Wedding Blog
Confession: Mr. Fondue and I are both music snobs. One of the reasons we actually started talking and dating was because we had a love for similar bands. What we consider our first date was a concert (A Perfect Circle). That’s not to say we agree on all music, however, which can produce some mild bickering in the Fondue household (like, he’s not allowed to listen to Dave Matthews if I can’t listen to Jewel), but, for the most part, our tastes run pretty close.
So one of the things we were really looking forward to was picking songs for our reception play list. We knew our do-not-play list would be extensive, so we made sure to find a DJ we trusted to follow it. We are also giving him a list of bands/artists that are definitely okay to play, and hopefully between the two, he’ll be able to discern our tastes.
Unfortunately, a lot of our favorite bands are not wedding/dance friendly (sorry, Trent, Maynard, Thom, and Roger). We also like a lot of electronic music, but didn’t want to alienate our non-techno-loving guests. However, we did manage to come up with a decently sized list of songs that we thought would be good to hear at some point during the night and that the majority of our guests would enjoy. So, without further ado, our reception play lists:
Dinner Music
“Let Go” - Frou Frou
“Tonight, Tonight” - The Smashing Pumpkins
“When I’m Sixty-Four” - The Beatles
“Something About the Way You Look Tonight” - Elton John
“Piano Man” - Billy Joel
“Moon River” - Henry Mancini
“Everlong” - Foo Fighters
“Angel” - Stabbing Westward
Jewel
Dave Matthews
Coldplay
Frank Sinatra
Ella Fitzgerald
Jack Johnson
Dance Music - Fast Songs
“The Twist” - Chubby Checker
“Electric Boogie” - Marcia Griffiths (not a huge fan of the song, but I love doing the electric slide)
“Thriller” - Michael Jackson (we’re trying to get as many people as possible to learn the dance)
“Such Great Heights” - The Postal Service
“One More Time” - Daft Punk
“I Bet That You Look Good on the Dance Floor” - Arctic Monkeys (hence the post title!)
“Shout” - Isley Brothers
“Blister in the Sun” - Violent Femmes
“Jump Jive and Wail” - Brian Setzer
“The Loco-Motion” - Little Eva
“Grease Megamix” (specifically for my friends; Mr. Fondue hates that this is on the list)
“I Can’t Help Myself” - The Four Tops
“Twist & Shout” - The Beatles
“Sandstorm” - Darude
“Rock This Town” - Stray Cats
“American Girl” - Tom Petty
“The Way You Make Me Feel” - Michael Jackson
“Last Nite” - The Strokes (we had to get in at least one song from our favorite band)
“Float On” - Modest Mouse
“Call Me Al” - Paul Simon (because Mr. Fondue does a really funny dance when this is played)
“Sweet Home Alabama” - Lynyrd Skynyrd
“Steady, As She Goes” - The Raconteurs
“Strict Machine” - Goldfrapp
“Take Me Out” - Franz Ferdinand
“I’ve Just Seen a Face” - The Beatles
“Are You Gonna Be My Girl” - Jet
Dance Music - Slow Songs (most of these have some sort of sentimental meaning to us and were contenders for our first dance)
“At Last” - Etta James
“The Luckiest” - Ben Folds
“Unchained Melody” - The Righteous Brothers
“Angel” - Jack Johnson
“Grow Old With You” - Adam Sandler
“By My Side” - Ben Harper
How important was your play list to you?
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Share this post: I Bet That You Look Good on the Dance Floor
I desperately want to convince my wedding party to do the Thriller dance. Somehing tells me that I’m not going to win that one though.
my guy and i started dating because of our shared love of radiohead. have you heard christopher o’reily’s piano covers of radiohead songs? they’re beautiful, and i’m pretty sure we’ll be using them for ceremony or dinner music.
WELL well, lookie here. Those are such great songs! Many of them are on our playlist as well - and you have my first dance song on there, too! Great post, and great music 
you have good taste in music!
Wow, what a great mix!! We haven’t even considered music yet…pooh.
The playlist is very important to us, as we’re both very into music, and have pretty similar tastes. We initally bonded over bands we both liked like Franz Ferdinand and Interpol. When he told me he burned a concert from Franz Ferdinand’s DVD to CD so he could listen to it in the car, that was even more proof that we were meant to be. He also told me he traveled over two hours to see Interpol at a show, so that was DEFINITE proof, as I have traveled far and wide to see my favorite bands. Well, in my younger days, that is. :p
I recognized that title! I loved Arctic Monkeys @ ACL fest! I may have to scope your list for other ideas!
Have you considered Aqua Lung? brighter than sunshine?
We’re doing an “Ipod wedding” (with laptops though). And, I’ve been having the hardest time coming up with good fast dance songs since most of our favorite music isn’t very dance-friendly or at least not for the majority of our guests. Thank you so much for this list!! Such a good mix with something for everyone.
LOVE TOOL & PERFECT CIRCLE… suitable wedding reception music? Not so much… lol. Darn it. Love your playlist.
Double check that your vendor actually has all the songs. Our dj, while very nice and agreeable with our suggestions, ending up not having the songs we’d placed our our list. Instead of telling us that, he “translated” the songs into what he had…so my exhaustive list of Scissor Sisters turned into 1 song, the list of neo-soul (Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, Angie Stone) turned into “Brick House” and, god help me, Goldfrapp became “We are Family”. The only reason he had our first dance some, “Stolen” by Dashboard Confessionals, was that we burned a cd for him.
Frankly, I’m still mad…and it’s been a year! I spent hours on that list and ended up with normal crap wedding music.
“One More Time” by Daft Punk is a great dance song! (And workout song too!)
Indie music is so hard because of the varied beats and syncopated rhythms. We’ve been struggling to come up with a good dance list. I’ve already got many of yours, but was able to add a few others, so thanks!
Great choices! I think that is a great variety, and your guests will be happy. We had a rock band at our wedding, but they do classic rock, oldies, new rock (alternative), funk, green day, you name it really. So I let them play whatever, because they are an awesome band and I knew we wouldn’t be dissatisfied with anything that they chose. They did a fantastic job, and our guest were thrilled! Hope your playlist goes over as well as I think it will!
Looks like a great playlist! I am a bit relieved that Mr. PN and I didn’t care too much about music. We just told our trio to play anything as long as it wasn’t cheesy!
Glad I could help some of you guys out! 
@elizabeth: Hehe, that’s exactly why I’m trying to get our guests into it too. I figured not enough of our wedding party would be willing to learn it!
@melodicsighs: I haven’t, but that sounds really cool! I will have to check it out!
@Sarah: Haha, yeah I know. My all-time favorite song is “Lateralus” but I just couldn’t find a way to fit it in, lol.
@Mary: I used to work out to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”. I would always try to do jumping jacks to the beat, and I would be worn out about a third of the way through the song.
no hip hop at all?
Mr. Taffy is in charge of the play list (so…hard…to let go…!), but I will probably have some suggestions/additions. He doesn’t like the Smashing Pumpkins or Radiohead!!! (Although we were at the same Smashing Pumpkins concert in Detroit in 1996 wayyy before we knew each other which I think is cute.) Your playlist sounds good!
I had to lead the Thriller dance in an October wedding a few years ago, and Miss Candy Corn did this past halloween. I just watched it over and over on youtube until it sunk in. Good luck!
I wasn’t too picky with our song list I’m going to let our dj do his thing, and I know alot of our guests like country so I’m including that as well. But our first dance song is Angel by Jack Johnson, which I saw on your list
DO the Thriller dance! My husband did it at our wedding with his groomsmen and my brothers and our flower girl in tow- it was a hit! Every single guest was lined up on the side of the dance floor watching and cheering.
The kicker is that it wasn’t the real Thriller dance- DH was completely making it up. The guys just followed him. Not one person noticed. :]
Anyway, it makes for awesome pictures, and a great memory!
I saw your post title and giggled - my FH and I both LOVE the Arctic Monkeys. Now we’re considering “Dance Floor” for our Bridal Party entrance music! Thanks for the inspiration!!
We are TOOL junkies and have seen them 4 times in concert, all our friends know of our love for the band, so we HAD to include it into our cocktail hour playlist…we just couldn’t leave it out! BTW, we even found a way to incorporate Pantera into the songlists for the day
Ben Folds is amazing live and The Luckiest is one of my absolute favorites. I get all sentimental about my guy when I hear that one, it was one of the first we ever dance to–bare foot in my dormitory. We. are. dorks. Ive thought about using it for a first dance as well.
Great song.
[...] we were discussing what songs we wanted to hear at our reception, “Thriller” came up. I (half-jokingly) said it would be awesome if we could get a group [...]
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Miss Fondue, Nashville
Age and Occupation: 27, Technical Analyst
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Network Admin Student/Senior Game Advisor
Engagement Date: December 25, 2007
Wedding Date: May 2009
Blogging Since: September 14, 2008
Venue: Ravenwood Golf Club
About Me: I’m your average computer geek marrying a gaming geek and trying to find a good balance of elegance and geek chic in our wedding. I adore The Sims, Nintendo, cosplay, (good) music, TiVo, theme parks, and our two crazy felines.
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