When Nature Calls

Sarah Gorajski and Michael Simurdiak were married on November 4, 2006 at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. The evening started off with cocktails on the lower level and moved upstairs for their ceremony and dinner. Andrew was assisting me. I had just flown in from Arizona and it felt really good to have his support on this gig. Dinner went long with desserts taking forever to come out. It seemed like they were cutting the cake as they were serving it rather than having it plated and ready to go when the time hit. It made my job tougher because I could either start dancing and then loose people as dessert started arriving, or wait on dancing and have the people get really anxious. I chose a medium ground where most were served, and some were anxious. It took a few minutes for guests to come out to dance, but once they did, we kept them out until close to the end. Andrew and I each took a cd player and bounced off one another the whole night. The party slowed down with a half-hour left, guests moved off the dance floor, and we played slower music. Nobody was slow dancing, so I picked it back up again with some 80’s and modern hip-hop. Guests came back. It was a dangerous move. With a hard stop (music has to end) at midnight, I got everybody’s energy back up again, only to bring it down a few minutes later. It worked great and closed the night with “Purple Rain” by Prince.

--Jonathan Hood, resident dj