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Oh wow. I'm definately not a "small wedding" bride (we have about 270 on our guest list!) but I think this is just rude! I mean, a gig is a gig, right? I don't know if I would even want him to be my DJ after that!
Are you sure it's the size that making him behave this way? It sounds like he's just grown too much of an ego for his own good. If he didn't want to drive all that way, why did he agree to do it in the first place?!
Don't worry about the size. Like august15bride said, a gig's a gig, and most everyone else will see it this way. Find someone else who really wants to help make your wedding day awesome, and isn't all *yawn* about getting paid.
I think this guy showed you his "true colors" and did you a favor.
In two days I've met with two florists, and they couldn't have been more different. Both of them regularly do weddings with floral budgets of $50k and more, and the first guy treated us wonderfully even though it was clear that we are paying less than 10% of that. The second just tried to up-sell everything and kept saying how "easy" ours was going to be because "it's not like you need very much stuff anyway, it's only 90 people." It's obvious who will get our business.
We sat down for the meeting, and he had NO idea who we were. Which I mean, may have been fine if we had set this up over the phone - but ALL of our correspondence, down to the confirmation for the meeting, was via email. How hard would it have been to check his email, print out my inquiry, with all of the relevant information? I'm a weddding proffesional myself, and I would never go into a meeting without the basic idea of what the couple was looking for.
That's the thing - I didn't understand why he had even agreed to meet with me if he was just going to say that he didn't think my wedding was his style - he knew how many people we invited, the date & time, and location before hand. Plus we drove an hour and fifteen minutes to his office (thankfully, I killed two birds with one stone, as I needed to be in that area for another reason, or I never would have considering driving more than an hour to meet with a vendor...)
Yeah - I guess I was just rooting for him. I've had SUCH a pain in the ass experience finding a DJ, and he seemed awesome over email. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
Oh goodness! Sorry you had a bad experience with the DJ (especially since you had high hopes about him). At least you found out about his attitude before signing with him. I agree with the previous posters; the vendor you end up going with should be open and willing to work with you for your day, no matter how big or small the guestlist. FH and I are having a medium-sized wedding (~100ppl) and did come into some challenges with guest minimums and venue spaces, but this was a pure numbers rule thing they had, not a personal affront (although it still sucked). You deserve the best - go with someone who will be happy to have your business! Good luck! 
I'm having the same issue with finding a photographer! We're having a small (75ppl) wedding from 11am- 4pm on a Saturday in July. First of all, it was either my dream caterer on that day & time or waiting another year. This is my chosen day & time, so deal with it. The only vendor that I'd bend for is my caterer.
Anyway... I'm still willing to pay for 8 hours, but no one is interested once I say what time my ceremony is. It's making me nuts. One offered me a package from 10am-2pm so she could keep her evening/afternoon open for a larger wedding. What!? No! I want photos taken after the reception. Also, how is this any different than a nighttime wedding? I'm paying for 8 hours! Photog still gets paid & gets home earlier than usual- score! I swear when she said larger she really meant "real".
Sorry for the rant. Basically, I understand your frustration. I say cut those vendors loose, they're probably going to be more trouble than they're worth. You want to have good relationships with all your vendors, so just keep looking!
@RecessionistaBride - That's awful! That's what I'm getting from vendors too - that, to them, larger is "real." Totally sucks! Especially when I was looking at venues with my mom in October 08 for my October 10 wedding.. telling people I was planning a wedding for 50 people two years from now, and they practically hung up on me!!
I can't believe your photogs won't just suck it up and call YOU the wedding for the day! If they booked a "real" wedding for the evening, do they expect to always cram in a quickie morning wedding?? I mean - I know a lot of photogs who only do one wedding a day (or even one wedding a weekend!). Why do they need to try and shove as many weddings as possible in? The quality of their work (and their own sanity) has to suffer, no doubt.
Good luck! I hope you find an awesome photographer :)
@wheresmydessert - We had SO much trouble finding a place that had anything less than a 100 person minimum for a holiday weekend. I was even willing to go with a 75 person minimum, and "eat" the extra costs, but it was just not fun logistically at all. I can imagine planning a medium-ish wedding in NYC is hard! Everything's so big there!
Good luck to you too! Oh I love the hive-- there's always support & there's always someone thats stuck w/ the same (or similar) situation!
I'm thissssclose to going to an art school & grabbing a student for the day. They are still passionate about the art & aren't all about the benjamins. I'm looking for mini pieces of artwork that capture the moment... the last thing I want is to have a photographer rush me because he/she has an afternoon wedding to get to.
I agree with the person who said this guy did you a favor. What a jerk. I would have dropped him right that very minute.
Better to find out now than a few weeks before your wedding. I'm sorry that he was so unprofessional. I don't think it had to do with the size of your wedding, but who knows? We are also having a small wedding and so far our vendors have been pretty good about it.
We had a caterer who kept blowing us off. After talking to our photographer, we learned that a lot of people in our area will string you along until the last possible second, so they can make a bigger sale. I've seen weddings in Tahoe that cost hundreds of thousnads of dollars featured in wedding magazines or on wedding websites. With a wedding of only 57 people, there was no way we could even compare to these huge blowouts!
I think vendors who do that are not only bad with business, they're also kinda of jerks. Imo, if they wanted your business, they would WORK for it. And they wouldn't treat you like you're second class just because they think something something bigger and better will come along. We ended up getting a different caterer, and it turned out for the best. Sure she wasn't our first choice, but her food was great, she always returned our phone calls, and she was really nice to us. Unlike some jerks... :)
Wow! I hate to think what they would think of our wedding--about 15 guests! Of course, we're not doing a lot of vendors for the wedding itself, but our photographer had no issues with doing a small wedding, so long as we were willing to pay his hourly rate. He even worked with us on stuff like getting formals of all of the attendees, not just the BP. Our florist was willing to work with us on creating two bridal bouquets, a MOH bouquet, and a bout, and even delivering them to our venue. And our luncheon venue (which does not yet even know we are a wedding) was happy to have us. Their private dining room is small anyway, so we were not competing with larger weddings.
I'm sorry you're having trouble with vendors taking you seriously. It makes a little more sense to me that a caterer would string you along for awhile since a caterer gets paid more the more people who eat, but a d.j. gets paid the same no matter the number of people who dance. Actually, it might be a possibility that he didn't want to take your gig because you said the music wasn't as important to you? Maybe he was looking for a little more enthusiasm? After all, he has chosen to provide music for events as his job. He obviously thinks it's pretty important.
@cheerful - I didn't say music wasn't important - he asked me how important dancing was at the wedding, and I said medium important - he told me that he wouldn't take my wedding if dancing was the most important thing, because of the odd layout of our reception area, he didn't think people wouldn't be hitting the dance floor hardcore all afternoon.
We actually got a long really well - we had good rapport - but he just seemed very adamant that he could do a good job, but made us feel like there were other things he'd rather be doing.
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Wow, that's really strange. I wonder why he was so distracted?
Good luck with your other vendors! We're having a small wedding too, slightly fewer than 50 people at the moment. Knock on wood, but so far we've had no trouble with the vendors. (Of course, the florist is a friend :-))
I wanted to follow up on this topic - that DJ never emailed or called me after the meeting to follow up (all my other vendors almost immediately sent me an email thank you post meeting), and only emailed us two weeks later, not to offer assistance in making our decision, but to see if we wanted to book him.
We met with another DJ who was absolutely lovely, accomdating, familiar with our venue, and 'got' our style and our wedding. Bonus: she was $200 cheaper than the first one.
Hurray for happy endings for vendors!
I only felt this way with one photographer, who when we told her that we'd probably only need her services for about five hours made a face and said something along the lines of our wedding wasn't even worth her leaving the house if it was five hours or less! Needless to say we didn't book her and found another photographer who was willing to work with us and was about $2k cheaper!
Glad it worked out for you in the end!
I have had problems with our caterer and I've attributed her lack of responsiveness to the size of our wedding (approx. 45 guests). I have to believe that this is not how she normally runs her business, or else she wouldn't still be in business! Our wedding's not a big moneymaker for her, I realize, so she doesn't want to put a lot of time into it, but there are still things that need to be done no matter what the size of the event... providing a contract, for one thing (we still have no contract 2 months out), ordering rental items (she waited so long that many items we wanted aren't available), and finalizing the menu so we can send out our invitations. My feeling is, if it was "too small" a job for her, she shouldn't have accepted it.
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My fiance and I have a small family, and a few close friends. Our wedding is going to have 60 guests, tops. On top of that, the layout of our reception is a little unusual - dancing will be in a separate attached room from where the food will be served.
We met with our first DJ this afternoon, and even though I am pretty sure I had given him the full timeline of the day (since we're having a three hour reception instead of a four hour reception, plus the ceremony and cocktail hour), he almost seemed shocked that I was even meeting with him at the price he had offered to me!
I don't quite understand - I wasn't going to try and argue his price down (he was on the high end of our budget, but within our budget), and I wanted to meet with him because I liked his attitude, communications, and website. I was up front with the size of our wedding, and told him that though dancing was not a top priority, I did want people to have fun.
It was really frustrated to have this vendor, who was at the top of my list, prior to the meeting, basically tell me that he didn't really want to DJ at my wedding (it's a two hour trip for him, it's the Sunday of a holiday weekend, he couldn't take any other jobs that day - he told me this in the meeting).
I know I'm having a small wedding - but it's not that we're cutting people out or chopping the list - we just don't know a lot of people! We still want the larger reception "vibe," and I guess I hadn't made that clear.
Are any other brides with smaller weddings getting pushed down by their vendors who don't take you seriously?