Indian & Greek wedding at Reinstein Ranch with traditional dances, Bollywood, 60s & 70s pop and soul music
“Jackie was our wedding DJ and did an amazing job! Our choice of music was quite unconventional, including pop, bollywood, party greek, and traditional greek music. Despite being unfamiliar with bollywood and greek music, Jackie was able to work with us and pull off an amazing night which all of our friends enjoyed! Several of our guests commented on how smooth and fun everything was--would 100% recommend!”
— Dimitris
The Great Bollywood vs. Greek Eurotrash Dance-Off 2022
The wedding of Shibani and Dimitris in June of 2022 was by far one of my most memorable weddings of that summer, and one of the biggest and most exciting tests of my skills as a wedding DJ. The event was held at the Reinstein Ranch outside of Livermore in the East Bay, where I had the pleasant surprise of finding that the site coordinator/planner was none other than Callie Hattabaugh (with founder of TLC Event Coordination Kirin White) who I had worked with just one week prior down in Carmel Valley! It’s a small world in the land of weddings, and it’s always nice to see a friendly face that you recognize.
In our pre-wedding talks about music, Shibani and Dimitris won me over with their warm and friendly personalities, and their love of classic 70s David Bowie and ABBA. They also requested a lot of modern chill/downtempo Indian music that I would describe as “indie,” which I later found myself listening to on my own personal time and enjoying a lot, particularly by the artist Prateek Kuhad, who did their choice of processional “Oh Love.”
How to choose a wedding recessional?
Shibani and Dimitris knew that they wanted the Prateek Kuhad track for their processional, but they weren’t totally sure what they wanted to do for the recessional. Fairly often, my clients ask for some help in selecting these special songs and this is a service that I feel confident in providing. Usually how I do it is this: I ask my couple to start a list of music, whether that is a Spotify playlist or even just an email thread of ideas, that doesn’t have to be in any order. These don’t necessarily have to be ideas for, let’s say the recessional, such as the case here- they just have to be music ideas that the couple likes. I go through all the songs and pick out a few selections that I think would work well as a recessional with a few different vibes; maybe one is more solemn, one is more party-time, one is more personal, etc., and then I let my clients choose from there. This way, it still feels collaborative, and not like I’m imposing my own musical ideas on anyone. I’m taking the ideas my clients already have, and just making some suggestions about what might work best and letting them decide.
For this event, we decided on a cute mix of starting with the opening of “Helpless” from the soundtrack of “Hamilton” - the part where they sing “Oh I do I do I dooooooo...” and segueing into “Signed Sealed Delivered” by Stevie Wonder, which is a recessional par excellence.
Not your typical wedding, not your typical wedding dance party
The wedding itself was lovely and went exceptionally smoothly, but I’m going to go ahead and skip ahead to the dance party, because honestly that’s the part of the night that I can’t wait to tell you about. Shibani and Dimitris’ wedding was unusual in that the majority of the guests were not American. Shibani hails from India and Dimitris from Greece, so although there were a handful of Americans at the event, the vast majority of guests- both friends and family- were from either of these other countries. What this meant, (besides some pretty stunning sarees and henna tattoos) was that the selection of music for the night was not going to be your typical American fare. Thankfully, the newlyweds had prepped me well.
First, they had given me a specific playlist of traditional Greek songs to be played in order, during which time the wedding party would perform some fun “hora” type dances. This was not only a really nice nod to Dimitris’ culture, but since the dances were not very complicated, and were circular (not partner dances), they felt inclusive and encouraged even the guests who had not learned the steps beforehand to join in.
Second, the couple gave me an extensive list of early/mid 2000s Bollywood and (to use Dimitris’ own description) “trashy” Greek music (I would call it “eurotrash club pop”). So extensive, that at first I thought I wasn’t going to need to utilize even a fraction of it. But I dutifully downloaded almost everything, just in case, and gave it all a cursory listen. Little did I realize at the time that my audience wasn’t going to be the usual bunch of Americans…
Why have a vinyl DJ at a wedding?
I definitely played some of your typical American wedding jams at first. We heard Earth Wind & Fire. “Cecilia” by Simon & Garfunkle. The Kinks. Queen. Shibani and Dimitris’ first dance was “Little Bitty Pretty One” by Thurston Harris, which is a great, swinging ‘50s era song that they had prepared a few entertaining moves to. A lot of the American music that they requested I had on vinyl, which made things extra fun- It’s always a bonus to be able to proudly display the LP sleeve while I’m Djing, and it makes a super cool visual for the guests. I know this is also part of what sets Ceremony apart as a wedding DJ company: We’re vinyl nerds!
Why have a digital DJ at a wedding?
But as the night continued, I could tell that the predominantly non-American crowd wanted predominantly non-American music. So it was time to bust out that Bollywood and Greek pop! As I mentioned, I had given all this music a listen, but I certainly wasn’t very familiar with it. So here is where using Serato as a Djing tool became absolutely essential. Although I come from a long tradition of Djing purely vinyl, I learned to use digital music software when I started doing weddings. These days, I try to use a combination of digital and real records whenever possible in my wedding gigs. While vinyl Djing might come more naturally to me, Serato actually has a number of pretty cool functions that allow for some pretty cool ways to think about understanding Djing. For one, the software can analyze songs and tell you what key they are in and how many beats per minute they have. While we might understand “bpm” (beats per minute) to mean how fast or how slow a song is, it does not actually translate that way. I’ll save a deeper explanation for another blog post, but suffice to say that these two things, the bpm and the key, were what saved the day for me at Shibani and Dimitris wedding, and helped me translate Greek and Hindi into my American brain.
First of all, I decided not to play a block of Indian music and then a block of Greek music, alternating thusly. It would be a greater challenge, but if I could pull it off, wayyyyyy more fun, if I could alternate song for song. When it comes to Djing, I’m up for a challenge! So I picked a good starting point, and away we go… Bollywood is just a great crowd pleaser in general: It’s built for dancing, and literally often has a dance designed to go along with it. Sure enough, the first song I picked caused everybody Indian amongst the guests to rush the stage and start dancing with emphatic arm gestures. Now it was time for Greece to have its turn. Using Serato’s tools, I identified a track in the same key with a similar bpm. Cueing it up in the headphones, I listened to the intro, and found that it would blend together nicely with the Bollywood number currently on deck. And sure enough, when I brought up the fader, I also brought up the Greek crowd, who now rushed forward to show off to their Indian friends that they, too, could dance their asses off!
I repeated this trick throughout pretty much the rest of the night, playing music that I had little-to-no familiarity with. All I needed was the key, the bpm, and the ability to cue up the intro and make sure that it wouldn’t sound jarring. It didn’t hurt that all the music that I was selecting from came from roughly the same era, and although the music was coming from two decidedly different cultures, they were both styles of music designed to make you dance.
Uniting cultures, friends & family through dance music!
It was absolutely one of the greatest thrills of my Djing career to watch wave after wave of Indians versus Greeks rush the dance floor to exclaim with pleasure when they heard their favorite songs and show off their best dance moves. And after a while, those waves started to mix together: Indians were dancing to the Greek tracks, and Greeks were dancing in Hindi… just like the newlyweds were uniting these two cultures.
The last song of the night was, appropriately, “Take a Chance on Me” by ABBA. I’m glad I took a chance with how I played the dance party at Shibani and Dimitris’ wedding; it turned out so much more amazing and memorable than if I had played it safe and stuck with what I knew already.
— Jackie
