All About Events

A tented reception on grass, tables and chairs in. Photo courtesy of All About Events.

How we know them

They are at a lot of our weddings. Often enough that when All About Events is the name on the rental order, we already know what the load-in looks like and we stop thinking about it.

They have also hired us for their own personal events. A rental company works beside every DJ in this market and sees all of us on a bad day as well as a good one, so being the one they call for their own night is not a small thing.

Corey also sits on the board of NACE Northeast Florida — the local chapter of the National Association for Catering and Events — alongside Olivia Marceau from their team.

What they rent

The catalogue is broad enough that most couples end up ordering from more than one part of it. The two lines that matter most to a reception are usually the tent and the dance floor, because those two decide where everything else can physically go.

In their own words

Their team page puts the founding story in one sentence: "Jeff started All About Events in 2010 because he believed the rental industry in Jacksonville severely needed a dose of great customer service."

That is a specific complaint, not a slogan, and it is the kind of reason a company gets started for. The rest of the site keeps circling the same idea.

They also describe themselves as "not your typical rental company" and as a partner in the day rather than a delivery service. Whether a company means that is decided on a Saturday morning, not on a website - but it is at least the right thing to be aiming at.

The people who answer the phone

Twelve people, and the site names all of them - which is unusual enough in the rental trade to be worth pointing out. A few you are likely to deal with:

What their clients say

The second one is the small review, and it is the one we would read first. The delivery crew is the part of a rental company you actually meet, usually at an hour when nobody is at their best.

Two things a DJ would tell you before you sign a rental order

We are on the other end of this. What gets rented decides what we can do with a room, so here are the two lines we would look at hardest.

Size the dance floor for the people who will actually be on it, not for everybody. We plan on roughly half the guest count dancing at once, and about four and a half square feet each. For 150 guests that is a floor somewhere near 16 by 20. Go much smaller and the floor looks full early and then feels full all night, which sounds fine and is not - people stop joining once it reads as crowded.

If there is a tent, sort the power before anything else. A tent is a field with a roof. It has no outlets, and a DJ rig, the lighting, the caterer's warmers and the coffee urns all want their own circuits. Ask who is supplying the generator and how many circuits it gives you, and ask it early, because the answer sometimes changes where the whole setup has to sit.

Neither of these is a criticism of anybody. They are just the two questions that get asked too late, and both are far cheaper to solve in a showroom in March than in a field in October.