Gay & LGBTQ+
Wedding DJ

The script most DJs
run on autopilot

A wedding MC works from a running order. After enough years, that running order hardens into defaults: the bride's father walks her in, the groom waits at the front, the couple is announced as Mr. and Mrs., there's a father-daughter dance and then a mother-son dance, and somewhere near the end somebody retrieves a garter.

Every one of those defaults assumes a bride and a groom. For two grooms or two brides, most of them simply don't apply — and a DJ who hasn't thought about it in advance improvises at the microphone, in front of two hundred people, in the moment. That's where it goes wrong.

We're not going to put a flag on the logo in June and call that an answer. What follows is the actual difference in how the night gets built.

Introductions, without
the default

The introduction is the loudest thing anyone says all night, and the standard phrasing — “please welcome, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Surname” — has three assumptions baked into it: two titles, one shared surname, and an order.

So we ask, at planning, in writing:

• What are you being announced as? Both first names. Mr. and Mr. One surname, two surnames, hyphenated, or neither. Some couples want the formality; some want their names and nothing else.
• Who enters first, or do you enter together? There's no convention to fall back on here, which means it's entirely your call — but it has to be decided before the doors open, because the photographer and the venue are both working off it.
• How is the wedding party introduced? Attendants don't have to be split by gender or paired off. If your people walk in as a group, or in threes, we build the music and the timing around that.

None of this is complicated. It just has to happen on a planning call rather than at the door.

Parent dances and
the traditions that assume

This is the one that most often lands badly. The default is a father-daughter dance followed by a mother-son dance, announced in that order, with that language.

For two grooms, that might be two mother-son dances, or one, or a single dance with both sets of parents, or nothing at all. For two brides, the same question in reverse. Some couples want a parent dance with someone who isn't a parent. Some skip it entirely and would rather the floor stay open.

The failure mode isn't awkwardness — it's erasure. An MC who announces “the father-daughter dance” at a wedding with two brides has just made one family invisible over a PA system. An MC who announces a dance that doesn't exist leaves two people standing.

So the parent dances are confirmed by name and by wording, not by role, and the exact sentence is written on the running order before the day.

The bouquet and garter

It's a gendered bit of business and plenty of couples of every kind skip it now. If you want something in that slot we'll suggest alternatives — an anniversary dance, a last-dance callback, or simply more floor time. If you want the traditional version, you get the traditional version. The point is being asked.

The ceremony,
and who walks

Ceremony audio is a separate job from reception audio, and the processional is where the running order matters most. Whether one of you walks in, both of you do, you come in together, you're walked by parents, or there's no aisle at all — the music has to be cued to what actually happens, with enough length to cover it and a clean place to end.

We get the real order in advance, time the music to it, and run the ceremony on its own system with its own operator. Nothing is carried over between songs and nothing is guessed at from the back of the room.

Names and pronouns, in writing

We're the ones holding the microphone, so a mistake from us is the one everybody hears. Names and pronouns go on the running order alongside the music, and we confirm them with the venue's maitre d' and your photographer during the walkthrough — because the announcement is usually what cues both of them.

Where we
work