tioga – DJ Johnny Only

August 5, 2015December 30, 2015

9 Ways a Photo Booth Helps You Personalize Your Wedding and Please Your Guests

“DJ Johnny Only, Thank you so much for making our reception a blast. You kept everyone on the dance floor all night. You even picked great intro songs for us, since we forgot to pick some! The Photobooth was perfect! Our guests loved it and left us with some funny pictures. The Album you made for us to keep is wonderful. Thanks again for your hard work, we really enjoyed it!” ~Tim & Shannon

One of the ways to personalize your wedding reception is to put more of YOU into it.

The biggest ‘YOU’ is who you decide to invite as your guests; your family and your closest friends.

So, the best way to further personalize your reception is add things that include and involve your family and closest friends.

Choose things that help them to socialize. Help them to celebrate with you and with each other.

Take food for example: The bride and groom personalize the menu, but every person is included in the meal and every person can get involved together. Dining with the bride and groom is a personalized celebratory experience for everyone alike.

I believe that a photo booth can provide a similar personalized experience for both the bridal couple and their guests. It helps people to socialize while giving each person the freedom to celebrate in their own way.

Below are 9 of the ways I see this happening.

#1) A photo booth is something that your guests can DO instead of watching!

Yes, your guests love to sit and watch you do all the things you do on your wedding day! (That is because they love you!)

But gosh, wouldn’t it be fun for them to DO something too?

Like take pictures and write things in your scrapbooked photo guestbook that you receive at the end!

#2) Guests get to see their own picture right next to your name and your wedding date!

Yes, your guests love to sit and watch you get your picture taken all day long! (That is because they love you!)

But hey! Don’t you think they’d like to get their picture taken too?

And not with a cell phone – that is too every-day-ho-hum-ishy.

They want to get their picture taken in your official instant-printing-out-on-real-photo-paper-wedding-day-photo-booth!

It helps that their photo strip is customized with your names, wedding colors, and wedding date.

Afterall, you are the celebrities and everybody wants to be with you on your wedding day!

#3) Your guests get to see their own picture in lights!

Our photo booth has a feature that allows us to export the pictures it takes to a flat screen or projector as they are being taken.

This is a way for you to share some of your spotlight with your guests, offering each of them their own 60 seconds of fame at your reception.

#4 People start laughing behind that curtain!

It is amazing how much fun people have with a camera behind a curtain!

They forget their problems and become like kids again -just having genuine FUN!

There is nothing more personal than that!

#5) Your guests get to use their own creativity to pose for their pictures and to write their own well-wishes to you!

They also write unrelated, funny and/or unexpectedly sweet things to you in your photo guestbook (that we provide) – I am always surprised how creative people become as the evening progresses!

People really ‘get into it’ and that is the ultimate personalization!

#6) Our photo booth helps your guests to socialize by delivering a uniquely personal experience!

Not only do guests connect by getting in the photo together, but we also supply props with our photo booth that help people to drop their guard and be more … human.

What could be better to help build new family ties and to help solidify old ones?

#7) You can personalize a placecard that fits in a photo booth frame.

The placecard can be in the frame that is going to hold the photo strip and it can include instructions about the photo booth.

Most couples choose 2 x 6 photo strips, but our booth can be set to print out 4 x 6 as well, so you could do 4 x 6 frames if you wanted.

All dressed up for a wedding? What better time is there for a couple to get a photo?

#8) Your Guests get to take home a photo strip as a highly personalized wedding favor.

My favorite idea is to offer them a protective sleeve with a magnetized back for the photostrips.

Your wedding favor to them is going to stay on the refridgerator and be talked about everytime they open the door -for decades! It has your names/date with their picture.

What could be better than that?

They will keep it forever and like your love for one another, your wedding reception will never be forgotton!

#9) You get a kick out of emailing their high resolution photos afterwards.

You receive all of the digital images on a flashdrive at the end of your reception.

Email them to your guests or post them on their facebook timelines as blackmail photos, renewed connections, smiles, laughter and things to talk about long after your reception is over!

All of those benefits, just because you added a photo booth!

Now that is what I call personalization!

February 1, 2015December 30, 2015

The Secret to 60+ Years of Wedded Bliss

In my role of Wedding DJ/MC Johnny Only, I am often asked to celebrate marital longevity by doing an “Anniversary Elimination Dance.” This is a slow dance just for married couples.

As the song progresses, I have people that have been married for a certain number of years sit down while the couples that have been married longer remain dancing.

I keep raising the number until there is only one couple (the longest married) left on the dance-floor. Sometimes the bride and groom offer them a flower(s) but every time,

I ask longest married couple to share their secret of wedded bliss with the newlyweds.

The secret to a happy marriage — The secret to a long & happy marriage is like a homemade casserole: Only the people who make it really know what goes into it.

The best answer I ever heard was that, “A happy marriage is like a homemade casserole; Only the people that make it really know what goes into it.”

January 19, 2015August 6, 2015

A photo of DJ Johnny’s Lights in action

My dancing lights are in the foreground of this picture. They liven up the dance floor by moving, changing color and ‘dancing’ to the music.

The uplights are in the background. You can see the plasma screen on the left.

Dancing Lights at the Owego Treadway — A photo of Johnny’s dancing lights. Uplights in the background and plasma screen on the left.

This was the Maine Endwell High School Prom. We showed photos of the seniors, courtesy of the yearbook committee, on the plasma screen and projected their “Spartan” mascot emblem on the dancefloor.

The uplights ran patterns of blue and gold to match the school colors.

Johnny DJ's the Maine Endwell Prom — The Maine Endwell High School Prom used their mascot emblem as the projected monogram

It was huge success! Administrators told me it was the best prom they’d had in years.

The class president was so pleased, he wrote me this note of testimonial below:

Johnny Only did a fantastic job as the DJ and MC for our High School Prom. He played a great mix of both our requests and popular hits. Johnny Only knew his audience and kept the Prom rocking for hours with music that we really wanted to listen to and dance to. His speaker system is very powerful and easily filled our large venue with sound. His system has an excellent range, with crystal clear vocals and deep pounding bass. It was everything that one would expect out of a professional DJ and more. As an MC, Johnny did an excellent job of announcing our Prom Court and kept the Prom flowing smoothly all night. His up-lighting synchronized with the music and created a really cool unique atmosphere that changed for each song and served as the perfect backdrop to our simple decorations.. The projected monogram and TV picture slide show were cool additions that also really helped to personalize and commemorate the event.

Thank you Johnny Only; you made our Prom night the best that it could be.

Anthony Taylor, Maine Endwell Class of 2014 Officer anthonytaylor@college.harvard.edu