Wedding Wednesday: The Music

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Ah music.

Music is a huge part of my life. I was born into a musical family and worked in the music field for a good part of my adult life. I'm one of "those" people that has an emotional connection with music.

So, it's not hard to imagine that picking the music for the ceremony was quite a big deal. I'm very pleased with our selections. Ultimately, we decided on a few songs and will do an iPod mix of some fave songs before the ceremony.

We will have a special song for the seating of the mothers/grandparents, the groom's processional, bridesmaid's entrance, bride's processional, unity candle and an exit song. The groomsmen/groom are walking in separately from the bridesmaids...hence the separate songs.

Even though I'm getting married in a church, we are allowed to use non-religious songs in wedding ceremonies. (heck, we even use them during church services sometimes!) With that, I've opted to use instrumental (without vocals or singing) versions of some favorite songs for most of the wedding.

Given my ecclectic taste in music, there are no "traditional" wedding songs in my wedding. However, we did opt to have the song that will be sung during the unity candle lighting be a live perfomance. Some friends of our are going to play guitar and cello and sing a verse and chorus of the song. This one's not a secret. :) It's called "Our God" and it's by Chris Tomlin. We really loved the words of this song and though it not about a wedding at all, it is a great anthem of the faith M and I share.

For the seating of the mothers/grandparents, I chose an instrumental version of "Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton. I grew up listening to Ol' Slowhand and he remains one of my favorite musicians of all time. The instrumental version of the song is done with a string quartet so the wailing guitar parts are a little more wedding appropriate. :) (Update: I decided to have a different song for the grandparents, so I chose this song "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" since it was a sweet hymn. Seating of the Parents was this version of "Wonderful Tonight".)

For my bridal processional, I will be walking down the aisle to a song that has a lot of significance for me personally...but is also just a beautiful arrangement of the original. (string quartet arrangement) I originally always wanted to walk down the aisle to Pearl Jam's cover of "Love Reign O'er Me" or Selah's "Draw Me Lord", however, I've wanted those songs for so long that I honestly kind of got tired of them. (Update: Here's the song I walked down the aisle to. It was a string version of this original called "Dare You to Move" by Switchfoot.)

Update: The groomsmen, upon the request of my husband, walked down the aisle to this song. Yes, you read that right. We also timed a lighting cue to be flickering white and black lights. Hey...we go all out! And keeping with the rock song - turned string quartet theme, my bridesmaids walked down to this string version of Sweet Child O'Mine.

Update: For the recessional...well, we went back and forth about this for quite a while. I really wanted "I Found You" by the Alabama Shakes OR "When the Saints Go Marching In" (because I'm a Saints fan!!) but we ultimately decided on a medley of 2 songs that went together well. We technically walked out to "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" by Stevie Wonder followed by "You Are the Best Thing" by Ray LaMontagne.

I want people to "experience" the music of my ceremony instead of having it just be something nice to listen to. Music can help to cultivate an emotion or a feeling so well, so I hope that the music I've chosen will do just that.

For those of you who are married, how did you go about choosing your music?