's music as we left. Turns out, the restaurant and H and I had fairly similar taste.

As a tip, bringing your laptop as a back up is always a good plan. My laptop has my dissertation on it, so it stayed at home :)

Coordination

The restaurant had a dedicated sound system for our floor of the restaurant. About a week ahead of the wedding, the events coordinator and I had an email exchange to block out the wedding hour by hour. I gave him the playlist names and the times to switch from one playlist to another. He gave the list to the General Manager and she and the service staff flipped the music on and off as planned.

The restaurant staff was under strict instructions to not let anyone else touch the iPod. Our potential nightmare scenario for an iPod deejayed wedding were

1) in a drunken or nervous fit, a highly opinionated guest would start flipping through songs as they pleased, and disrupt the other guests

2) the iPod would be stolen. Frankly, this latter point really wasn't a major concern, but it's the sort of thing parents tell their kids to be cautious about.

As it turns out, no one wanted to flip through the iPod, so it all worked out.

People danced

Yup. The upshot is, people danced and had a fantastic time. H and I had been concerned that the music would play to a cold room after brunch, so we told a few friends of ours how the day would be organized and asked them to dance if they felt like it. Turns out, we probably didn't need to ask at all. A late brunch, a drink on the way into the restaurant and wine over eggs led to lots of people kicking off their shoes and dancing when they recognized songs. Since our friends and families had made song recommendations, everyone heard songs they knew and loved.

All in all, everyone had a lot of fun. Even if we had had a much larger budget, I would still use my iPod to deejay.

photo credit: Shaun Baker Photography

Especially budget friendly happy hour

I usually don't participate in happy hours for three reasons

a) I don't work a 9-5 job

b) I have s#$% to do

c) I don't find drinking for drinking's sake entertaining or a good use of my limited daily calories

That said, for the first time in 4 or 5 years I went out for happy hour. That's when I came across a bar that had 1995 beer prices.

Japas 55 (55th between Broadway and 8th) is a karaoke bar that runs a half price drink special on all alcohol in the bar between 5-7 on Fridays and Saturdays. That means Sapporo, Heineken - Chambord, if that is what does it for you - is half off. A japanese or chinese beer will run you $2.50.

photo credit: Japas55

....and the bar runs public and private room karaoke and is attached to a restaurant (bar upstairs, restaurant downstairs). I can't attest to the quality of the food, but other patrons seemed to enjoy it. The prices are very reasonable as well.

Despite a killer drink special, nice staff and fairly comprehensive songbooks, the bar is more or less completely empty between the hours of 5 and 7 (it gets very busy in the later hours). This really means that public room karaoke is just about as private as private room karaoke. Best thing is, at this time of day you don't really have to sing or listen to anyone else sing. The traffic is so slow between these hours, that there are long breaks between songs.......so if the only thing you want is a cheap, imported beer in a public place, you can get your kicks for $2.50 and move on to some other activity.

....which is what I did last week.

Trouble with messing up dinner while on a budget

...is that you have to eat it anyway. Since I made an extra big batch, I'll have to eat this slop for two days.

Since my failure in the kitchen has put me in foul humour, I'm going to come straight out and say what is on my mind.

What the hell is the deal with Grover Norquist's image facelift? How is this guy a positive story for any party? If I kept files on every friend I'd had since high school, I would be sent off for psychiatric counseling. What is it with Congress Republicans? Even if he has photos of you in a drunken orgy with circus animals, popping Canadian-sourced Lipitor why the hell would you ever agree to a pledge that

a) leverages the alleviation of the debt ceiling against

b) never raising taxes again, ever

because you risk revealing that you are either

i) a stubborn, economic simpleton

or

ii) a freak that really likes to get naughty with a few Elephants and some dancing dogs

How do you pay down the debt when you limit your income, particularly in a time of high unemployment and against a standard of living being largely set by the economic policies of export economies? Would you, for example, advise your child that in order to pay the money they owe a storekeeper for a large amount of candy, it makes the most sense to earn the same wage over many years - even though the amount they owe for the old candy keeps going up, and the cost of new candy is growing? Clearly this line in the sand is an attempt to trap the current administration in a "read my lips. No new taxes" corner...you know...rather than focus on the possibility that the U.S. bond might take a nose dive and never recover.

....so I think we all know what John Boehner is hiding.

When your "boss" costs you money

I have an unusual committee arrangement for my PhD. I am co-advised by a group of people, and then have additional committee members. That means that every publication, every piece of paper related to my degree has to be passed by a number of hands to be submitted.

I chose the members of my advisement team during a moment of considerable weakness. I think that is why my many advisors have personality traits that I would avoid in real life. Two of these advisors are a particularly difficult to deal with. They

a) are persistently disorganized

b) frequently yell a staff/students

c) manipulate and personally insult staff/students

d) panic and demand your immediate appearance at the drop of a hat

e) reorganize experiments, suddenly change direction and change back

Now, I'm a tough cookie, so at this point I'm willing to eat a,b and c. I'm not willing to eat d and e. Why? Because d and e cost me money.

How does their panic, forgetfulness and lack of organization cost me money

a) I often have to pay for costly reagent shipping out of my own pocket

b) My presence is often demanded within minutes - regardless of schedule - so I am expected to pay for a $20+ cab ride to various offices and apartments....often to discuss and achieve nothing

c) I have had to dig into my own pocket to attend whatever conferences they wanted me to attend. I will have to dig into my own pocket for publications as well

d) a portion of my grant money was spent on their spur of the moment decisions and retractions about experiments....until I put my foot down.

While I was a new student. I did whatever they said. As recently as two months ago, I was spending $100s jumping in and out of cabs whenever they decided I needed to be in a particular place at a particular time to do....nothing. My attitude at the time was "what ever gets me through the degree/job".

I've since had an epiphany.

This is my money. My time.

I will not waste it.

So - here is how I'm dealing with my costly bosses

I say "no"

Yup. When my advisors demand my immediate presence with no forewarning, I simply go when I am able. I don't rush to their offices. No one is bleeding to death. I check for scheduling conflicts. I tell them when I am available and I show up on time. I do not tell them why I unavailable at other times. That provides a foot in the door to discuss why I should be immediately present. Procrastinators, like my bosses, are prone to spreading their anxiety and making deliberate attempts to induce anxiety in others. I simply tell them when I can show up and I show up at that time.

I am not friends with my bosses

I picked this up this tip while working for a particularly invasive boss in 2002. I am happy to see it reiterated on PsychCentral. I do not try to establish a friendship with my bosses. I don't share personal information. I don't tell them where I live. They have never met my husband. Ostensibly, an employee should keep their personal lives private to maintain a professional decorum. I, however, have had an inordinate number of emotional manipulative and abusive bosses, so I keep my private life under wraps in an attempt to create some emotional distance. My husband and my home are my safe place, where I do not have to engage with my bosses if I do not want to.

Once I have a better sense of how a boss operates, I'll start to let information slip and might even visit home etc.. In my experience, few bosses are capable of being both friends and productive bosses. Why risk your own financial and emotional health? There are plenty of other people that I can call friends.

I think for myself

One of the reasons I was susceptible to my advisors panicked back and forth approach to experiments was that I was distracted. I balanced a high teaching load with lab work. When my advisors would ask me to do one experiment that required three days of work and then yell 1 day "where are the results", I too would panic and mindlessly set up experiments. The experiments would fail and more yelling and panic would ensue.

I stopped the cycle by thinking for myself. Every boss/employee advisor/student relationship is different. In my case, I just stopped answering emails while I was still researching and planning an experiment. I certainly considered their advice. My advisors are more experienced than I am. They are very smart and successful people. It's just that our communication was destructive. I needed to find a way to mitigate the destruction until I could produce some useful experiments. It didn't take long. I only needed 3 weeks of carefully calculated communication and thinking/experiment time to produce something that worked. Before that time I had spent almost 16 months in this panic/experiment cycle.

I eventually found a way to cut back on teaching as well, which also helped. Basically, I decided that to think for myself I would have to provide myself with time to think. My success was directly correlated to comfortable time to think and plan. Yelling, panicked emails, teaching - all distractions keeping me from my goal.

I don't take their insults personally

I raced to their offices because I didn't want to disappoint my bosses. I spent $1000s on shipping costs and cabs because I wanted to keep things calm and steady. I could have spent $100 000s, it wouldn't matter. People yell at other people out of self-entitlement. I could have delivered a Nature paper on top of a birthday cake at every lab meeting, my advisors would still yell, lodge personal insults and manipulate. It is who they are as bosses.

It is not, however, who I am.

They misbehave and I refuse to engage. I stay on topic. I don't take it personally.

I am

an auntie.

Congratulations to my brother and my sister-in-law on their little boy!

Curing the budget blues

You know, most days I love budgeted living. I love that I know where our money goes. Finding new ways to save on expenses can be really fun.

Not today.

Today, I am frustrated.

Why?

a) It's insanely hot. Like 95-degrees-in-the-shade-grab-a-shotgun-hot

b) My barometer says the apartment is at 88% humidity

c) I am imagining my friends sipping champagne, using their finished dissertations as foot rests as their lovely and freshly coiffed hair blows in the breeze of their 20 000 btu air conditioners (I'm in dire need of a hair cut)

d) ...and my cheques have not yet arrived home to be deposited into the account I only keep open to service my student debt.

..so not only is my dissertation writing not progressing today, but neither is my financial plan.

The only thing that is going up is my barometer.

I would like to keep a sunny attitude and keep in mind that this period of relative poverty is only short term...except....I've been saying "short-term" since I was 19. That's 16 years of low income and, possibly, delusion. I'm not really a holistic, meditating, heal the world with my sparkling essence type. I really wish I was, because maybe saying "I'm doing this for the good of my future children" would put this all in perspective.

...but...the problem is I'm not doing this for the good of my future children. I mean, I might be now, but I've been financially struggling since my teenage years - decades before I started thinking about children. Sigh....ah, to have a better attitude...

So the way I see it, I have a choice I can

a) be in foul humour over eating pasta for the umpteenth time this month

or

b) I can go for a run when it cools down

so... b)...it is.

(written July 13, 2011)

How to throw a cheap and fun wedding in New York City part 2: The 50 Dollar Flash Wedding

"and kiss"....."hey...where is the license?"

Wedding part II - the $50 New York City wedding

So....remember how I said we had to buy a duplicate copy of the marriage license? Well, during the course of wedding day set up, the license was lost. It just vanished. No one realized this until the end of the ceremony when the officiant and my husband were ready to walk off, and I said "hey guys, we have to sign the license".

"where is the license?"

"I thought you had it"

Gone. It was there minutes before but we never did find it.

It's really the best thing that happened to us.

You mean we have to do this again?

My husband (H) fixated on the mysterious disappearance of the license, largely because the folder that held it also contained a certified cheque for the photographer. I was much less concerned. We called the bank over brunch to put on record that we lost the cheque and eventually H chilled out and got back into the groove.

Come Sunday night it became apparent that we would have to get a duplicate license at the City Clerk's office and get married on Monday.

As we had originally applied for a license that would be used off-site, we would have to be married outside of the City Clerk's office by an outside officiant. Turns out our officiant friend (a lawyer) was scheduled to be in court on Monday morning. This would put him a few blocks away from the City Clerk's office. He agreed to meet us after court.

The Flash wedding

With the officiant squared away, we faced another small hurdle - venue. NYC has lots of laws about the use of public spaces for private events. If you want to get married in Central Park, you have to apply weeks in advance and pay a fee. We had about 2 hours to plan. That's when we decided to have a Flash Wedding.

What is a Flash wedding? It's a spur of the moment break out ceremony organized by a group of conspirators. It's just like a flash mob, with a wedding ceremony thrown in for fun.

We texted two of our friends on Sunday night asking them to meet us at the Clerk's Office. A few of H family members were still in town, so we invited them along. Sadly, none of my relatives were still around. My friend, however, effectively live blogged the event and my parents got to look at the pictures in order.

My wedding dress was completely trashed (someone had actually dropped a full glass of wine down the entire length of the dress). I found an off-white dress in the back of closet. Put my wedding shoes back on, grabbed a cardigan and spare t-shirt and jeans and we were on our way

This 2007 purchase served as wedding dress #2

While waiting in line to get the license re-issued, we decided we would like to get married near an important NYC building.

The text message invite

While H texted some of his friends that work in the downtown area, it struck me - we would get married on Wall Street. No one gets married there. I couldn't think of a place more in need of a little joy.

We quickly decided on using the steps of Old Federal Hall. This might be the most important historical building in New York City. It's the site of George Washington's inauguration and the first capitol building under of the United States under the constitution.

Every person we texted showed up during the next half hour. The lot of us rushed down to Wall street, picking up more friends on the way. Two gals ran off and bought me an impromptu bouquet. We marched down to Wall street with the plan of rushing up Old Federal Hall's steps and getting the ceremony done in under 2 minutes.

Sizing up Old Federal Hall

Our officiant peaked around the corner of the Hall to look for free space. "All clear"....except for a high school tour that was posing on the other side of the steps, press photographers, and bankers...lots of bankers.

Now, this particular area of Wall street is covered in NYPD....so I was a little worried that they might stop us for blocking traffic or not having a site license. We spied about 30 police officers within 50 feet of us - including a van of officers sitting right at the bottom of the Federal Hall steps. Turns out, they had better things to do....like keeping the peace in front of the world's most powerful stock exchange during the worst recession in 60 years.

The ceremony

We jumped up the steps.

Our officiant repeated our ceremony.

We re-exchanged rings.

A crowd gathered below us.....including one of H's cousins who we hadn't realized was in the area.

We kissed and the street went completely wild - everyone, officers included, clapped.

I threw my bouquet into a crowd of tourists.

...and then we signed the license and walked to the nearest post office to post the document back to the City Clerk's office before grabbing a quick lunch at a local pub.

The kiss.....part #2

The best thing that ever happened to us

When H and I first discussed getting married, we had settled on a plan where a few of our local friends, our parents and siblings would show up at the City Clerk's Office and we would seal the deal. We eventually decided to have something a little bigger. When a few relatives started an increasingly intense, unrelenting and, at times, very hurtful campaign for a grand affair, we reverted to this idea repeatedly. As the emails and voice messages about what a tremendous disappointment our wedding day would be continued to come in, I remember thinking "keep calm and carry on". When the anxiety of those relatives hit a fever pitch during the last weeks of planning, my attention frayed a bit and we unknowingly and slightly exceeded our budget.

The day of our wedding I remember being a little sad that my adoption of a "stay the course" attitude actually meant drifting away from our original plan of a simple, spunky, very low cost affair. When the license was lost we gained a little bit of independence, a little bit of excitement. The freedom of our flash wedding somewhat compensated for the hurtful actions those few family members engaged in even 48 hours before. In the end H and I did have the wedding we wanted - spunky, laid back and very low cost.

Happy, happy, happy