A Great American Music Hall wedding with Vanessa & Glen

By Adrian Cavlan

On February 12th, I had the pleasure of being the MC and DJ for my friends Vanessa & Glen at their spectacular wedding at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

While primarily known as one of The City's foremost and most historic music venues (Duke Ellington had a residency here!), it also serves as a most unique and spectacular wedding venue as well! This beautiful, opulent hall was built right after the 1906 earthquake and has been preserved lovingly for over a century: with its gilded, highly-detailed ceilings and sweeping upstairs balconies, there is a sense of classic luxury that can't be bought or duplicated today.

The catering was done in-house, decor and flowers were brought in, and the cakes (yes, there was one for each table) and dessert buffet were the most spectacular I have ever seen in 22 years of DJing weddings... it was a crying shame I was on a diet!!

But one of the non-obvious benefits of doing your wedding at this venue is the in-house production capabilities. It has a large stage, with a top-level L-Acoustics line-array sound system (basically a major-league concert sound system miniaturized) and a full intelligent light show with operator. The possibilities are truly endless. You could have two follow spots up on the balcony follow you in during the grand entrance, gobo projections, spotlit tables... all in-house!

Now Vanessa and Glen? A perfect match for this fine facility. Their sense of style was on-point and their instincts for event planning were as well. The toasts were classic, where we got a glimpse into not only Glen's English heritage (his father, who also served as his Best Man, roasted him mercilessly for about 15 minutes!), but also Vanessa's Italian-American heritage ("... you know how Italian men are about their daughters, right Glen?"). It was *awesome*!

Overall, another fantastic wedding to start 2011 for me. Best job ever, like I have said for years : )

For more information on the Great American Music Hall, please call Kim at 415-202-9812 / 415-255-7395 and see the website at www.gamh.com

Adrian Cavlan