Dance, Dance!

January 9th, 2009 @ 6:13 pm by Mrs. Quiche

Mr. Quiche and I are such “music” people, that I don’t trust leaving the song decisions up to a Jamaican DJ. We don’t want the same old song and dance (Electric Slide, Shout!, you get the point…).

The resort provides a Jamaican Mento band (I had no idea what one was, either!) as part of our general wedding package. I am glad that we’re going to have some Jamaican music for the ceremony, but I don’t want that to be the sole source of entertainment for the reception.

As you may remember, the movie Love Actually played a major role in our engagement, and I want to find a subtle way to incorporate it into our ceremony. During the wedding scene, they walk back down the aisle to a crowd-participation version of “All We Need is Love”. I don’t know if I can get the guests to pick up a trombone and play along, but am hoping to find a way to have the band press “play” on my iPod as the ceremony is ending. It’s my goal to get this to work out!

There is also a reggae band that you can hire for the reception, but at $3,000 a night, it’s WAAAAY outside of our budget. Speaker and microphone rental are available for $150, so I think we’ve decided to have an iPod reception. This makes me happy because we can dictate exactly what we want to hear.

As we are also celebrating our family and friends, I thought of one way to honor our married guests during the reception – asking them what their “first dance” song was when they were married, and those songs can fulfill our slow dance portion of the night. I considered opening this up to everyone by putting song request line on the RSVP card, but ultimately decided against it.

Speaking of first dances, Mr. Quiche and I have mad love and respect for Jack Johnson. I introduced him to Mr. Quiche right after we started dating, and Mr. Quiche was blown away. Jack’s played a big role in our lives, so we are dancing to “Better Together”. It should be… interesting… as it is slightly faster than a slow song, but not fast enough to be a fast song. We “practiced” the other day while standing in the kitchen, and let’s just say it wasn’t perfect.

Mr. Quiche claims it’s because I try to lead and I need to stop, but I beg to differ!

What is your first dance song? Are you having an iPod reception to save money? Any tips?

Tags: ceremony music, dance, dj, reception music |

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14 Responses to “Dance, Dance!”

Guest

We are using Jack Johnson’s Angel. It’s slow and short, perfect since we can’t dance!

1/9/09 @ 6:28 pm (reply)

Guest

West Coast bride

I think our first dance song will end up being “What’s Simple Is True” by Jewel, or “Sea of Love” by Cat Power. In case your tempo problems aren’t fixable, you could always use “Better Together” as your pronouncement song instead. We’re doing out own music by creating different playlists on our Play Station. Since we’re doing an “at home” wedding, we have the freedom to set up a whole media centre ourselves without too many hassles.

1/9/09 @ 6:36 pm (reply)

Guest

buttercup

Same as JS we used Jack Johnson’s Angel. Since we don’t actually know how to dance, and it’s not very long so we didn’t feel uncomfortable because we didn’t have everyone staring at us for very long.

1/9/09 @ 6:37 pm (reply)

Guest

Amy

We’re dancing to Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”…

1/9/09 @ 6:52 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Meatball (message) 613 posts, Busy bee

I’m a *huge* Jack Johnson fan, and Banana Pancakes has been on our shortlist for first dance songs forever. Mad props!

I love the idea of using the married couples’ first dance songs… that’s so so sweet… I just might steal it

1/9/09 @ 7:46 pm (reply)

Bee

Mrs. Sea Breeze (message) 912 posts, Busy bee

We played ‘Better Together’ before our ceremony!

1/9/09 @ 7:49 pm (reply)

Guest

Heather

We’re dancing to A Kiss to Build A Dream On(Louis Armstrong)/Shake a Tail Feather. It’s going to be a blast.

1/9/09 @ 7:59 pm (reply)

Member

Twalison (message) 92 posts, Worker bee

iPod tip–make sure someone is in charge of it. You will forget/be too busy. Also, make sure whoever is controlling it knows WHEN you want things to be played, i.e. don’t let the fast music come on right as you start to cut the cake!!

1/9/09 @ 8:03 pm (reply)

Member

peachypear (message) 343 posts, Helper bee

We used our laptop for our wedding reception. I am so glad we did it! It was perfect for us: free and easy. Plus, we didn’t have to worry about a skanky DJ playing awful music (I’ve been to those weddings…)

Tips:
– Test beforehand. We brought our laptop to the venue on our first meeting and hooked it up to the system (note, we warned them we’d want to do this). AND the day of the wedding, DH tested it again and made sure the staff were aware that it was supposed to be there (since it had to sit on the bar).
– Plan your playlist first. It sounds obvious, but don’t just start dragging in everything you can think of. Without a DJ, it’s up to you to set the mood. What type of music do you want? How fast to do you want it to be? (We started with old standards and moved to modern pop) Do the lyrics matter to you? (I was obsessed with having only songs with pro-love and happiness lyrics). How many slow dances vs fast dances will your guests want? (We knew no one would dance anyway, so we put on songs that would make good background music)
– Burn your playlist to CD, just in case. And remember to bring the CDs to the wedding (see Mrs Tulip’s post on this). Our venue had a CD player, so we knew it would work in a hitch.
– Do the playlist in advance. I swore I wasn’t going to be that person, but we were copying music the night before the wedding. I felt silly making our playlist months in advance, but wished that I had.
– Have back-ups of any live music. We had live band play our ceremony and we made sure that we had electronic versions of the songs on the laptop… just in case. It’s there - why not?

Contrary to some of the pp, we didn’t have someone else in charge. I actually was the one who opened it up and hit “play.” But we just had it go on random; we didn’t try to DJ. You would want someone to handle that for you. I’d also recommend clearly labeling all the important songs - even making separate playlists for each if necessary, so that they know for certain which is for your first dance and which is the recessional.

I’ve also heard some people say that guests took it as an invite to mess with their playlist. Our laptop was tucked out of sight, and we didn’t have any problems. I don’t think that anyone knew we were running the music from a laptop, which helped.

1/9/09 @ 8:39 pm (reply)

10.

Guest

Justine

We also had an ‘iPod’ [computer] reception, and it was a wonderful way to save money.

For every song, as we made our list, we asked ‘how can people dance to this?’ It stopped us from adding a lot of songs that were good but not dance-able. The songs that we couldn’t dance to went onto the dinner playlist. :]

Like peachypear, we also tucked the computer out of sight.

1/9/09 @ 9:00 pm (reply)

11.

Guest

Meg

We’re dancing to Jack Johnson’s “Do you Remember” it’s completely us - 10 years and all

1/9/09 @ 10:26 pm (reply)

12.

Bee

Miss Quiche (message) 2,175 posts, Buzzing bee

@Meg: That’s awesome. I LOVE that song as well.

@Miss Meatball: Love Banana Pancakes as well!

I guess I should just say that I love *all* of Jack’s songs!

@peachypear: great tips - thanks a lot! I will definitely have to have a back up plan. I can’t imagine if something didn’t work out…

1/10/09 @ 9:37 am (reply)

13.

Guest

ladyjane

I hear ya on this one– I’m a super music snob, so the idea of handing over our music to a stranger (even if we had the money) was a no-go for me!

Never teh Bride of Manolo for the Brides just wrote an excellent post on this very subject Check it out:
http://manolobrides.com/2009/01/09/putting-the-ipod-in-i-do/

1/10/09 @ 12:18 pm (reply)

14.

Guest

Tee

We are dancing to “Better Together” as well. We played the Jack Johnson CD on our first vaca together at the Cape. It’s such a good song! I was afraid a lot of people would have it and it would become a token wedding song but it’s to perfect to pass up:)

I am also having an Ipod wedding! My fiance said he refused to have someone yelling at him to “get his booty on the dance floor.” We are anti-cheessy DJ. I agree with Twalison about having someone watch it. I was a little nervous about not having someone to babysit the lap top in case it skips or something so we enlisted my fiance’s music loving cousin to “play dj”. He was honored to be asked and he also said he’d do our announcements and intros whcih is super cool.

1/10/09 @ 1:36 pm (reply)