Wedding Blog
I may have mentioned before that the Dude is into music. It’s one of his three favorite things (besides me!); his list goes: music, college football, and Microsoft Excel, in no particular order. He not only plays guitar and bass but also has great taste in music. Over the past five years, he has introduced me to all sorts of artists that I would’ve never thought twice about–a lot of them indie, local, and even a bit avant garde. He’s turned me into a total music snob, though I will never stop jamming to Beyonce and ABBA in my car.
One of the main reasons we want to have an iPod reception is so that we can hand-pick each song on our playlist. (Can you say, “control freaks”?) We’re picking the music together, but the Dude gets veto power, just in case I pick something too cheesy for his taste. For the reception music, we are going for songs that capture a dreamy, bittersweet, subtle mood. We’re not so much concerned with lyrics, though it would be nice not to have too many songs that explicitly criticize love or marriage. We’d also like to play a lot of music from local artists, since we are living in the Live Music Capitol of the World. There are tons of Austin bands that I’d like to give links to, but unfortunately a lot of them do not have videos on YouTube—or the ones there are are of poor quality.
At any rate, I’d like to share a few videos so you all can get an idea for the type of mood we’d like to create during our reception—some of these may even make the cut!
The album version has pretty strings, too!
I heart Iron and Wine–Sam Beam, the man behind the beard, has such a beautiful, haunting voice.
The Dude and I have seen My Morning Jacket in concert three times—the last time we waited in line for two hours in the rain to get free tickets!
One of our new fave bands!
The embedding was disabled on this Sigur Ros video, but head on over to YouTube, and give it a listen.
Sigur Ros makes music so pretty I could cry. I would love this song to be our first dance (if we can cut it down a bit in length).
Do you or your FI consider music to be top priority? How are you going about choosing your playlist for your wedding?
|
Share this post: Music Makes Me Happy
Oh, there will for certain be some Sigur Ros and Iron and Wine action at my wedding too 
Music is a major deal at our wedding. The hard part is finding a DJ with that kind of collection–we may have to iPod it, too (although we don’t want to). We need someone with great taste in dance music whose lyrics won’t make me cringe, who can also play some great bhangra, salsa, and flamenco (our favorites).
Great selection! I had to burn a cd of all the music the dj did not have but it was worth it. I had to have the music we like at the wedding or it just would not reflect who we are at all. I am so glad we did too.
I’m an Indie pop freak… We’re doing an ipod wedding too. The only difficulty has been to pick some music that other people will enjoy dancing to as well
Just some of our selections are MGMT, Mint Royale, New Pornographers, Passion Pit, Peter Bjorn and John, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens etc.
I don’t know how many songs we need, but I suspect we need to pick more! It’s a little nerve-wracking to have all responsibility squarely on our shoulders!
An Ipod reception is a great idea for people who are very particular about their music, but you should make sure you have someone who will still “run” the ipod and be a master of ceremony type. One of my best friends opted to do the ipod at her reception for the exact reason you are, but the reception kind of fell apart because no one was announcing the big events or really playing to the crowd. Alot of people danced during their first song, (which turned out to not be the song they originally picked anyway) no one really paid attention to the two tosses, and everyone left really, really early. I took this into consideration when deciding if I wanted a DJ or an ipod. Unfortunately, I have no close friends who would make a great master of ceremonies to man the ipod all night, so I went with a DJ just to avoid everything falling apart.
This is one part I’m not looking forward too…We both listen to metal and hardcore…not really “wedding” music. In fact one of my friends had called me once and I hit the answer key before I could actually pull the phone up to my ear and my music was blasting…she said she thought she heard Satan speak to her. Dramatic!
I’m leaning towards Sinatra and that kind of stuff…but I may give the music job to him
If DJs don’t have the selection you ask for, isn’t it part of their job to get that music? How does it really work?
Music was the most important aspect to our reception - in fact, it was pretty much the entire focus! We wanted live music so we decided to mix up a wonderful band with our IPOD with our favs for dinner and breaks. We did some other pretty neat stuff (if I do say so myself). I used to work in a recond store so we had LPs as our chargers, our seating cards were replicas of concert tickets with a line from a song as their table number. Our guests had to guess what band sung the song to find their table because our table numbers were mini concert posters of our favorite bands It was a great way to get people talking with each other. And the best part was that when it was time for each table to be ushered through the buffet instead of just calling their table names - they had to listen for the song on their ticket!! We still have people telling us how much fun they had!
Oh I just realized that I was at the radiohead concert!! Fun times!
Does anyone have any advice on how to pull off the iPod wedding in terms of what kind of equipment you need? I think our venue doesn’t have much for us, so we have to rent, but I am not sure what (aside from the iPod!) we even need.
Music was definitely high on our list, but it was more the ceremony music than the reception music for us. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still have an iTunes playlist called “wedding.”
Actually, come to think of it, I have four.
We are music snobs too. Indie music all the way!
Putting together our various playlists was HARD. It is impossible to choose amongst such perfectly awesome songs. sigh
p.s. make sure you have backups & backups of backups…
Our wedding was centered around music also… we went with our iPod for the dinner, and a live band for the dancing. Our tables were named after concerts we’d been to and the placecards were Concert Tickets, directing our guests to the table. Having the iPod for dinner was great because it is one of those things you can just let run through. But you DEFINITELY need an MC of some sorts… they are the ones who kept us on schedule and made sure all our “events” happened and people knew it.
We’re using an iPod, too. I HATE the music most DJ’s play. My guy and first bonded over our mutual love for Radiohead, so we wanted to include a lot of them in our wedding music. However, we were worried about the lyrics of “songs that explicitly criticize love or marriage”… solution?: have you heard of Christopher O’Reily? He plays beautiful piano-only covers of Radiohead songs… anyone who knows Radiohead will recognize the songs, and everyone will appreciate the beautiful music. We’re going to be playing his songs during dinner.
ohhhhh, sigur ros. <3 so beautiful.
GREAT taste in music, Miss Mouse. I don’t know about you, but I loathe Top 40. I actually DID cry the first time I listened to Sigur Ros. lol
Can’t go wrong with Radiohead and Iron & Wine! Two of my all-time favorites!
Oh, we were in the same boat - husband and I are total music fanatics (though he’s more indie than I - I like the heavy stuff!) and I spent a TON of time looking for a dj that I thought my guy could tolerate. I ended up finding a FANTASTIC dj in Boston who played a perfect mix of exactly the indie/somewhat unknown music we love during cocktail hour and dinner and then mixing it up with more popular and danceable things afterwards. Anyone in Massachusets can PM me for his name. All our music snob friends are still talking about how great he was - who else would have played a Cardigans cover of a Black Sabbath song? (and he came up with that all on his own!)
Music has been a source of fun and frustration for Mr. PD and I . . . we are very picky and our “do not play” list is almost as long as the “must play” list! We love the idea of an iPod wedding, but Mr. PD is the DJ among our group, and he will certainly be otherwise engaged at our reception! I’m curious what fun and creative music others are incorporating . . . We are going to use the M.Ward guitar duets as our pre-ceremony interlude music, three songs at the ceremony (Processional - “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes, Bride’s Entrance - “At My Most Beautiful” by REM, and Recessional - “No One’s Gonna Love You” by Band of Horses) and then use blues and soul (heavy on Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Al Green, and Marvin Gaye) for our cocktail reception, and transition into some indie rock favorites with dinner. We have known for a while what our first dance would be, and our second - “Such Great Heights” by Iron and Wine, right into “I’m the Man Who Loves You” by Wilco . . . I get excited just thinking about dancing to those two!
| Visit our sister sites | Project Wedding Wedding Songs |
eHarmony Advice Dating Advice |
JustMommies Pregnancy Calendar |
Fertile Thoughts Infertility Support |
Mrs. Mouse, Austin
Age and Occupation: 25, Attorney
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 31, Civil Engineer
Engagement Date: December 19, 2007
Wedding Date: September 2009
Venue: Barr Mansion
About Me: I just graduated from law school and will be taking the bar, getting married, going on a honeymoon with my guy, and then trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I was born and raised in a small East Texas town, but I'm no country girl! I'm obsessed with British accents, fantasy (including Harry Potter, of course), and classic rock. My fiance and I consider ourselves both music and beer snobs--but every once in awhile we love to hear a crappy band and drink a cheap brew or two. We're planning an eco-friendly, casual, English garden affair for the end of summer, and we can't wait for it to get here!
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 |
Latest Gallery Pics