Ideas For Special Wedding Music
Make Weddings Memorable By Selecting And Planning Musical Classics
Oct 17, 2009
Weddings are intended to be a very special day. Most couples spend many weeks planning the details meticulously. The music at weddings, however, is often neglected. This is a lost opportunity, since music can be used to convey the tone of a particular part of the wedding ceremony: rousing, emotional, calming, spiritual, or any other feeling.
Wedding Music at Church Before the Bride Arrives
As the guests await the arrival of the bride, the music could be calm but still full of anticipation. This is an ideal time to have music played. The options are endless, but music at this point will be light, fairly quiet, and positive.
The arrival of the bride is the most highly anticipated point of the ceremony. Her appearance, and subsequent walk to meet her husband-to-be, is a matter of great fanfare and rejoicing. Ironically, the music traditionally played at this point is a slow march such as Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” (Treulich Gefuhrt). It is often not played at traditional Jewish weddings, as these are non-processional, and also because Wagner was openly anti-Semitic.
Music During the Wedding Ceremony
During the wedding ceremony it is possible to play low-volume, un-intrusive music. This may be discouraged for cultural or practical reasons, but if it is permissible and possible , the general tempo should be slow, and possibly spiritual, to reflect the solemnity of the occasion. As the service finishes, and the couple become husband and wife, the tempo will suddenly change. The music will reflect that a great event has just taken place. “Ode to Joy” (An die Freude) is popular, using the music from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The final part of the ceremony – the exit of the new couple from the church – may use the cultural origins of the couple, such as playing the rousing sound of bagpipes. (Even those without Celtic ancestry can try this: the bagpipes origin is actually African).
Wedding Reception Music
The music at a church wedding is often conservative, in that few “risks” are taken musically. Some brides and grooms will try something more daring with the church music, but the wedding reception is a safer ground for everyone to try different music. String Quartets may be employed to play as the guests arrive for the meal. There are so many tunes that are fitting at this point. These include the haunting and well-named “Romance” (from Op. 97a, the Gadfly Suite) by Dmitri Shostakovich, and Frederic Chopin’s Etude No. 3 in E, better known now as the Jo Stafford 1950 hit “No Other Love”.
Wedding Video / DVD Music Selection
The wedding video is a permanent record of what happened on wedding day. It captures the key moments of the day, and there is generally a soundtrack, chosen by the couple, to accompany it. The music for the video can easily become dated, but that is not always a problem: it may be fine for the music to sound dated if it reflects the music of the day, as long as it reflects the feelings of the couple on the day that they married.
The wedding Video / DVD is still, however, an excellent chance to use music to set a tone or ambience for the scene being shown, and the sheer number of tunes and tracks available means that every couple can have a soundtrack that expresses their unique relationship in a special way.
Wedding Music Selection In The Internet Age
Up until around the year 2000, selecting wedding music was much more difficult. Those without a thorough knowledge of classical and popular music had to rely on friends, luck, or a wedding planner to select appropriate tunes. After that, widespread use of the internet has removed these limitations. All a couple needs now is to select the type of music – tempo, volume, style, etc – and search for a suitable tune.
An internet search will quickly come up with many suggestions. These can then be heard at the multitude of on-line music providers like Amazon which provides 30-second samples or Youtube, which frequently plays the entire tune.
Wedding Music Summary
Music can be used to fantastic effect at many points during a wedding day. Humans respond to music in a very primal way. For example, when fast music is played in a car, the driver tends to drive more quickly. Weddings are also a basic human personal and social event, where two people – or two families – are conjoined. Weddings and music are therefore both important facets of human needs, and so it makes sense to select wedding music very carefully.
Since music is such a personal choice, the tunes mentioned here are described only to illustrate a point, and are not a substitute for careful thought and planning.
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