I don’t often toot my own horn, but when I receive a nice bit of recognition from a respected industry resource, it is nice to let everybody know about it. Here is what the people at Wedding Wire have to say about me:
WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding Marketplace, is excited to announce Mike Mahnich – DJ & MC – Voice – Music has been selected to receive the prestigious WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2012 for DJ & MC Services!
The esteemed annual awards program recognizes the top local wedding vendors from the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism within the wedding industry. While many industry awards are selected by the organization, Mike Mahnich was selected based on his stellar reviews from past newlywed clients.
Mr. Mahnich is recognized as part of the top five percent of wedding professionals in the WeddingWire local vendor community, comprised of over 200,000 wedding professionals throughout the United States and Canada. The Bride’s Choice Award recognizes the best local wedding vendors across 20 service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers, based on their overall professional achievements throughout the past year.
“WeddingWire is thrilled to honor the success of the top-rated wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community,” said Timothy Chi, CEO, WeddingWire. “Since the launch of the Bride’s Choice Awards™ program four years ago, thousands of outstanding wedding professionals have been recognized by the bridal community for their supreme service and dedication to the wedding industry. It is with great pleasure that we congratulate Mike Mahnich for continued professionalism and commitment to enriching the wedding planning experience for engaged couples.”
We are happy to announce that Mike Mahnich is one of the very best DJs within the WeddingWire Network, which includes leading wedding planning sites WeddingWire, Project Wedding, Brides.com, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Weddingbee. We would like to thank our past clients for taking the time to review our business on WeddingWire. Thanks to their positive feedback we were able to receive the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ for 2012.
For more information, please visit our WeddingWire Storefront today at http://www.weddingwire.com/biz/mike-mahnich-dj-mc-voice-music-dallas-fort-worth/b83025bca064bf08.htm.
To learn more about the Bride’s Choice Awards™, please visit www.WeddingWire.com.
Thank you so much to all of my past brides, grooms, parents and friends of my happy couples for all of their confidence and continued support of me. I am so pleased to have been a part of more than 700 wedding receptions over my career and still love every minute of it! :^)
I recently saw a bumper sticker on the back of a construction vehicle that said “Excellence has to be planned in advance”. I like that. As a full-time, professional wedding DJ & MC, I often hear from people in other professions about how great it must be to have my weeks off and just work one or two days on the weekends. But that is not how things work if you want to be the best at what you do – especially for weddings.
The way I look at things regarding wedding clients is that it is my job to help my brides & grooms get what they want on their wedding day. To me, I see it as a one-time chance during a 4-6 hour window to help create an atmosphere, a mood, and to facilitate several once-in-a-lifetime moments - all according to the vision that my happy couples have in their minds. It would be foolish and presumptuous of me to think that I already know what a bride may want at her wedding. After all, she may have been dreaming about this day since she was a little girl!
Fancy lights for a fancy night!
The only way I can know what she may want is by getting to know her. And the best way I know to do that is through a series of phones calls, face-to-face meetings (usually at a Starbucks – yum!), listening to music together, picking out lighting colors, emailing, texting and finally putting things in writing in my reception and ceremony planning guides. My brides & grooms can rest assured that on their “day-of” I know what they want and will not forget it because they have seen the written documentation.
This planning may take two, three or four times as long as the actual event, but it is usually spread out over several months. I can meet my clients during the regular business day. But because of my clients’ schedules, I will usually meet people after they get off work at a place that is convenient for them. Since I work all over Dallas & Fort Worth, I may find myself driving for an hour or more one-way just to have a 40 minute meeting. But that is what it takes to make sure that my brides & grooms are taken care of. Brides and grooms are usually super-busy with planning their wedding and often times they are in the midst of wrapping up a college degree or moving (or both!) – should I make them come to me and meet me when it is convenient to me? Do I limit how much time I give to my brides? Happily I say – NO!
It is true that some couples take more time than others, but people want to know that I can be there for them to answer questions and bounce ideas off of. This is what separates the true professionals from the part-time hobby DJs. The irony is that the difference in price is not much more than if you found a “wedding factory” anonymous DJ through a big nationwide company. Plus the value I bring to the table far outweighs that difference. Since I have been a part of hundreds of wedding receptions over a long period of time, I am able to help brides, grooms, and their parents figure out how to get what they envision. Sometimes that means that I provide things that will save them hundreds of dollars elsewhere and eliminate overcharges by other vendors for unessesary expenses. You just will never get that level of service and personal touch from a part-timer or a big company.
We had fun at Winstar across the Red River.
I am not writing this to simply toot-my-own-horn, but because I think it is important to help distinguish what constitutes excellence in a crazy profession such as mine. Anybody can buy a sound system and play pre-recorded music, but in my world as a Professional Wedding DJ and Master Of Ceremony, the actual execution of the ceremony and wedding reception starts from the first phone call months in advance and does not end until the the truck is packed at the end of your wedding night. :^)
Come see me play with two of my bands on 11/23/2011 at Lone Star Legends in Garland, Texas. First up is my rock & roll party band, The Metroplexers featuring our new line-up with guitar player, Randy Howard. Lead singer, Larry Porter has moved from guitar to bass.
The Metroplexers are opening for my other band, Streetlight People - The Music Of Journey. All Journey – All Night!
Cover charge is only $5.00 for an entire night of music and fun. Hope to see you there!
Join me at the CHICS organization’s annual fundraiser for Family Place. We will be at the Park Lane Ranch on October 15th with dinner, dancing, awards, raffles and more!
Come join the CHICS at the 5th Annual Gala and Fundraiser in support of The Family Place. Enjoy fabulous dining and fast-paced musical entertainment and dancing at beautiful Park Lane Ranch. Live and silent auctions will offer amazing deals on jewelry, spa, sports and getaway packages!
Your $60.00 ticket at the door gets you a great night of fun, friends, and dancing, an excellent meal and helps save lives!
Fort Worth, Texas has many beautiful places to hold your wedding event. The Marquis On Magnolia, the downtown YWCA, and the Ashton Hotel are all great. But the past two weeks in a row, I have found myself at one of my favorite places - Belltower Chapel & Garden located at 3712 Wichita Street.
There are many things to like about Belltower. For one thing, it is one of very few places to have a “church” wedding on a Sunday. The vintage architecture has been gorgeously restored, and the stained glass is fantabulous! It is conveniently located off of I-20 and there is excellent security and parking. You can have indoor or outdoor events. The staff is super-friendly and really care about their brides & grooms. I could go on and on…
So, sure the place is unique, clean and beautiful. But what really sets the place apart is the reason they are in business. This facility is in business, not to make money from brides on their wedding day, but to help children and needy families through a charitable non-profit called ACH. Here is a quote from their website:
ACH is a nonprofit organization that has been protecting children and preserving families in Tarrant County since 1915. ACH operates a variety of both residential and outreach programs designed to protect children from child abuse, neglect and family separation, or help them heal from these tragedies when they do happen. Each year, ACH reaches more than 3,100 children and families through direct program enrollment and touches the lives of 8,000 more through vital safety outreach and education programming. ACH serves nine North Texas counties, with primary operations based in Fort Worth.
The giving heart and spirit of this organization is exemplified by the caring staff at Belltower. Their staff is filled with certified wedding planners who give expert recommendations for outside vendors. They screen their recommended vendor list to make sure you are going to get the best-of-the-best.
It should be noted that not every wedding disc jockey carries the type of liability insurance that Bell Tower requires (I do!), so always check with your vendors to make sure that they are able to meet the requirements needed to serve you at this facility.
For more information about Belltower Chapel and Garden, contact Wendy Abrams by email or call 682-432-1140. You will love it!
The bell is rung by each newly-wed bride & groom. Fun!
Inside look at the stained glass.
This is the Chapel at Belltower Chapel and Garden.
Part of being a well-rounded DJ & MC (announcer too!) is helping to promote brand awareness, venues or products on location. I have been involved with too many to count with brands like Pepsi, Budweiser, Ritz Crackers, KCSC, Crate & Barrel and more.
This past weekend, we had a fun event at Macy’s NorthPark Center that featured Justin Bieber’s fragrance “Someday“. The event happened to coincide with Tax-free Weekend in Texas, so lots of kids and parents were out in the mall.
Justin Bieber’s representatives were there and captured some of the action:
UpLights and GoBo Monograms are some of the most popular options for wedding receptions and other special events. They can be customized for your personal tastes in infinite combinations and allow for a total room transformation.
With the right pre-planning, a party or event coordinator can save literally hours of setup and decorating time by bringing in an UpLighting and GoBo package. Compared to draping, paper, or other traditional decoration option, a lighting package is more economical too. Nothing has more impact on a plain/boring room than an UpLight / GoBo package. Watch the following video for more information:
I did not set out in life to become a “wedding DJ” and I did not become a seasoned wedding professional (haha) overnight. But I did get my start a long time ago as a teenager and thought I would share a beautiful story that came about recently because of that First Wedding Event.
When I was still in high school, my friends and I all worked at a local movie theatre. As things would have it, teenaged boys and girls that worked together would occasionally pair-off and shenanigans would ensue. One such couple, found themselves in the position of fast becoming teenage parents… and this is where our wedding-related story begins.
Under the circumstances of the time for this couple, they decided to get married and bring their child into the world with both parents under the same roof. The wedding was planned on a very limited budget, mainly with family & friends at a private residence. Since my friends at the movie theatre were also my high school pals, many of them had seen me DJ at a school dance or two. As a result, the happy couple asked me to play some music after the wedding… thus was born my career as a wedding DJ.
Flash forward to the Facebook era and I was happy to be reacquainted with some of my movie-theatre friends more than 20 years after we had all worked together. To my delight, the couple that had married under less-than-ideal circumstances back in the late 1980s had stayed together all these years and had had a beautiful, happy life. Not only that, but the daughter born just months after their wedding (now in her early twenties) was herself about to be a bride.
First, we re-connected through Facebook. Then we spoke on the phone for a bit. But when we got together at a local Starbucks, I was genuinely touched by meeting the bride & groom-to-be, and her parents (my old friends). We met and made the entertainment and lighting arrangements for their special day.
I do my best to make sure that every bride and groom have the special day of their dreams that they will never forget. And after all these years of working as a wedding professional, I wish I could say that I remember every one of the 500+ weddings I have been a part of. Specifics sometimes are forgotten along the way… but I will always remember being a part of my first bride’s daughter’s wedding.
Most people know me as a professional DJ & MC. But with my specialty being wedding ceremonies and receptions, I am sometimes open on Friday nights. So what is a full-time musician/disc jockey to do to keep busy? Well… start a fantastic-all-Journey-music “tribute” band, of course!
I have been playing keyboards and singing even longer than I have been a disc jockey, so when my friends brought a rare musical opportunity to my attention, I could not say no.
This kind of band does not play very often, so have no fear about scheduling conflicts with upcoming events. With my solo work as a DJ & MC, Voice Over Professional, and Musician, I have had to keep a tight & varied schedule for years.
Mike Mahnich DJ & MC – Voice – Music is now WeddingWire Rated for 2011.
WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, is pleased to announce that Mike Mahnich DJ & MC – Voice – Music is WeddingWire Rated 2011 for Disc Jockey Services. WeddingWire Rated is an annual award program that distinguishes wedding vendors across the country for their excellence. Based on hundreds of thousands of recent wedding reviews, WeddingWire Rated is the most recognized and trusted brand among engaged couples looking to find the best local businesses for their wedding.
Reviews by our newlywed clients include detailed ratings and insightful descriptions about their experiences working with our business and staff. Our reviews provide transparency for potential clients, assisting them in making the most informed decisions for their big day.
“We are delighted to unveil the 5th annual WeddingWire Rated program,” said Timothy Chi, CEO, WeddingWire, Inc. ” Mike Mahnich has made a commitment to capturing his clients experiences on the nation’s leading wedding review site.”
As the largest site for wedding reviews, WeddingWire empowers engaged couples with the most comprehensive and trusted review system available. The WeddingWire Rated program provides Mike Mahnich with a simple platform to capture customer feedback from their wedding planning experience. Newly engaged couples can easily access all of the reviews for Mike Mahnich on WeddingWire.com. We would like to thank our newlyweds for our WeddingWire Rated 2011 recognition.
For more information on WeddingWire Rated 2011, please visit www.WeddingWire.com.
