60’s soul and modern hip hop wedding, University Club, San Francisco, CA. Photo: Will Khoury
“Jamie is THE BEST!! We couldn't be happier with selecting him as our wedding DJ. The entire experience of working with him was great. He spent lots of time familiarizing himself with the type of music and vibe we were looking for, and the evening was absolute perfection. I also appreciated his ability to cover everything from the ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, and DANCE PARTY! His collection is diverse (we had everything from Willie Nelson to E40) and he was totally committed to making our vision happen. It also helps he is a totally cool person, accessible and communicative.” - Yoyo Chan
”Jamie was the perfect DJ for our wedding. He has a vast knowledge of music and really cared about the feeling we wanted to present through music. He met with us before the wedding to get an idea of what we wanted and what our guests would like to hear. He delivered above and beyond our expectations, played music that we loved and his timing and professionalism were top notch. Jamie even worked to customize his system to work in our unique venue. Most importantly, Jamie is professional, he cares, and knows what he is doing, which meant he worked independently and didn't take time out of our busy day. The end result was everything we could have hoped for.” - Kyle Destiche
An Elegant, High Class Wedding at San Francisco’s University Club
So this one is a funny story. We live in San Francisco down the street from one of the main skateparks in the city and above a shop called Dirty Pigeon that sells streetwear and skate stuff to all those guys at the skatepark when they aren’t hosting art shows and hip hop parties and having everyone in town over to watching the 49’ers lose the Superbowl.
It turns out that Kyle is best buddies with all of our downstairs neighbors and that whole scene of skate dudes, including our buddy Ron, who someone told me is related to Snoop Dogg? I’m not sure if they are pulling my leg. In any case, we were pleasantly surprised to find out we had large amounts of friends in common, not beforehand, but literally at the event.
An Extremely Fancy Venue
As you can see, it’s a pretty nice venue. Maybe the fanciest in town? Certainly among them. And Yoyo is a fancy lady. She literally works for the Warriors, if I remember correctly, and her friends were real deal, ballers. Like actual NBA players.
So already you’ve got a mix of people that’s more like the Romeo and Juliet of friend groups than your average two different sides of the family with different tastes. We’ve got two sides of the family here, but they can all hang. The challenge of this wedding was splitting the difference between the upscale venue and the down to earth guests, while still keeping the whole thing both suitably fancy and suitably accessable.
A Vocal Jazz Ceremony
We went with 40’s vocal jazz before the ceremony to keep things formal. 60’s slow jam soul for the cocktail hour with special emphasis on Otis Redding “Sittin on the Dock of the Bay” type shout out’s to the location and famous skate video tracks everyone from the park would remember. We went to town on 60’s soul and girl groups for the dinner, knowing that when we got to the dancing part we could really drop the hammer on new hip hop.
A Bay Hip Hop Dance Party
For the dancing we went with all modern hip hop and R&B with emphasis on Bay Area tracks like G-Eazy “No Limit” for the opening part of the dancing (“If I hit it one time I'ma pipe her, If I hit it two times then I like her, If I fuck three times I'ma wife her, It ain't safe for the black or the white girls”) and classic Bay Area hip hop tracks for the special after hours.
I’m an expert at classic hip hop and actually have all the Bay stuff on vinyl from one of our old club events, but I learned all the new stuff custom for these guys and now I’m great at that too. We just got a car, and I’ve been literally driving around writing down songs on my phone. So if you want it to sound like Rick Lee the Dragon from KMEL, I’ve got you.
Big Ups & Shout Outs
Special thanks to the University Club of San Francisco for allowing me to run cables out the window from the ceremony and dancing on the fourth floor down to dinner on the third floor.
Special thanks to the ladies at Michael Daigian Floral Design for giving me a pep talk at the event about how I should really be doing corporate product launch and branding events. The flowers, it goes without saying, looked amazing.
Special thanks to Yoyo and Kyle for being so great and entrusting me with this extremely fancy venue. I think we crushed it!
Also, special shout out to Ron from Dirty Pigeon for getting the party started.
Peace!
Ceremony Songs
Prelude
Willie Nelson “Always on My Mind”
Processional:
Paul McCartney “Maybe I’m Amazed”
Recessional:
Stevie Wonder “For Once in My Life”
First Dance:
Requests:
Herbie Hancock “Watermelon Man”
Al Green “Love and Happiness”
The Spinners “I’ll Be Around”
Venue: University Club / Photographer: Wil Khoury / DJ: Ceremony DJs / Florist: Michael Daigian Floral Design
