Wedding Music

[hawkinsssable]

I'm putting together the music for my sister's wedding (which is in about three weeks, gulp) and I've been having difficulty getting the mix of music right. I'm going to give them a series of CD's, with album art, of the playlist for their wedding present, so I want it to be perfect. But I'm having a lot of difficulty getting the right balance between jarringly varied and blandly insipid, as well as finding music with lyrics that aren't about breakups or bad relationships or anything along those lines.

The mix so far includes a lot of

• The Tallest Man on Earth
• Bob Dylan
• Belle & Sebastian
• Beirut
• Jose Gonzales
• Explosions in the Sky
• The Radio Dept.
• Elliot Smith

I'm also working on a mix of general happy dance-y tunes that's going much better, and I'm trying to balance properly between obscure/ famous, older and newer songs. Suggestions here would be great, too!

So anyway - does anybody have suggestions for wedding music / stories about wedding music / want to share the music they played at their wedding?

[Dream]

If this is a regular wedding, your job will be to get a vastly varied crowd, in age, interests and social ability, all in a good mood, and preferably all dancing after the couple do their first dance thing. So I would actually strike off most of that list and start instead with a huge selection of middle of the road crowd pleasers, from which I would cull anything that stuck out as too twee or crap, then I'd start embellishing it with better music where I reckoned I could fit it in. For instance, you should probably not put in a storming French house breakdown, you'd alienate everyone over forty within two bars. However, you could very easily slot in some after a Michael Jackson number, because the grooves are practically identical. "Music Sounds Better With You" would be perfect.

I know you're working on a more danceable mix, but you should probably amalgamate everything into one big, upbeat awesome playlist that will keep everyone in good spirits all night. So, much as I love them, not Explosions In The Sky.

[hawkinsssable]

That's... probably very good advice! Just to clarify, though, the two separate play-lists are for two separate rooms and times of the night. The idea is that everybody starts in one room for dinner, then moves into another for dancing, with the music in the dinner room sort of trailing off a little while after the music starts in the other. I could probably just use the one playlist and keep the more danceable tunes for towards the end of the night - would that be a better idea?

The danceable mix is maybe 50% well-known pop songs from the 60s to 80s, 15% covers of well-known pop songs, 15% slightly alternative singles from bands like The Pixies, The Strokes, and Iggy Pop, and then 20% contemporary alternative/ indie stuff from bands like Okkervil River, The National, and Black Seeds that I know the bride and groom really like, hopefully slotted in where it flows well. I'm still fiddling around with it a lot, and trying to make sure everything fits in.

Good idea with the Stardust song, btw - I might end up using it.