Samantha Trout
Positives: - James typically was good at responding. There were a few times that I felt he was pushing up to the last minute, but overall wasn’t overly stressed as he seemed to get things taken care of. (Mash up for our first dance, answering questions, call to walk through timeline 3 days before, etc.). - Photo Booth had awesome lighting - There were no songs played/genres played we didn’t want played- so that was nice. - lights were awesome. sound quality was awesome - first dance mashup was great- couldn’t have don’t that myself for sure Negatives: - Photo Booth had wrong date in the backdrop as well as “The Hairs” when we specifically told him I was not changing my last name. - app to build playlists acted finicky on more than one occasion which caused a few hiccups - I was not aware we couldn’t add songs on YouTube. The night before he informed me I should pick a different song for my bride spotlight dance with my uncle which stressed me out entirely. I could’ve sworn I had added this a few weeks in advance- but then the app I believe deleted a few selections for this part of the night so we re added the night before. He ended up finding a version of the song that worked, but I wish he would’ve just done that without texting me the night before because that stressed me out as I knew my uncle would be livid if we couldn’t do that specific song- which is a pretty common song btw- Vienna Waltz - The day of, he said his app deleted the timeline. Fine- I quickly ran through it with him at beginning of reception after he mistakenly announced our first dance when we were supposed to announce a blessing to start dinner. I then had my coordinator come up asking about the timeline as he was inquiring again which annoyed me because I had just told him 30 minutes prior, as well as 3 days prior on the phone we walked through everything together. - he dismissed a total of 6 tables out of 20. We eventually started telling people to get their food as they didn’t have any as we were greeting people by tables. - it’s my understanding he sat at my family table and made them feel uncomfortable with a few snarky comments about how loud everyone was being and how he couldn’t make said announcements (yes it’s loud- we had 200 people). I believe he may have went back for seconds before others even got their first plate. - I went through tirelessly to make notes about which sections of songs to play so we could play all the songs we wanted. He advised he would play about 90 seconds of each unless instructed otherwise. This did not happen the night of, causing a number songs on the playlist to not play. - he informed us that our uncle with cerebral palsy knocked into his speaker (and chipped the paint- speaker still working)- and said he wouldn’t charge. My husband and I were both confused as to why he brought it up in the first place in the moment if that was the case and just felt a weird vibe and felt very insensitive to someone with a disability. I understand your equipment is valuable and important- but it’s a chip of paint, which both of us couldn’t even see, and again, why pull us away from our night to tell us if you truly weren’t going to do anything. Felt off. - he called last song 10-15 minutes earlier than our end (11. Last call for drinks was 10:45- don’t know if it was another app error or what). - I had several family members from Danny’s side and mine say he came off rude or uncomfortable vibes on several occasions which didn’t make me feel great. A lot of them were the occurrences I mentioned above. Overall, thankfully, we were very intentional on trying to keep ourselves present and not let minor things stress us out. I don’t feel in the moment it was bad enough to waste our limited time of the day hashing it out live with James. However, some of these things came to my attention after the fact and pushed me a little more to the disappointing side as I had already tried to shove my annoyances that I did have to deal with directly during Thursday/Friday.
