01-05-2008: 50th Birthday at Travis Pointe

Travis pointe country club is a beautiful venue, if you live around Ann Arbor/Saline area and want to have a party. We DJd a 50th birthday party at this club. The banquet hall had an open floor plan, which means guests can have a long open aisle from the lounge, perfect for family walk ins. If you have a small wedding of 100-150 people, it would be perfect.

The evening started with instrumentals while open fire sauteed some trendy chicken and shrimp kabobs and veggie relishes, courtesy Shalimar restaurant. After a few short and sweet speeches, some shayari (Poems) was poured open. The candid shayari was aimed at the man hitting 50 years and was quite funny. Guests and the host's family enjoyed it with good spirit.

When all dispersed for the dinner, we opened up a juke box and sang a few karaoke songs. The first one was a low key, as it took a little time to adjust speakers' position. From the second song on, dinner time rocked. We started with the saucy "Jaane jaa dhoondta" and ended it with the foot thumping "Jai jai shiv shankar" with a few latest songs from Koi mil gaya and Chalte Chalte in between.

After dinner, the mom and daughter performed a dance together on salam-e-ishq. The dad and the son countered that with a punchy bhangra "Sardar". I have not seen a family that is so young and vibrant and so talented, 50 years was nothing on him, he beat his teenager son with his bhangra moves.

Open dance floor rocked with the latest bolly and bhangra beats. While all the guest left to their homes which were about 5-10 minutes away, we drove 65 miles back, phew !!... but, it was fun !

12-15-2007: A Cleaveland engagement

Yes, you read the date right, that was the blizzard weekend and only crazy people like us drive through that to go to Cleaveland from Detroit and DJ this fabulous engagement party. The gig actually was DJ Sachin's, a very good friend of ours and I just went along with him to see him in action. We hit the road on saturday in the morning for this evening gala and the drive was pretty smooth. We got there in time, set up and were ready to rock the night.

Sachin is an amazing dhol player, he took off with his dhol and started to rock the entrance with family waiting for the bride. Folks could not contain themselves and started dancing right at the beginning of the party itself. It was a treat to watch. The bride entered with a big dhol bang and the excitement was set for the evening.

The bride and the groom were trained dancers, they had bagged several prizes in FOGANA competetions and knew each other since they were kids. So, dancing was second nature and they just outwit everyone. Oh, that performance by Aunties.com was roaring as well.

The entire evening was themed black and white and the hall decked with tons of photographs, a black and white photo essay of the bride and the groom, it was unique.

Sachin kicked off the dance floor with his punching live dhol mix and and crowd went bonkers with bhangra, bollywood and of course Soulja boy. Towards the end, when most of the elder folks left, Sachin resorted to hiphop and spinned quite a few reggae and R&B.

We were put up in the same hotel as all the other wedding guests. So, after the party, all of them came to the hotel and went into another after-party till 5 in the morning. We dozed off soon, and started to drive back to Michigan the next morning. It only took 6 and half hours to cover an otherwise 3 hour route. Nuf said !