Charles and Joel's Admiral Kidd Catering & Conference Center Wedding
“The power of love is that it sees all people.”― DaShanne Stokes
Love is a wonderful thing to celebrate. Of all the beautiful things in life, there is nothing that quite compares to finding that person you strongly feel you’ll spend the length of forever with. Suddenly, there’s a little kick in your step, you laugh so much more, and that missing puzzle piece you’ve been searching for is found. That is a love that you fight for, that is a love we should all fight for, whether you agree with it or not.
I met Charles and Joel at the Admiral Kidd Catering and Conference Center Wedding Expo in Naval Base Point Loma Annex. Because of my veteran status, I can provide my professional wedding DJ services on all military bases. What I got from Charles and Joel in my first initial meeting was that they were in love, in real love, and they wanted a fun San Diego Wedding DJ. I fit the fun wedding DJ profile and they booked me.
During our talks leading up to their wedding, Charles told me how hard it was to find a professional wedding DJ. They originally considered a family friend to DJ their wedding, but once he realized it was a gay wedding, he declined because he was not comfortable with their union. This broke and continues to break my heart. Love is love, and everyone deserves to have an amazing wedding celebration.
Our Grooms had an intimate ceremony on top of the Sunset Cliffs with the perfect color blue sky as their backdrop. They brought along their closest friends and family to support them.
After their ceremony, they headed over to Admiral Kidd for the reception. I was already set up and greeted guests as they showed up with fun Motown music for cocktail hour. Cocktail hour was on the patio overlooking the San Diego Cityscape right outside the reception.
Charles and Joel’s reception was nautically themed, which was beautifully suited for their courageous and freedom loving spirits, all the way down to the Game of Thrones wedding cake!
When it was time for our couple’s grand entrance, I created a fun ambiance with everyone clapping as I introduced our bridal party and our wedded couple. Charles and Joel went right into their first dance together as husband and husband. Their dear friend and talented singer, Thonie Lee, provided the vocals to their first dance song.
After their first dance, another dear friend—guitarist Xavier Backus—played as we transitioned to dinner hour.
Following dinner, we had both our grooms take their loving, supporting mothers onto the dance floor for their parent dances.
With all the sentimental events done, we were ready to party. I played a fun mix of pop, hip-hop, and dance music that filled the night with laughter, love, and of course, much needed dancing.
We slowed down the dancing for a bit so we could watch our groom’s feed each other cake.
And after, we continued to get down on the dance floor
I am so glad that I got the opportunity to not only meet these two amazing men, but that they choose me to help celebrate their love. I’ll end this blog by really applauding Charles and Joel’s family. I’ve done many gay weddings before, but I have never seen this much support from family and friends. As time goes on, my goal is to not only serve as a DJ at more LGBTQ weddings, but to witness this level of support from families and friends of our LGBTQ counterparts.
I want to first and foremost thank Black Moon Images (https://www.blackmoonimages.com/) for their unbelievable work with photography. To Thonie Lee (https://www.facebook.com/thonie.lee) with his awesome voice that catered to our couple as they danced their first dance and last of the night. To my friend Xavier Backus (https://www.facebook.com/Joshua.Backus) for his beautiful guitar strings during dinner hour and his insatiable taste for good music. I want to thank the staff of Admiral Kidd Catering and Conference Center for being punctual and making sure I was fed and taken care of the whole night. Lastly, thank you to Charles and Joel for entrusting me with their big day.
