Robin and I started a wedding blog to talk about the planning, partying, and aftermath. Robin's supposed to be posting there as well but I guess we'll see. Either way feel free to go and check it out.

I'll have some new stuff posted up on this site shortly.

Labels: wedding

Robin and I drove up to Framingham, Massachusetts on Saturday and we’ll be here until Friday. We have several reasons for taking the trip, first-and-foremost being the fact that Robin’s sister is having another baby on Tuesday. So we get to see the baby along with our nephew/godson Shamus – always a good time. We want to take him to the aquarium for the first time and take him to get his Halloween costume this year. I’m thinking I’m going to push him towards The Flash because it’s an easy superhero concept for a 20-month-old to grasp: The Flash runs really fast. It doesn’t involve utility belts, healing factors, or super strength – just run.

We’re also doing some wedding planning while we’re up here. We met with a DJ on Saturday night and he was a super nice guy but he seemed like the kind of person who does a “whacky” morning show on the radio. The good thing is we’re pretty sure that he’ll do whatever we tell him to do so if we go with him we’ll be able to at least fake the type of DJ we’ve been looking for.

Today we’re meeting with a caterer and on Wednesday we’re getting our engagement pictures taken care of. The caterer situation is insane – the one we really liked sent us a proposal that was around $55 per person for food (within our budget) and then an extra $100 per person for staff, linens, silverware, etc (about $100 out of our budget). The person we’re meeting with today seems to be within out budget but, as a foodie, his food choices hurt my soul. I’ll live…

The wedding thing is getting scary – especially with this whole “economy is rapidly falling apart” thing. We were trying to be frugal going into it and now we’re tripling our efforts on the savings front. Who knows how it’s going to go, anyway – for all we know we could be in a depression within a year and we won’t even have the wedding; at least not the picturesque one we’re going for now.

This economy – I’ve tried to create several posts on it but there’s simply nothing funny about it. It’s just a mess.

Anyway, that’s how my week is looking. I imagine there will also be a lot of beer involved (although I did pick up a couple of bottles of Rhone from the Vin Bin, a fantastic wine shop in Marlborough). There will also be a ton of keno and scratch tickets. Every bar we go to in Framingham has keno in it and I’ll play twenty-dollars in numbers as soon as I get in. On Saturday I wound up winning $15 dollars over cost between Keno and scratch cards so I’m already ahead. I’m sure I’ll end up a couple of bucks down by the time the week is out. We also want to go to Foxwoods to check out the new MGM Grand so that’ll certainly put me out a couple of bucks unless I have a blackjack run like I had at Atlantic City this past summer (I put $100 in and pulled $700 out).

Anyway, that’s really all there is to do in Framingham. The nights are particularly boring – I usually find myself in bed by ten which is about 3 hours earlier than I’ll go to bed on a weeknight, let alone a weekend. Hopefully I’ll get some writing done while I’m out here, I have several pitches I want to work on and several scripts I promised folks I’d read.

That’s all – sorry for the boring “here’s what I’m up to” blog post. Better stuff (in theory) on the way.

Labels: rambling, wedding

Push/Pull Product Development and Marketing is one of my favorite subjects, believe it or not. It's a pretty simple concept: some products are generated and marketed as a result of customer demands and some products and generated and marketed that the customer doesn't even know they need yet. The former is a pull strategy and the latter requires a push strategy. I'm a big fan of the push strategy, not because I think I can develop something the public will soon realize they need but because I feel like the public will buy anything you tell them to.

Anyway, now that you're an expert in push/pull strategies I'd like you to ponder a question - are Wedding DJs the result of a push or a pull?

Robin and I are currently looking for a DJ for our wedding. My first choice was djBC but he no longer does weddings. Since I didn't really have a second choice, we decided to scour the World Wide Web for Boston-area wedding DJs. We discovered something pretty early in our research - a Wedding DJ is a guy that wears a vest and a bow tie, is bald or balding, uses tacky inflatable props, and has an extensive playlist that includes Kelly Clarkson, the Electric Slide, and "It's Raining Men." A Wedding DJ is essentially someone who, long ago, decided that they'd never make it in the club scene, on radio, or in the studio and, instead, they'll do the same tired routine day-in-and-day-out at weddings. It seems like a soulless profession, where a script is generated on Day One and forty years later it's being performed for a cool grand. It's not a bad life, don't get me wrong, but if it was my life I'd have killed myself years ago.

But we're not here to shit on the Wedding DJ - we're here to talk about push-pull strategies. So, honestly, looking at the Wedding DJ - is it push or pull? Does the Wedding DJ exist because the customer demands him or does he exist because he feels the customer needs him? I honestly don't know where I stand on this issue - I can't live in a world where a Wedding DJ is needed nor can I live in one where people are convinced they need a Wedding DJ. I'm thinking there's a new paradigm in play here, and that's Lack of Information Strategy. If every advertised Wedding DJ acts, looks, and performs like every other advertised Wedding DJ, how would the customer even know what options are available?

Well, I know what I want in a DJ for my wedding. I want a guy or girl that's young and doesn't own a bow tie. I want someone that's working his or her ass off to break into the club or mix tape or record production scene and doing weddings on the side to pay the bills. I want someone who would REFUSE to play that "Slide to the left now crisscross song" as a matter of artistic integrity. I want someone with Sam Cooke in their library but not just "You Send Me", I want "That's Where It's At" to close the night and some Soul Stirrers "Jesus Gave Me Water" mixed into the cocktail hour. Where is THAT guy (or girl)? Who's marketing that person? There's a pull right here and, I imagine, as my generation marries off that pull will grow - who's meeting us halfway?

I know these people are out there someone and I know they don't even own the Chicken Dance or "I Will Survive."

Labels: editorial, music, wedding

Robin and I have been thinking about the wedding for the past couple of months but this weekend I think it's safe to say we finally started planning it. We went up to Boston to scout out locations. We checked out The Barker Tavern in Scituate (which, in Mass, is kind of sort-of pronounced "shit you it" and we couldn't stop saying "shit you ate"), the BU Castle in Boston, and Stonehurst, The Robert Treat Paine Estate (or, as I like to call it, The House of Paine) in Waltham.

Each hall had it's pros and cons but The House of Paine was all pros with one exception...price.

Ugh.

But I think we both loved the place way too much to let the price get us down, we'll just have to make adjustments elsewhere.

At any rate, here's a flickr photoset of the three places for you to love and enjoy.

www.flickr.com Eximious Pictures' Wedding photoset

Labels: wedding

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