How we plan the music when you're 6,000 miles away
Planning a destination wedding from abroad is mostly about trust and good communication. With the music, it takes four steps, all of them possible from your living room:
- 1
Intro call
A short Zoom or WhatsApp call to check your date and venue, hear about the two of you and your guests, and see if we click.
- 2
Music meeting over Zoom
The full planning session. I play you options, you react, and the playlist is built from your taste rather than a template. We cover the big moments, the dance floor styles and your do-not-play list.
- 3
Final details before the wedding
Timeline, venue coordination and last song requests, on WhatsApp in the weeks before the date. You land in Israel with the music already sorted.
- 4
The wedding
I run the music from the chuppah to the last song and keep reading the room all night, so you can stop planning and start dancing.
A dance floor for Israeli and American guests
An Israeli wedding dance floor sounds different from an American one. Israeli guests expect the Israeli and Mizrahi hits that fill every dance floor here, and your friends from home want the songs they grew up on. Play only one side and half the room sits down.
The answer is not a compromise playlist. It is timing: knowing when the room is ready for a run of Israeli dance hits, when an American classic brings everyone back, and when to push into house or trance late at night. That is what reading the room means, and it is the core of the job.
“What mattered to us musically was that all of our guests could celebrate, dance and feel part of the biggest event of our lives, from the young crowd to the older guests.”
“You got my aunts dancing, which is not easy, and gave us trance until 4 a.m. Who would have believed it, a winter wedding in the middle of the week.”
The chuppah, breaking the glass and your first dance
These are the moments your guests will film and remember, so they get the most attention in our music meeting. Some couples arrive knowing exactly what they want; others want to hear options. Either way, we keep going until you both love it.
- Chuppah entrance: a song that moves you, not just one that sounds pretty
- Breaking the glass: the switch from ceremony to celebration, usually with more energy
- First dance: the most personal moment in front of everyone
- Your do-not-play list, respected all night
“The help we got from him choosing the songs for the chuppah and the slow dance was critical. Assaf sat with us for close to three and a half hours in the music meeting, until we found the song we both agreed on.”
Friday afternoons, weeknights and summer heat
Weddings in Israel often take place on Friday afternoons or on weekday evenings, not only on Saturday nights. A Friday wedding in July means keeping the energy up through daylight and heat; a Tuesday wedding means guests who came straight from work and need the music to win them over fast. Both work, with the right pacing.
“We got married in the hot summer months at an outdoor venue on a Friday afternoon. There was a heat wave that day, 40°C (104°F), and the man who saved the wedding and kept more than 100 of our 220 guests dancing nonstop into the night was Assaf.”
Where in Israel
I'm based in central Israel and DJ weddings in Tel Aviv, the Sharon region and the center, and across the country on request. Getting married in the US instead? See how bringing an Israeli DJ to your US wedding works.