Weddingbee Blog

Because of the space issues with our ceremony spot—and our budget—we’re just having our DJ play some music for our ceremony. It wasn’t too much extra and gives us complete freedom for what we want to play (and someone to make sure songs start and stop at the right moment). This is good…since we’re sticklers about the music.

We’re kind of viewing this whole big wedding thing as one gigantic playlist. Anyone ever seen High Fidelity (one of the Gray Wolf favorites)? We’re following Rob Gordon’s advice for a great compilation:

We want to start off with a bang (prelude and processional) and then kick it up a notch (recessional)…and then cool it off a bit (cocktail hour tunes). Then do it all over again with the reception.

We wanted the prelude music to be sort of soft—something instrumental that would easily segue into a more dramatic number in the processional. We were looking for songs that would say something about us too. This was sort of hard, finding instrumental songs that still were a nod to our tastes, as we don’t regularly listen to acoustic numbers or orchestral arrangements. Enter in VSQ and this album:

(Album art via Vitamin String Quartet)

Uhm…jackpot. It’s a collection of beautifully rendered covers of songs famously heard in Wes Anderson films (think The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Rushmore). Songs by artists we love (Nico, Elliot Smith, David Bowie) from movies we adore. Even if people don’t recognize the tunes—I have a lot of satisfaction that the song choices will be “traditional” in that they’re orchestral arrangements…but also a nod to us as a couple.

So, we’ll play some tunes from the album from about 20 minutes before the ceremony onward, as people trickle in, then the official prelude song will be Nico’s “These Days.”

Then, what I think of as the showstopper: Sigur Ros’ “Staralfur.” I can’t even. I wanted to use this song somehow because it’s just so beautiful, but the vocals in the original version gave me a bit of pause—kinda weird, sort of like the elf music in Lord of the Rings. Not a bad thing, just not necessarily wedding appropriate? So the VSQ version is perfection. Hopefully we’ll be able to time it so I’m walking in at about the 2:00 mark, where there’s a short pause. I tear up just listening to it, and as soon as I heard it I knew it was the right choice. This will be our wedding’s version of “kicking things up a notch.”

I know a lot of other bees have turned to VSQ for their ceremony tunes—what do you think of this choice?