Music

I admit. This part baffles me just a bit. I probably should have relegated this duty to Todd, as he’s the music buff, but I was afraid I’d end up marching down the aisle to Judas Priest. I guess “Whole Lotta Rosie” by AC/DC would be appropriate enough and I like the song, but…yeah.

Our church has a pipe organ and a piano. I could have hired someone to come play, or asked a friend to play. I could have asked someone to sing, I suppose. But part of the deal is that we want to keep the ceremony itself very short and get directly to the socializing and partying. If you’re into a longer ceremony with more parts and meaning than we are, music will probably be much more important.

Here’s what I’m doing…I went to Amazon.com and did a search for Celtic, Wedding, Irish, Classical, and Gregorian Chants (hey, they’re Medieval and I really like them, so shoot me.) I picked out half a dozen albums and bought them, and then I’m going to force Todd to sit and listen to snippets of all of them and attempt to burn together my own CDs for use at the wedding. Hopefully that’ll work. Even if it doesn’t, we’ll have the original CDs as backup. I know I’ll have to have a Music Wrangler, and that there are all kinds of timing things that can go wrong with a CD, but that’s okay. Not that big a deal to me.

I decided I really loathed the Wedding March and Bridal Chorus, so I’m not using them. Only heard a little squawking about that from some family members. Turns out the pastor doesn't like it either, which is great. I do really want to use ”Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, because for some reason I adore that song. I also want to use Greensleeves, though I admit with the lyrics it’s not entirely appropriate. I will be wearing green sleeves, but I am not casting off my love discourteously! I think I want to include some Tchaikovsky too, not because it’s appropriately period, but because I’ve loved that music since I was very young.

Post Wedding Update: What I ended up with was three CD's worth of music, one for the prelude, one for the processional/recessional, and one for the reception. I grabbed my longtime friend Doug Stephens and asked him to run the CD player, which he graciously agreed to do. I heard the prelude music go on at 5:00, and I did hear my processional music, and I'm relatively certain there was music when we left the stage too but at that point I was a little dazed. We had music at the reception for a while, and then it got turned off for the toast and I don't think it was ever turned back on, which was fine.

Note to those who have never burned CD's: CD-RW's don't work in a regular CD player. I didn't know. Fortunately, my newly-acquired brother-in-law did, and he gave us four regular blank CD's to use. Whew. And he didn't even laugh.

If you want live music, consider booking several months in advance. There are troupes that will play weddings, and I know Heather Alexander is available for bookings if you catch her far enough in advance and on a date she doesn’t have booked.

If you want to be really period-appropriate, just pay attention to the dates the music was written and published, and have someone play it live. It’ll probably be mostly stringed and woodwind instruments, as most of us don’t carry a harpsichord in our back pockets…