Tagging Equipment

[electricsmooth]

I have a wedding on the 22nd that I'm djing and was just emailed earlier today by the bride informing me that the venue will refuse to let me set-up unless all my equipment is tagged "so and so wedding ceremony". I have never experienced this before. I've done my fair share of weddings and other events with nobody ever asking me this.

I called the venue coordinator and haven't heard back. Is this normal? What exactly does this entail? Labelling all my speakers, mixer, mic, cables, truss? If this is the case, I don't have time for it unless they want to pay me an extra 2 hours (not taking into consideration removing all the masking tape from my equipment afterwards) and I can go through my equipment the night before. I don't mind labelling a few things but I find this request ridiculous.

I'm assuming this is so that my equipment does not get mixed up with the hall fixtures but I will be providing everything (mics, lights, sound, and projector). Besides, I will be at the event the whole time and will not be leaving my stuff unattended.

Anyone else experience this?

[robare99]

I ordered my business cards from vistaprint. They always offer things like address labels etc. so I had a couple batches made up that instead of an address say:

Property of:
Jimmy the DJ

www.jimmy_thedj.com



Stuck them on all my speakers etc.



:edit - made up the name, woah... It's real!

[electricsmooth]

That's a good practice for sure but you can't have those on everything (truss, mics). Furthermore, my stuff has to specifically say " (name of bride and groom) wedding"

[robare99]

I see. I make my own cables. I'm starting to put colored heatshrink on them to identify them as mine. Red for lighting cables, blue for everything else. Still not much help though.

[electricsmooth]

I wish I could make my own cables. Freakin cool! I just put different colored tape at the ends to ID dmx or audio

[MusicMix]

Just pick up some of those tags with strings and then remove them after the event. Never had this before but it is probably in case something gets left in the way they will know what event it belongs to.

[KLH]

Labelling is a good idea. I'm surprised that I never thought of it.

-KLH

[robare99]

I wish I could make my own cables. Freakin cool! I just put different colored tape at the ends to ID dmx or audio

Soldering isn't real hard. I'll buy 50' mic or DMX cables them cut them up into what I need. They aren't labelled, just the color on the male ends. That way I can say "mine all have the blue or red on them.

I need to make the time to add the heatshrink to cables I already have. That involves unsoldering the ends, adding the heat shrink them redoing them. A bit of a pain, but better in the long run.

:)

[electricsmooth]

I heard back from the venue and they told me that I don't have to label anything. She said that they do it because sometimes there are multiple weddings in one day and they don't want a bunch of boxes getting mixed up. She said that vendors often leave their stuff for a bit and go but in my case, I'll be staying there and there is only one wedding scheduled for that day.

But yeah, probably a good idea to label some of the more expensive items just in case.

[jamesmington]

I would have gone with some masking tape if they still made you do it. I'm weary of the more permanent means of labeling.

[allensmusic]

I was just looking at the tags on a few of my mic cables today.
some of them even have phone numbers on them.
I better check all my cables and remove the tags before the owners see them....

[Nick_EventPro]

Anytime I get a new piece of gear I go through a "putting it into inventory" process.

As soon as whatever it is comes in, I unbox, add tags, cable ties if applicable, add to inventory in the computer system, and put it in its proper case.

In the future, I'd like to add barcodes to each item so I can track what goes out, which job its on, its expected return, and its status- good working order, needs repair, post rental check, prep for job, etc. At one point I knew every piece of gear I owned, but that's no longer the case so I need to make some improvements to my inventory system to keep track of it all.