Weddingbee Blog

Wow, it’s already been more than a month since Mr. Cannon and I went and made it official.

Picture by Abby Troxell of Mary Wyar Photography

I’ve still got a while until I can do recaps, but I thought I’d try to fill in some details I didn’t get to before the wedding and maybe tell you a bit about our honeymoon while we wait.

First, I want to talk about the music at our reception. Mr. Cannon was adamant about using our mp3 players so we could get the music we wanted. This was both for cost reasons and also because he didn’t trust the DJ to actually play what we wanted. He didn’t want to pay someone some large sum of money for something he felt we could do ourselves. I wasn’t so sure.

But you know what? He was right. The only issue we had with it the entire night was my sister’s difficulty in starting the mother/son dance song, and I think that was mostly because we have Zunes and she’s used to iPods. Other than that, it was smooth sailing and we got TONS of compliments about the music. I mean, obviously our friends, who have similar taste in music to us, complimented it, but it meant a lot to me that people enjoyed it.

In the interest of helping others who may want to use playlists for their wedding, here’s the process we followed:

1. Mr. Cannon set up a playlist called “Wedding!”
2. We both dragged any songs we wanted played at the wedding to that playlist.
3. We both put joke songs that we didn’t really want played at the wedding on the playlist to make each other laugh.
4. We had way too many songs, so we edited it down to about six hours of music.
5. We split the list into four different lists: “Cocktail Hour” “Dinner” “Dances/Cake” and “Dance!”
6. We looked them over to make sure they made sense and looked good.

And, in the interest of maybe inspiring a few playlists, here’s what our lists consisted of:

Cocktail Hour

• Holiday Cocktail Lounge- the Bouncing Souls
• Hey Joe- Jimi Hendrix Experience
• Redemption Song- Bob Marley & the Wailers
• Dixie Fried- Carl Perkins
• Lola- the Kinks
• Swept Away- the Avett Brothers
• Angels at Play- Common Rider
• Uh-oh, Love Comes to Town- the Talking Heads
• What a Wonderful World- Joey Ramone
• Come Back Jonee- Devo
• The Wild Rover- Stiff Little Fingers
• Coma Girl- Joe Strummer
• Pinball Wizard- the Who
• Maybellene- Chuck Berry
• The Bottom Line- Big Audio Dynamite
• A Message to You- the Specials
• Everybody’s Happy Nowadays- the Buzzcocks
• Ramona- the Ramones
• Fell in Love with a Girl- the White Stripes
• Life Won’t Wait- Rancid

Dinner

• Highway 101- Social Distortion
• I’m a Little Dinosaur- Jonathan Richman
• These Boots are Made for Walking- Nancy Sinatra
• The Rainbow Connection- Willie Nelson
• Three Little Birds- Bob Marley & the Wailers
• Looking for a Kiss- the New York Dolls
• Bohemian Rhapsody- Queen
• Hopeless Romantic- the Bouncing Souls
• Pressure Drop- Toots & the Maytals
• You Can’t Put your Arms Around a Memory- Johnny Thunders
• Some Kinda Hate- the Misfits
• Substitute- the Who
• Blister in the Sun- the Violent Femmes
• Stay Free- the Clash
• Classsics of Love- Common Rider
• Lean on, Sheena- the Bouncing Souls
• All Shook Up- Elvis
• Bennie and the Jets- Elton John
• It’s So Easy- Buddy Holly
• Tony Adams- Joe Strummer and the Mescalero
• I Want you Around- the Ramones
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band- the Beatles
• X Offender- Blondie
• Upstarts and Broken Hearts- Dropkick Murphys
• The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side- Magnetic Fields
• Smile- Lily Allen
• Yes, It’s True- the Slackers

Dance!

• Should I Stay or Should I Go- the Clash
• Mony Mony- Billy Idol
• God Only Knows- the Beach Boys
• Get Off of My Cloud- the Rolling Stones
• Into Action- Tim Armstrong
• Who Would’ve Thought- Rancid
• Bus Stop- the Hollies
• I Love Rock n Roll- Joan Jett
• YMCA- the Village People
• Girls Just Want to Have Fun- Cyndi Lauper
• My Generation- the Who
• Brick House- Commodores
• Lovely, Love my Family- the Roots
• The Kids are Alright- the Who
• Train in Vain- the Clash
• Sheena is a Punk Rocker- the Ramones
• I Know What Boys Like- the Waitresses
• Ring of Fire- Johnny Cash
• Dancing Queen- ABBA
• Come on Eileen- Dexys Midnight Runners
• Going to the Chapel-the Dixie Cups
• Try it Again- the Hives
• And Then He Kissed Me- the Crystals
• Do You Wanna Dance- the Ramones
• ABC- the Jackson 5
• Party Hard- Andrew WK
• I Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine- Elvis
• Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On- Jerry Lee Lewis
• Inside Out and Upside Down (With You)- the Cramps
• You Never Can Tell- Chuck Berry
• You Really Got Me- the Kinks
• A Lover Like You- the Avett Brothers
• Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap- AC/DC
• Love, Love, Love Me Honey Do- Patsy Cline
• Hey Ya!- Outkast
• Get Down Tonight- KC and the Sunshine Band
• I Want You to Want Me- Cheap Trick
• Signed, Sealed, Delivered- Stevie Wonder
• Tobe’s Got a Drinking Problem- the Street Dogs
• Love Shack- the B-52s
• All Day and All of the Night- the Kinks
• At the Beach- the Avett Brothers
• I Want you Back- Jackson 5
• Billie Jean- Michael Jackson
• Whatta Man- Salt n Pepa
• I Still Love You- the Slackers
• My Boyfriend’s Back- Angels
• Fat Bottomed Girls- Queen
• Take me Home, Country Roads- Toots & the Maytals
• If the Gov’t Could Read my Mind- the Vandals
• Easy to Love- Frank Sinatra
• Late Bloomer- the Bouncing Souls
• You Belong to Me- Elvis Costello
• I Need You- the Kinks
• Sisters- the Puppini Sisters
• Years May Come, Years May Go- the Irish Rovers
• Great Balls of Fire- Jerry Lee Lewis
• Crimson and Clover- Tommy James and the Shondells
• Into the Valley- the Street Dogs
• Can’t Help Falling in Love- Elvis
• I Held Her in my Arms- the Violent Femmes
• Tainted Love- Soft Cell
• I Heard it Through the Grape Vine- Gladys Knight and the Pips
• You’re My Best Friend- Queen
• Be My Baby- the Ronettes
• Mama Told Me- the Slackers
• Devil’s Dance- Rancid
• I Think We’re Alone Now- Tommy James and the Shondells
• My Girl- the Temptations
• Maybe I’m Amazed- Paul McCartney
• Hot Hot Hot- Buster Poindexter
• People Will Say We’re in Love- Frank Sinatra
• At Last- Etta James
• Goodbye Song- Yo Gabba Gabba

So, I know you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s very, uh, detailed Cannon, but what’s the big deal?”

First, I just wanted to show you how many freaking songs you need to put together for an entire reception (and ours was pretty short!). It’s a lot of work and definitely not something you want to put off until the very last minute. I also wanted to show that you can play your style of music and still have people dance and enjoy it. The key for us was to mix things up. We played music from bands we like that other people may not like as much, but also played a lot of oldies that everyone loves (I mean, can anyone resist Tainted Love? Or My Boyfriend’s Back?) And if you want to get the older folks on the dance floor, play something they’ll want to dance to. I knew YMCA was a must have because I knew my MIL would dance to it. And if you play an older slow song, you can definitely get your parent’s generation on the floor for some cute slow dance pictures. (God Only Knows was a good one.) Look at ballads that were in the top tens when a lot of your guests got married, and there’s a good chance you’ll play “someone’s song,” and you know they HAVE to dance to that.

As far as what went wrong, I would say the one mistake we made was playing a song with bad words too early. Mr. Cannon really loves Who Would’ve Thought by Rancid, and I know it makes him think of me, so I knew we would play it. But it was definitely too early in the night for the F word when we did it. If we had put it farther down on the list so it would play later, I don’t think anyone would have even noticed. In fact, I know they wouldn’t because there were a few more F bombs later in the night that no one even noticed. No one said anything about that song, but I think everyone felt a little uncomfortable for a minute there when it was playing.

We may have skewed a bit non-traditional in the music, but I think it was a great success. It was really amazing having everyone we love jamming to music that means so much to us. There is a story behind almost every song on the playlist. I’m really glad we did it.

Has anyone else had an iPod reception? How did it work out for you? And does anyone have any additional tips for those still planning?