From Andy Williams and Robyn to Don Broco, Limp Bizkit and an Electric Callboy circle pit: Stephen McCormick’s first two weddings under the Curtis Allen DJ banner were a pretty good introduction to what he brings to the team.
After years of personally performing almost every booking under my own name, it was a slightly strange feeling seeing someone else head out to represent Curtis Allen DJ.
Not because I didn’t trust him — quite the opposite. I’ve known Stephen McCormick for years through Birmingham’s alternative music scene, and before he ever took on a wedding for me we’d spent a lot of time talking about music, DJing, weddings and what actually makes a good night work.
He’d been through my onboarding process, we’d talked through hypothetical dancefloors and awkward situations, and I already knew that our musical tastes overlapped enormously.
Stephen wasn’t starting from zero. He’d DJed weddings and parties before, run a club night called Apocalypse at XL’s, hosted quizzes and spent plenty of time in front of audiences in other parts of his working life. What was new was doing weddings this way — going through the planning process I use, working from a detailed couple’s brief, and then representing Curtis Allen DJ on the night.
But there’s still a difference between talking about it and watching somebody head off to a real wedding with your name attached to the booking.
Then, over one weekend in September, Stephen did it twice.
On Friday 4th September he DJed Barney and Ellie’s wedding at Cherwell Boathouse in Oxford. Two days later, he was behind the decks again for Tabi and Tom at Ettington Park Hotel in Warwickshire. Both venues actively host wedding receptions and evening dancing, although they’re very different settings.
So this seemed like a good point to introduce him properly.
Not Curtis 2.0 — and that’s the point
The idea was never to teach Stephen to impersonate me.
One of the reasons I wanted to work with him was that he already had his own musical knowledge, personality and instincts. His strengths cover Britpop and indie, pop-punk and emo, grunge, nu-metal and classic rock, but also plenty of the stuff that makes a mixed-age wedding work: 60s soul, disco and the huge 80s, 90s and 00s pop songs everybody suddenly remembers all the words to after a few drinks.
That combination matters. I specialise in alternative weddings, but I’ve never believed that an “alternative wedding” means stubbornly playing five hours of music only the couple’s mates know while everybody else stares at the dancefloor.
Stephen gets that too.
As he put it:
“I wanted to deliver my own unique take on what his brand represents, but keep the service professionally consistent.”
That’s basically it.
And Stephen says, “I was very excited to be working alongside Curtis Allen. He’s been a DJ I’ve admired for many years. His music choices usually align with my own, and he’s always had a nice way with people, which I think is a very important part of being a good DJ.”
There’s a fuller introduction to Stephen on my Associate DJs page, but these first two weddings tell you rather more about what he’s actually like behind the decks. His existing profile reflects the same balance: alternative music is a major strength, but so are Motown, disco, soul and the broader material needed for a mixed wedding crowd.
Wedding One: From Andy Williams to Turnstile at Cherwell Boathouse
Barney and Ellie’s wedding was a good first assignment because their music wasn’t one-dimensional.
There was indie, emo and classic rock in there, but also plenty of 60s and 70s music and a need to keep things accessible across the generations. Turnstile were on the must-play side of things; Andy Williams’ Music to Watch Girls By was in there for Barney’s mum.
That is much closer to a real wedding brief than “play loads of alternative music”.
As Stephen puts it:
“Preparation is nine tenths of the assignment really. That’s the consultation and client communications. You put together a playlist according to their preferences, and sometimes that requires going back to them and getting further clarity. You’re the expert when it comes to keeping a busy dancefloor, and sometimes you have to confirm “Is that really what you want?” bearing in mind how some of their guests may respond to their niche genre choices.”
Sometimes it is what they want, and sometimes that reminder can get the couple thinking about Granny Jones’ delicate sensibilities and whether they do actually want to launch straight into an assault on them from 7pm.
And, of course, the actual wedding will then refuse to behave exactly as planned.
The speeches ran over, for example, pushing the evening slightly later. When Barney and Ellie decided they’d had enough of their first dance, they gave Stephen the nod; he faded it, got on the microphone, invited everyone to give them a round of applause and moved the night forward.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing anybody needed to worry about. Just one of those tiny moments of judgement that happen constantly at weddings.
Once the party was moving, Stephen started finding out what this particular room responded to.
One of his biggest reactions came from Robyn’s Dancing On My Own — which wasn’t on Barney and Ellie’s request list at all. You can actually see the reaction in Stephen’s footage: arms in the air, people singing and a properly engaged dancefloor.
Fatboy Slim’s The Rockafeller Skank worked too, with the crowd getting considerably lower and sillier as the track went on, and it’s another good example of the difference between simply knowing songs and spotting when a particular record will work for the people in front of you.
And then there was Neil Diamond.
The groomsmen had requested Forever in Blue Jeans. It went down well enough that, when the crowd demanded an encore at the end of the night, they asked Stephen to play it again.
Normally, playing the same song twice is the sort of thing I’d avoid. But a room full of people enthusiastically demanding the same record again at the end of the wedding is quite a compelling argument for breaking the rule.
That’s the distinction between following a playlist and DJing a room.
Stephen came away from the night telling me that Barney and Ellie had been “over the moon”, and that they’d subsequently sent him a fantastic testimonial. More importantly for him, the night had given him a substantial confidence boost before wedding number two.
Two Days Later: Tabi and Tom at Ettington Park
There wasn’t much time to bask in it, because on Sunday Stephen was doing it all again.
Tabi and Tom’s wedding at Ettington Park leaned much more heavily into the music that originally brought Stephen and me together: rock, metal, punk, pop-punk, emo and 2000s classics.
There was already something wonderfully personal about their first dance.
Rather than one track, it moved through three songs representing three generations of their family: Green Day’s Last Night on Earth, Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders’ A Groovy Kind of Love.
That’s the kind of thing I like about wedding music. It doesn’t have to make sense as somebody else’s Spotify playlist. It needs to make sense to the people getting married.
And, again, some of Stephen’s most successful decisions came from outside the supplied requests.
Stephen described one of those moments rather nicely:
“You know you’ve struck a chord with the crowd when you slip on the next track and you hear that cheer of approval and hands go up in the air.”
At Barney and Ellie’s wedding, that happened when he played Robyn’s Dancing On My Own — not a track they’d specifically requested, but one Stephen chose because he thought the room would respond to it.
Two days later, Don Broco’s Everybody produced much the same reaction at Tabi and Tom’s.
Later came one of my favourite reports from either wedding: a circle mosh pit to Electric Callboy’s Hypa Hypa.
But looking through Stephen’s videos afterwards, what I like just as much is all the completely unplanned nonsense happening around the music.
During Limp Bizkit’s Hot Dog, the guests appear to have invented some kind of game in the middle of the dancefloor. I’m still not entirely sure what the rules were — assuming there were rules — but everybody involved seems to know exactly what they’re doing.
Later, The Salmon Dance by The Chemical Brothers inspired an appropriately silly wiggly dance, while Pendulum’s Propane Nightmares featured two guests dancing around holding printed photographs of faces — presumably Tabi and Tom — above the crowd.
I couldn’t have planned any of those moments in a consultation, and neither could Stephen.
That’s rather the point.
A good wedding playlist gives people the right environment to start creating their own memories and in-jokes. Sometimes that means a romantic first dance. Sometimes it means a room full of people singing My Chemical Romance. And apparently sometimes it means giant cardboard faces and an unexplained Limp Bizkit game.
The Playlist Is the Starting Point, Not the Script
There’s a reason I’ve picked out Robyn and Don Broco in particular.
Neither was somebody simply ticking off a must-play list.
Stephen chose them because he thought they would work at that moment — and the people in front of him immediately told him he was right.
That’s an important part of how I approach my own wedding DJ sets too. My current wedding service is explicitly built around a detailed consultation, tailored music and adapting the selection to the actual room rather than treating the plan as an immovable playlist.
The planning matters enormously. I want to know what you love, what you hate, what reminds you of being 17, what your friends are likely to lose their minds to and whether playing a particular song will cause a family incident I’d rather know about beforehand.
But I don’t think the outcome of all that planning should be a rigid five-hour Spotify playlist.
You still need somebody watching the room.
Stephen summed that up rather nicely himself:
“No matter how much preparation you do, you still have to think on your feet sometimes. Weddings are very busy events where things don’t always run to exact timings. At my first wedding, the bride and groom were a little bit later than expected because the speeches overran. They had their first dance, and wanted it cut short, so they gave me the nod and I got on the mic to ask everyone to give them a round of applause while I faded the track out and cued up the next one.”
Sometimes thinking on your feet means realising that Robyn is exactly what the room needs.
Sometimes it means going heavier.
Sometimes it apparently means playing Forever in Blue Jeans twice.
And sometimes you just accept that the guests have invented a game to Limp Bizkit and let them get on with it.
So What Does an Associate Wedding DJ Actually Mean?
This is probably worth explaining, because I’m deliberately doing something slightly different from turning Curtis Allen DJ into a big anonymous agency.
Most of the weddings booked with me are still performed by me.
But there are dates when I’m already booked, or occasions where another DJ’s particular strengths make them a very good fit. That’s why I’m gradually building a small team of DJs I actually know and trust.
If I suggest Stephen for your wedding, it isn’t simply because he happens to have a free Saturday.
It’s because I think he suits what you’re asking for.
The planning still happens under Curtis Allen DJ. There’s still a proper music brief. There’s still a consultation. There are still conversations about the first dance, requests, things you absolutely don’t want played and how broadly or narrowly you want us to interpret your tastes.
That is also how I describe the associate system on the site: you book through CADJ, the music planning process remains in place, and the associate is expected to bring the same professional standards, discretion and crowd-reading rather than delivering a cookie-cutter wedding.
But when Stephen is your DJ, I also want him to be Stephen.
I don’t want somebody mechanically reproducing a Curtis Allen set. I want somebody who understands the same underlying idea — make the night personal to the couple, pay attention to the people actually in front of you, and don’t be afraid of alternative music just because it’s a wedding — while bringing his own knowledge and judgement to it.
His first two weddings were a pretty encouraging demonstration of exactly that.
A Very Good First Weekend
Perhaps the nicest thing to come out of all this is that those first weddings weren’t really an ending.
Stephen had already DJed before he started working with me, but getting properly back behind the decks seems to have reminded him how much he enjoys it.
Since joining me, he’s started picking up more DJ work of his own too, including nights at The Royal in Sutton Coldfield, Ye Olde Foundry in Dudley — a dedicated rock pub with live music and DJ nights — and Merlin’s Café Bar in Birmingham, another alternative venue hosting rock and metal events that I’ve enjoyed DJing at in the past.
He messaged me recently:
“Once I caught the bug for it and got some practice in, I really found I was enjoying it.”
That’s also something he’s said to me in person. The weddings gave him confidence, but more importantly, DJing seems to have given him something he genuinely wants to keep developing.
He was kind enough in the same message to give me a lot of the credit for getting him moving in that direction. I’m happy to take a little of it — but the work he’s getting now, and what he does with it, is very much his.
And that makes me even happier to have him involved with Curtis Allen DJ.
Two days later, Tabi and Tom’s guests gave him an Electric Callboy circle pit, a Limp Bizkit game and some big face cards.
I think he’s settling in quite nicely.
If you’re planning your own alternative wedding and want to know whether I’m available personally, or whether Stephen might be a particularly good match for what you have in mind, tell me about your date, venue and musical tastes here.