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With the sounds of champagne glasses clinking together, toast ceremonies are concluded at a wedding reception where disc jockey Matt Mizell is entertaining.

Mizell's silver cufflinks shimmer as his fingers and hands dance around a multitude of knobs and switches on his Pioneer mixer, controlling every element of sound coming from the speakers.

It's dancing time inside a banquet room at Prairie Star Restaurant at Santa Ana Pueblo, and another segment in the smooth execution of a wedding itinerary has just been accomplished.

For the more than 45 DJs and DJ companies in the Albuquerque metro area, the prime of the wedding season is upcoming. That means more planning, more playing and more opportunities to make memories.

Hopefully, not any bad ones.

In a profession where their performance is directly linked with the outcome of a once-in-a-lifetime day, wedding DJs are playing a more direct role in planning the scenarios of a wedding.

Some DJs, like Matthew Martinez of Sound Productions in Albuquerque, are so involved in planning they prefer the title "wedding director."

"I spend 15 hours before the actual wedding planning with the bride and groom," said Martinez, who has more than 25 years of DJ experience. "People don't perceive DJs as professionals and they put them on a low priority list for weddings. You get what you pay for in this business."

Making a master of ceremonies

Before Mizell, 25, stepped behind the controls of his multithousand dollar setup to be a wedding's master of ceremonies, he was behind the microphone as a radio DJ for 16 radio stations in New Mexico.

Using his radio experience, Mizell became a DJ and started his own company, Lighthouse Entertainment, all before he graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2003. He considered it the perfect profession to accompany him to law school, but the Walt Disney Co. had other plans.

Not long after he graduated, Disney called Mizell about an opportunity to DJ in the Bahamas on one of their cruise ships.

"Out of 1,000 employees on a ship, I was one of 22 Americans," he said. "I was exposed to world music and all the different genres of music that just aren't known in America."

In July, Mizell is planning to be the DJ at a wedding in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a friend he met while working on a cruise. A wedding in South Africa is a thrilling prospect for Mizell as it requires him to constantly monitor world music charts, something he considers essential for any DJ.

"In South Africa, they have a genre that sounds like a mix of merengue and our jazz and hip-hop," he said. "I have to be on top of what every crowd wants to hear."

Part of the challenges DJs face during an event include finding what Nathan Duran calls "crowd chemistry."

With about 4,000 weddings under his company's belt, Duran, owner of Too Hot to Stop in Albuquerque, said weddings are great because the activity levels are high and there is a lot of variety in the music.

"You can play a lot more stuff because you're pleasing the kids, parents and grandparents," Duran said. "But you can't play everything at random, you have to feel out a crowd and get them where you want. It's chemistry."

Chris Romero of Cutmaster Music in Albuquerque said it's a delicate balance to include music the bride and groom want with what will keep the wedding flowing.

"Sometimes people think they can load up their iPod and everyone will enjoy listening to that," Romero said. "An iPod will never be able to read a crowd and understand age groups or different ethnic backgrounds."

Music, gear, memories

In order to properly coordinate a wedding reception and the dancing segments throughout the event, wedding DJs must be masters of their music libraries and have an intimate knowledge of their sophisticated equipment.

Mizell said he spends more than $2,000 per year on music and has $20,000 in equipment.

Martinez said his CD collection is going on 25,000.

Duran said the speakers alone on one of his seven DJ systems are $2,000 apiece.

But simply having the tools doesn't make a professional DJ, said Dr. Drax, president and executive director of the American Disc Jockey Association, based in Glendale, Ariz.

"A DJ must have a desire for taste and timing while being a sociable representative for the bride and groom," Dr. Drax said. "A truly great emcee is a voice actor, telling the story of how this couple met and fell in love and how everyone got to this point in time at this wedding."

There are also intangible attributes that comprise a professional wedding DJ, said Martinez.

"Weddings have everything from stressed-out brides to intoxicated guests, and you should be able to handle all of it," Martinez said. "And don't mispronounce a name, that's bad."

In a pre-emptive effort to avoid an embarrassing name pronunciation, Mizell keeps printed wedding itineraries on hand with names phonetically spelled out. He also has detailed music lists with exact song times, categorized for segments of the reception, allowing him to mark off every song he's played.

Mizell said he marks every song played to avoid the "cardinal sin of DJs" of playing the same song twice during the same event, and to prevent anyone from saying he played inappropriate music.

"I edit my music for profanity, because even if the bride and groom want that song, Aunt Lulu from Louisiana might think the DJ shouldn't be playing it," he said.

Industry values

Mizell said New Mexico doesn't require DJs to have licenses and the Federal Communications Commission doesn't monitor DJ activity at private events, so DJ ethics become a factor.

"Back when Napster wasn't illegal, I was doing it," Mizell said, referring to the formerly free music-downloading site. Mizell said once the laws changed, all of his music was purchased as a CD or through subscription services like Apple's iTunes and music pools for DJs.

Mizell said his company's name, Lighthouse Entertainment, comes from his early experiences as a DJ, when he experienced the shady side of the industry. He said companies would "bait and switch" on a bride and groom, showing them a professional DJ, but then overbook them. The result: an ad was placed in the paper for a DJ with "little or no experience necessary," and that person would get the wedding, he said.

Despite the background static created by some DJs with illegal music libraries or false advertising, professional wedding DJs want the public to get the signal clear and understand that entertainment for a wedding shouldn't be a minimal part of the budget.

Dr. Drax said the average wedding costs more than $20,000 and professional DJs should be around 10 percent of the total wedding budget.

"If you figure they did 50 weddings at a $20,000 average, they're responsible for more than a million dollars of business volume," he said. "Why shouldn't they be 10 percent of the budget?"

For Mizell, the value of a wedding DJ is all in the details.

Mizell offers his clients the option of having what he calls their "love story." During individual consultations before a wedding, Mizell will ask his bride and groom to write out everything they remember about the entire relationship since the day they met.

"I combine the copies and read it during the wedding and most guests, even family, don't know the whole story from both sides," he said. "It's all in the details."