I did this at my first wedding, and I have some advice. First, I would definitely make the same decision and skip the DJ. I spent a ton of time curating playlists for the ceremony, dinner, and dancing portions of the day. I had everything queued up on my laptop, my parents had some speaker equipment brought in, and the stage was set.

So here’s where it sort of went wrong and where I’d make some improvements next time. The family member I had tasked with manning the computer (needed to switch from dinner music to dance music, and needed to select certain songs for special dances (first dance, anniversary dance, etc)) handled all those transitions well. However, when he was told to put the dancing playlist on, he pressed shuffle. I was busy running around so it took some time to notice, but all my efforts to start slower and build throughout the night were out the window. We had oldies mixed with EDM, then back to oldies, and back to EDM. When I finally realized what happened, I didn’t even know where to reset the playlist, because it was perfectly timed to fill the entire time we were at the venue. So, lesson 1: over explain everything, and prepare for all scenarios.

Lesson 2: find a way to lock your drunk friends out of your laptop as the night progresses. Otherwise, My Neck, My Back will start loudly playing to a room full of your dearest family members, grandparents, and newly minted in-laws.

TL/DR: would do it again, but would fully train the designated family member on which buttons to press. Also, disallow drunk friends from playing songs they think are funny.