Celebration receptions are family-heavy, and that is an advantage

Celebration weddings tend to run family-first: a walkable downtown, guests staying nearby, kids present, grandparents present, and a reception that starts earlier than the Orlando average.

The received wisdom is that a wide age range forces you into the safe middle. It does the opposite. Motown and Stax hold a room from age nine to ninety, and a floor that opens on soul will take a hip-hop run twenty minutes later without complaint, because the room has already agreed to dance.

Open on shared ground

Soul is the only genre where nobody in the room has to be persuaded.

• Open the floor on records everybody's grandmother recognises
• Escalate in tempo, not in obscurity
• Keep one early window for the kids, then let it close cleanly
• Save the deepest cuts for the last forty minutes, when the floor has self-selected

An earlier start also means the last hour is genuinely the last hour. There is no second wind coming at midnight, so last call has to be planned as a peak rather than a wind-down.

DJ Johnny Lorenzo covers Orlando and all of Central Florida from Tampa to Jacksonville, with published packages from $1,499. Build your reception in five segments on the planner, or send a date and get a real number back.