Everyone who loves a wedding loves the reception – it really is about bringing everyone together to celebrate! As wedding entertainment for guests becomes an increasingly important part of the day, Radio Faversham stopped by to chat to Sean at the recent LK Wedding Fayre.
Clickable link to full recording of Sean’s chat with Radio Faversham.
And for a quick read, here’s a Q&A blog summary of the chat:
How about an intro to SOS Entertainment?
Sean explained all about the business:
‘We’re pretty much a one-stop shop for all entertainment. We started out just DJ-ing a good 10-15 years ago, providing just a DJ service.
But we were getting more and more people asking us, oh do you provide dance floors? Do you provide photo booths? So I thought, well I’m just going to go out and buy everything customers need! So now I’ve got nine photo booths, dance floors, sweet carts. We’ve got inflatable domes, gaming domes, bouncy castles – you name it, we’ve got it all.’
Q: Everybody gets really excited understandably about the sort of formal part and the actual wedding ceremony, but the party afterwards is just as important really, isn't it?
Sean:
‘Yes absolutely, there’s more to it than just the music and a lot of people now want to think of the whole day. So it’s a whole event rather than just a DJ for the evening. What they’d normally do is go to another company for outside entertainment but they don’t need to. W e’ve got dart football, a massive 15-foot dart board where they kick footballs on. We’ve got footpool, foozball tables, we’ve got everything. So it’s not just entertainment for the evening, it’s the whole day.’
Q: Has that changed over time with weddings, do you think? Where it's gone from just the afternoon and then a party afterwards, to something that lasts all the way through?
Sean:
‘Yes – people want more and more! Like I say people want photo booths, they want extras. We’ve also got a new audio guest book so you don’t come in and sign a little bit of paper in a little book anymore. You go into a full-size British telephone box, pick up the phone and record them a message.’
Q: How do you find out what the sort of trends are in the wedding world? Because they must change quite a lot ... it's quite a fashion-related business isn't it?
Sean:
‘Yes, absolutely. So we’re online all the time watching China and America. We’re always on socials as well, as the trends start in China.
That’s where we found out about the audio guest books and entertainment extras like that. Our digital dancefloor that we’ve got, it cost us about £10,000 imported from China. But there’s very few in the UK that have it – people will have your standard white sparkly dance floor but we’ve got a digital one. So for example, you can have during your first dance – it will all sparkle like all the others but your name will go across the dance floor at the click of a button on the laptop. It will do all hearts, shapes, patterns that go to the music. So yes, you’ve got to be one step ahead of the competition.’
Q: Social media's been around for a while now but you know platforms like Instagram, that visual impact of somebody's wedding, that must be really important to the people who are getting married?
Sean:
‘Absolutely and that’s where the photobooths have all advanced as well. It used to be you’d get a print out, a copy of it and that one goes in the album. Now it’s all going digital as well; we’ve got three other ones that are purely just digital. So at the flick of a button the photo will be on your phone within seconds, as soon as you take the picture it’s on your phone then they can share it across their platforms on all their social media.
We’ve got one that does the 360 videos. They stand on it, the camera will go around the couple, take a video and then within seconds they can share that to all their friends and family.’
Q: Quite often people have a day where the weddings may be quite early on and then you've got a while to wait until the reception in the evening. I suppose some of the wedding entertainment for guests you provide is good to help keep people entertained and happy during that space between the service and the evening?
Sean:
‘Yes, absolutely and that’s why they like using us because it’s a one-stop shop. They can do everything with us, they don’t have to deal with six different vendors they could just deal with me. Like our crazy golf, people love that at the minute and that can go inside or outside. So, like you say they might have the ceremony in the morning but then the couple’s got to go off, they’ll have pictures to do, sign the register. But what is everyone else doing? They’re just standing around. So, give them something to do, the mini golf, the dart football, foozball, anything that we’ve got.
We’ve got a cosy dome five meters wide with two 50-inch plasmas in there that you can play Playstations, Xboxes – everything you can think of to keep them occupied during the day and we’ll do it.
*Our cosy dome doesn’t have to be set up for gaming, it can also be configured as a chill-out zone for weddings!*
We turn up sometimes like 8am and we won’t get home till like 3am [the following morning]. What we like to do is set everything up in the morning before the couples and everyone turns up. Like last Friday, the party didn’t start till 7pm but we knew that they were getting married in the venue having their reception there, the meals there. So we thought rather than us bringing through a load of dance floors, with flight cases and everything, what we do is we turn up nice and early so we were there at 10 am. We didn’t charge them extra, it was just a nice touch to them when they turn up at 12 o’clock, everything was set up and we’re not going to disturb their day walking in with all our kit and setting it up.’
Q: I suppose another thing you could be quite good for is kids who maybe weddings aren't something that a lot of them are into - you can provide that thing to keep them entertained and happy and keep them out of everybody's way almost? And anything for the older folk as well?
Sean:
‘Yes, we start from the little ones, with baby soft play; ball pits, little climbing frames, safety mats. We can even provide a child care supervisor to look after them as well. Then if they get a little bit older, we’ve got arcade machines with like 2000 games on it all wedding themed.
Also the Gaming Dome can go inside or outside, 5m with Playstation, Xboxes – keeps all of them occupied all day long.
The dart football is normally for the older ones or the footpool but yeah you normally find that in the gaming dome you get the groom, the best man and all his mates in there as well!
Q: Now you still do the old school DJ, which you have to have at every wedding? Being a DJ at a wedding, there’s a skill to that, isn't there - you can't just put on Spotify and hope for the best?
Sean:
‘Absolutely, so we always advise the couple to send us a playlist, so they’ll send us that but it’s also knowing what to play thereafter. You’d never just play the whole list, just hit play and that’s it, not at all! You’ve got to then work what will go with each tune, see that what the people are up and dancing to, it’s just ever-changing.
I’ve got a hard drive there with nearly a quarter of a million songs on it, so I’ll watch what’s working and read the crowd, it’s all about reading the crowd. It’s all on the hard drive now, just the size of your phone so rather than lugging records back in the day in or CDs, being a wedding DJ is all digital now.’
Q: You must get a good buzz when you see a crowd of people having a great time at a wedding that you've been part of?
Sean:
‘That’s what I do it for! I love it, love seeing the smile on their faces, the messages they send you the next day thanking you.
I do videos for the couple as well. I’ll go out while they’re dancing because the photographer’s normally gone home at that stage, so I’ll do an extra thing. I don’t charge anything for it, I’ll just do it on my phone, go around get these nice little photos and videos of them whilst they’re dancing, enjoying themselves, letting their hair down. The next day I’ll just ping them across to them. Our couples love it – a nice little touch that they get from me that they weren’t expecting and that they wouldn’t have had because the photographer’s already gone home. It’s all these little thoughts we give them that go the extra mile.’
Q: And you provide such a wide range of services that people can fit into their wedding planning don't you, with new things that people haven't seen before?
Sean:
‘Absolutely – on our website we’ve got like half a dozen wedding entertainment package deals starting around £1,000 upwards. But everyone wants a bespoke wedding, so we then literally have a list of probably about 80 items that they can choose from. They can say right how much for this, this, this and this – and we’ll work them out a package deal for the whole lot!’
Q: When people are planning their wedding, how do you engage with them? Do you go around and have a chat with them, how does that how does that work for your part in planning the wedding?
Sean:
‘Well now, they can come to our office down in Headcorn, couples can come down there and we can even bring some of the items out so they can see them. So if they ask, what’s a shot wall, what’s dart-football, we can get them out into the warehouse and show them. We can sit down, have a consultation with them, go through music they want plus music they don’t want, and go through prices.
It’s always good to meet them but prior to that, or if they live too far away, we can always Zoom meet or video calls like that. But yes, it’s always good to sit down and have a face-to-face cup of tea with them and get to know them.’
*An office is in Headcorn but Sean’s service area is throughout the South East, including Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Essex and London*