Weddingbee Blog

Music is a very important part of our relationship. Burger is a talented musician (in my opinion), and he introduced me to a lot of amazing tunes that I otherwise never would have heard. Because of this, we hope to customize as much of the music played on our big day as possible.

Because we are having a Catholic mass, our ceremony music choices are slightly limited. We are not allowed to have secular music in any form (even instrumentals). We were, however, given a list of “Catholic approved” classical music to choose from, thus, giving us some room for personalization.

Here are our (fairly standard) selections for the ceremony:

Processional (Family & Bridesmaids): “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”, Bach

Processional (Flower girls, Me & Cheeseburger Dad!): “Cannon in D”, Pachelbel

Lighting of the Unity Candle: “Be Thou With Them”, Bach

Presentation of Flowers to the Blessed Mother: “Ave Maria”, Shubert

Recessional: “Water Music”, Handel

We’ve been to lots of weddings with both bands and DJs, and while some of the bands really blew our minds, others really were no better than a good DJ (but about $4,000 more expensive, according to our friends!). Given the extra expense of a band, and the fact that we literally have no space left in our reception venue for a band, we started to talk DJs.

After discussing our options at length, Burger and I decided not to use the DJ for the cocktail hour. Considering that it’s a time spent mingling and chatting, we doubted that most people would notice the music, anyway. Plus, we figured that it would create an unnecessary financial and logistical burden - thus, our iPod Cocktail Hour was born!

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We’ll be programming the music onto both of our iPods (with back-up playlists on our phones and laptops, just in case), and using our iPod speakers to play some subtle tunes while we’re all munching on hors d’oeuvres.

We’ve thought long and hard about our music selections, and throughout this series you’ll probably notice some wedding staples as well as some pretty out-there choices. We like to think of our cocktail hour music as modern alternative romantic. Take a look at our choices!

• Ants Marching - Dave Mathews Band
• Come on Eileen - Dexy’s Midnight Runner
• Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrisson
• Stuck in the Middle With You - Stealer’s Wheel
• Your Love - Outfield
• Say Hey (I Love You) - Michael Franti & Spearhead
• I’m Yours - Jason Mraz
• The Best of Me - Starting Line
• La La Lie - Jack’s Mannequin (yes, it’s a song about breaking up, but we had to throw a Jack’s song in there!)
• Hey Soul Sister - Train
• Alive With the Glory of Love - Say Anything (one of our favorites - hence the napkin quote)
• You and Me - Lifehouse
• Last Night on Earth - Green Day

Were you at all limited in your ceremony music selection? If so, what did you end up using? And, are you DIYing any of your music?