I am so lucky to be able to say that Nine Mile Smile (9MS) provided the musical entertainment for my wedding reception and I am proud to highly recommend them on Wedding Wire!

The first thing every bride should know about working with Nine Mile Smile and Kurtis Kaechele (their manager, scheduler, email responder, coordinator, drummer, and all-around great guy) is that they are incredibly responsive and professional in all of their interactions. From my first email to Kurtis inquiring about their availability, Kurtis' replies were always EXTREMELY prompt, courteous, helpful, and fun. Additionally, as we traveled to hear the band, and eventually contracted with them to perform at our wedding, Kurtis was always very helpful in getting things done easily and efficiently (a quality EVERY bride can appreciate!). Up through the wedding, he was responsive, made helpful suggestions, and helped me make our entertainment memorable.

In addition to their professionalism and amazing responsiveness, 9MS offered a lot of other perks that we did not find in other potential wedding bands. For example, they will learn five brand new songs for you that they do not already know! They do this for EACH wedding couple! This means, if you want that special father/daughter dance song performed live, and if it is not already on their list, they will learn it for you by the time of our wedding! We had some amazing “must-play” songs, and they learned and performed them excellently! Importantly, there was no additional charge for this – they do it out of their desire to make your wedding personal and perfect for you! Additionally, they provided free emcee and DJing between their music sets. Kurtis does an excellent job with this! Also, 9MS worked with me so well to determine a “fluid set list,” where there definitely were songs that I wanted played, but he was also to fit them into the list appropriately and play to the crowd. Kurtis encouraged me to trust his judgment with this one, and I’m glad I did, because when the crowd wanted slow songs, that is what they played, and when they wanted a dance party, that’s what they did. They read the crowd well and definitely kept our dance floor packed!

One thing that you have to worry about any musical performance on the day of your wedding is – how will the band sound?! We traveled up to Mt. Pleasant to hear 9MS perform prior to booking them, but Kurtis said it would sound a lot different in a much smaller room on the day of our wedding. What I was not prepared for is how AMAZING they would be. I already knew they sounded great, but the day of the wedding, they sounded fantastic! And I wasn’t alone in my thinking. I honestly did not expect for almost every single one of our guests to come up to me and ask me where we found this band and how did we get them, but that is exactly what happened. Our guests were SO IMPRESSED with the quality of music 9MS provided, they had a GREAT time jamming out to them all night, our dance floor was CONSTANTLY packed (every bride’s reception dream, right?!), and the variety of music was amazing! Their look, vibe, sound, and groove were a perfect recipe for our wedding!

Most importantly, the folks making up 9MS will go the extra mile (get it?!) for you! I don't think that I received any special treatment, but let me tell you, it sure FELT like I did! One example of this is that I asked Kurt if they would be willing to play or play their recorded version of our first dance song for us between our cocktail hour and reception so we could practice when no one else was in the room. (We did some sweet choreography, and were recommended to do the dance at least once before we did it for real – great recommendation!) Kurt responded to me and said that he’d try to get Michael Shapiro (who is a fantastic Adam Levine-sounding vocalist and amazing guitarist, and my husband and I love his style) to play it for us. Sure enough, on the day of, Michael was there and played it for us live just as he would later in the night. It was a perfect way for us to practice and was something that not every band member of just any band would do. It was outside of their contracted play time, but they made it happen for us. Another example of their above-and-beyond service is that I probably changed my mind about how I was incorporating my mom into my father/daughter dance five times. And emailed Kurtis about it (book-long emails) every time. He stuck with me, helped me problem-solve, made great suggestions, and in the end (probably the day or two before the wedding) helped me to make it happen perfectly!

I know that I’ve just written a crazy-long review for this band, but they deserve every word of the praise. I do not have any negatives to report about 9MS; we truly had 5-star service, professionalism, and music quality. They are an excellent choice if you’re looking for a competitively priced, but above-average quality wedding band. Please feel free to contact me personally if I can provide any more helpful information to you about Nine Mile Smile! As I said to them, and have said to many others, 9MS was one of the easiest and BEST decisions we made for our wedding!