Miss Cherry Pie, Seattle/Polebridge, Montana
Age and Occupation: 25, Marketing Communications Specialist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Nurse Practitioner
Engagement Date: August 26, 2006
Wedding Date: September 2008
Blogging Since: April 1, 2008
Venue: A tiny town just outside of Glacier National Park
About Me: I think of life as a journey and I love the places it's taking me! I went to school to study Magazine Journalism, ended up with a second major in Japanese language, and now work at a company that makes software for libraries. I love writing, computers, photography, and the great outdoors. I spend most of my time playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band or geeking out online with Mr. Cherry Pie. I'm happiest when I'm on the road, especially traveling abroad, or just nesting quietly at home with my sweetie, who is a fabulous cook and bakes a delicious rendition of a certain cherry-filled dessert!
Montana Bluegrass
April 9th, 2008 @ 8:25 am by Mrs. Cherry Pie
( The Foggy Mountain Boys bluegrass band )
I had a difficult time figuring out what to do about music and dancing. For me, music is essential at a wedding and one of the more important items on a list. I feel that even more than the food, it can make or break a celebration.
I’ve been to a few weddings with good DJs, some with horrible DJs, and others where the music was fully automated with some sort of playlist. Hiring a DJ to play in the middle of BFE in Montana didn’t seem entirely mood-appropriate to me. Can you imagine us dancing outside, kicking up some dust to the Macarena or She’s a Brick House? Montana-style Chicken Dance anyone?
In some ways, I would be content JUST to create my own playlist for entire wedding. I have over 75 GB of tunes on my computer and I’m all about mixing my own mood-appropriate sets. This is certainly the cost-effective solution, but something about having an outdoor wedding in Montana just begs for live music.
However, I have yet to attend a wedding with live entertainment, so when I started considering it, I had no idea where to begin.
Hiring a band is a challenging process. The first obvious problem was that I have no familiarity with local bands. The second obvious problem is that cost can be very prohibitive when planning live music. If I had money coming out my ears, I could fly out anyone I wanted, with plane tickets for their instruments. But I don’t have money coming out of anywhere, so I had to think locally… and that meant searching for bands in Kalispell, Columbia Falls, and Whitefish, which are the closest “metropolitan” areas to Glacier and Polebridge.
Believe it or not (I suspect you’ll believe it), there isn’t a lot of detailed information online about bands local to Northwest Montana. Purported directories of live music don’t turn up much. The search feature (along with everything else) on MySpace sucks. And scouring Google search results for an hour turned up only a handful of candidates in different genres. Nine out of ten were either disbanded or sounded horrible.
However, a bit of beginner’s luck gave me Good Wood. No, I’m not being obscene… this bluegrass band came up in one of the first searches I did for bluegrass in Kalispell. Their website is quite retro, as I’ve noticed many Montana websites are, but they sound AMAZING.
There are several more uptempo bluegrass audio tracks and a video on their website.
I got in touch with Christian Johnson, fiddler extraordinaire and he told me that Good Wood is available for our wedding. They’ve got great rates- a $300 deposit and $1200 total for three hours of music. I didn’t want to jump the gun, so I ran my idea by friends, family, and our wedding coordinator to get their blessing. Honestly, no one I know is all the familiar with bluegrass and some of them thought I might actually be insane. But our planner agreed with me that their rates and sound were awesome, so we took the plunge.
Provided we can use the wooden stage in Polebridge or rent one, it looks like we have ourselves a band! I will probably still put together a playlist for the cocktail hour and part of the reception, depending on when we want these guys to start to play. As for our ceremony music, that’s another story, one that’s closer to home.
Did you hire a live band for your wedding or have you been to any weddings with live music? What was your experience?
30 Responses to “Montana Bluegrass”
Yay! We’re using live music too. I love your entries, Miss Cherry Pie, as you’re having a wedding that is most similar to mine (also rustic/country-themed). I found my band on MySpace by using the “Sounds like” search. I wanted a country band. Not alt-country, not country-influenced, and not a wedding band that played a few country tunes, and I found a great guy. It’s a bit pricey, but that was one of our must-haves, so we went with it. After we booked him, we heard him play at a bar and were SO HAPPY.
I would have liked too, but it got too challenging. I’m also having a destination wedding and didn’t want to book something that I didn’t hear..
i love bluegrass - especially live - it will be amazing!
Miss Cherry Pie, I also LOVE your posts! we are hosting a rustic-y wedding this october at my parents “spread.” and i agree, these types of events scream for live music, and i feel music may be more important than food….
well, our family’s favorite bar in St. Louis (and thankfully, the FI loves it too!) is Riddles Pentultimate. on the second and fourth saturdays of most months a band called Swirl plays… we first heard them in 2005, and we all immediately fell in love.
naturally, i had to have them play at my wedding… my planner warned me that live bands get pricey, but i was CERTAIN that this bluesy, jazzy, rock’n'roll band couldn’t charge more than $700, especially if we fed them and provided ample booze.
short story: they came in below my guess and i’m pretty sure that we are their first wedding! we went to meet them one saturday night at riddles after we had hired them, and they called me the “wedding lady.” they are freaking awesome! they whole place dances whenever they play! i can’t wait until october!
i think you will be more than pleased with your choice of bluegrass! everybody loves that beat!
I LOVE your wedding. As I said before, Polebridge is one of the coolest places on the planet and we were strongly considering it for our wedding.
We’re also using a bluegrass band here in Colorado for our wedding and combining it with an ipod to be used for part of the night. Yay bluegrass!
Yay for Bluegrass! We are having a bluegrass band as well, which is slightly more unusual here in CT but it just fit so much better into our rustic-y wedding than a DJ or typical wedding band. We can’t wait!
I desperately wanted live music — next to food and beverage, it was my top priority. Unfortunately, our venue is small and just couldn’t accomodate our guests AND a live band. Upon learning the square footage of our reception site, one live music contender suggested that instead of hiring his band, I just hire him solo with his guitar. That would be lovely for cocktail hour and dinner, I’m sure, but not exactly the party atmosphere I’m looking to create. So, DJ it is.
this is a cooool site.. love the pic! we love bluegrass at the wwb! make sure you put up a link to your site on our page by contact tamara@worldwidebluegrass.com
Miss Cherry Pie, I can understand wanting to vet a bluegrass band to all interested parties, but if this provides any reassurance, it seems like these younger bluegrass bands (my experience was seeing The Hackensaw Boys on the Unlimited Sunshine Tour, and I know fans of The String Cheese Incident) all boast amazing musicians and are all about getting people up and stomping their feet. That, combined with the gorgeous wilds of your location, should be more than enough to get your guests caught up in the whole experience!
I want to come to your wedding 
haha!! Seriously you are putting together an amazing event!
Bluegrass music is about the only music my husband and I share an interest for! It’s right in the middle of my country music and his jam bands!
I’m wondering if you’ll be practicing your flat footin’ in those new boots so you can show of some skills at your wedding!
Yay bluegrass! We are using a friend who DJ’s for our event, but we put together a compilation of bluegrass for our cocktail hour. We’re soooo excited to use it!
-S. (the rustic barn wedding on the VT countryside chick)
I’m from the south, and I absolutely love Bluegrass. I’m actually thinking of having a band play in combination with a DJ (maybe for an hour or so). Everyone in both our families enjoy the sounds of Bluegrass, and hearing that some others are doing it definitely keeps my fears of duplicating this idea down…
~Ash
Bluegrass isn’t for everyone (I personally love it), but really, who can argue with it at a party? It’s the epitome of toe-tappin’ good times - you and your guests are gonna have a GREAT time! My cousin is a dj and we couldn’t say no to free music - but if we had the means for a live band, this good stuff would be first on my list! Great choice!
I love that they’re playing an Old Crow Medicine Show song in that youtube clip! I actually wanted a band like this for our wedding and was shocked when I couldn’t find the right thing, considering that it’s in Asheville, NC. We decided to have the good ol’ 5-piece bluegrass band for our country rehearsal, and to go with a jazz/swing band for the wedding.
Love the bluegrass idea. When doing a destination (for many guests) wedding, I think it is important to provide them with some authentic flavor!
We hired an amazing 8-piece band. They play Sinatra and the like. Can’t beat good live music! It is so personal.
I love it! The best wedding I ever went to had zydeco music, and we danced for hours and hours — not a single slow song. We danced so hard nobody even had cake!
Nerdherd- Your “We danced so hard nobody even had cake” just made me laugh out loud in my cube.
Awesome!
I think that most of the weddings I have been to have had live music. Of course, that might be somehow related to my being an amateur musician. Right out of college, playing piano with a little jazz combo and for our local Light Opera company, I was often the person tapped to round up a few woodwinds and strings and provide the ceremony music. When your friends are mostly musicians, its pretty easy. We are having a little jazz combo with two fantastic woman vocalists for our wedding/reception. They are all people we have known forever, and we called them as soon as we booked the venue.
My guy and I work a bluegrass festival in Tacoma every year, and we were sure we were going to book a band there. We came close, but the price (although reasonable) was just out of our budget. We ended up asking my violin instructor and a guitar instructor if they’d be wiling. It turned out beautifully!
Ms Cherry Pie… I don’t know if your library has back stacks of wedding magazines, but all your ideas make me think of a wedding from winter 2008 of Inside Weddings… It actually took place in Ojai, CA, but it totally exemplifies the whole rustic elegance thing. They even had a mechanical bull and everyone who rode it got a cowboy hat! The bride had a white one. Over the top, but amazing. Oh and the tablescapes! Sorry to ramble. If you can’t find it, let me know, I’d be willing to scan the story for you
Alexinwonderland- I would love to see a scan of the story! I’ll check out the Seattle Library downtown to see what they have, too.
We are having one of our favorite local (Maui) bluegrass bands too. It’s about the same price that you quoted, including all of the amps, etc. that we can also use for toasts and recorded music. For the cocktails and dinner, we’re just using an ipod loaded with our favorite songs. Bluegrass is fun and danc-y, and it fits in with our tropical-country wedding theme. Great choice!
I want to go back and change everything. I want your wedding! Oh we started out on the same path as you, but somewhere it took a turn. Not a bad turn, just a different path. So we are getting married in a castle instead of a barn… oh well, doesn’t matter too much in the end. It will be everything that I want with some compromises. That’s what happens when you have a budget. So we want a band and have been having the same issues - Bluegrass is awesome and everyone will love it, even if it’s a mockary for some. I wish you the best of luck!
Bluegrass! Love it! My FI & I have talked about bluegrass possibly being a musical solution for us (our music tastes are just soo different, but we both can agree on bluegrass), but we’re kinda intimidated about actually finding a good bluegrass band… that, and I wonder if our crowd is more likely to dance if the music is familiar to them (no matter how good the live music is)…
I’m totally using this post (& everyone’s comments) as inspiration to look a bit more!
we’re getting married just outside of bozeman at a turn-of-the-century dancehall so a live band was a no brainer! we too went the bluegrass way…ours is a trio and they also play country and celtic music (there’s also a big scottish tradition at the location where we’re getting married) so it’s working out well. they also agreed to have one guy play sloftly during our sitdown dinner, providing ambiance but allowing guests to talk. can’t wait! i think you’ve made a great decision. my beau and i are going to be taking a few ‘country’ dance lessons…and no, it’s not line dancing.
Hi Miss Cherry Pie! We’re also going with bluegrass. This is the only type of music my fiance will dance too, and he’s really good at it - so although I always imagined 40’s big-band music, I gladly went with it. We’re getting married in Hood River, OR on a hillside overlooking the Columbia with the reception in the barn at the top of the hill. We found our band by checking the music line-ups at the local bars, then the band’s websites. We found that many had demo CD’s, which was really helpful. I really like our band’s music, but I have to admit that I’m not sure how my guests will react to it. None of my friends in San Francisco are into BG. Reading the other comments was encouraging though. I am putting together a playlist for when the band takes breaks. My musical tast is really eclectic, so I’d like to add some modern indie, 40’s standards, disco and classic 80’s tunes, but my fiance’s having issues with that - “got to stick to the theme.” What type of music are you supplementing the bluegrass with?
Shannon- Awesome that you’re doing the bluegrass thing too, and in Hood River. I love HR!
We’ll probably supplement the bluegrass with folk and/or instrumental jazz for reception music, if we end up using our iPod for that purpose.
[…] I’m not going to wear the hat for the ceremony or the reception because I really don’t want to take the “Western” element of our wedding over the top, but it will make a great accessory to use in some bride/groom or bridal portraits with the Polebridge Mercantile or Saloon. And I’ll surely break it out for dancing to the bluegrass band. […]
[…] Friday or Saturday night, I’m also hoping to take a trip down to Polson to hear Good Wood, our bluegrass band perform at a local bar & […]
[…] my hair and makeup trials, we planned to drive an hour down to Polson, where Good Wood, the bluegrass band we hired for our wedding was […]
