The Drama of Picking Music...Part I

Hmmm...well, I’ve mentioned several times that I’ve been having music problems. I don’t know why this process has been so difficult for me...probably because I “assumed” that it wouldn’t be that hard to do, huh? That’s what I get! The reason that I thought that it would be easier is because we’re big on music. There’s always music playing at home or in the car (I cannot drive my car alone without singing out loud!) and we both have a wide selection of music that we both enjoy.

But what I’ve discovered is that music that you love isn’t always the best music to play...at a WEDDING. There are some great artists that we really like that just aren’t wedding appropriate...and I don’t care what you all tell me, I just can’t play my favorite Fergie song to get me out on the floor to a nice round of dirty dancing with grandmas in the audience. I just can’t do it. I’d like to, I really would, but we can’t. And B is in full agreement on this point.

The other thing is that I was trying really hard to do was to mesh our music tastes so that the reception music was a good blend of both of our tastes along with some of our mutual favorites. But that didn’t work either. You see, B’s favorite music selections are all angry, loud, metal grinding music about death, violence and other non-wedding-appropriate subjects. So right away we ran into a road block. But that’s ok, because he likes other music, right? Yeah...easier said than done. And if you look at my CD collection you’ll see a vast majority of country music. Which is the extreme opposite of Rage Against the Machine or Godsmack. Somewhere in the middle you find our pop rock collection, jazz collection and my instrumental favorites. So...we really are all over the board on music.

The DJ that we booked has an online catalog of music to pick from and he’s got a really nice set-up for planning your event. When you send in your deposit to reserve your day, he gives you a log on to the Client Area of his website. From there, you can fill out a Planning Form, Wedding Timeline and submit your Music Requests. Depending on the length of time that you booked him, the system is pre-set up with how many songs you need to select, and lets you categorize them into Must Play Songs and Play if Possible songs. I quickly scanned through some of his library early on in the planning, saw a bunch of artists that we like and just forgot about it.

Fast forward to three weeks ago when I realized that we have not done anything other then fill in the Planning Form and select our First Dance song. Sometimes, that’s the hardest one for couples to select, but that was easy for us – we’ve known all along that it would be “You’re the One” by The Black Keys. It’s the rest of the music that we struggled with...and don’t even get me started on the ceremony music!

Having decided that the looming deadline needed to be addressed, we set out some time to sit down together and go through our DJ’s library of music page by page until we had our required number of songs. And this is where we noticed that just because you like a song, or an artist, doesn’t mean that that song or artist HAS to be played at your wedding. The DJ’s list is sorted alphabetically, and we got to the letter “J” and reached our maximum number of Must Play Songs. Hmmm...this isn’t going to work, huh?

Well, I’ll make a long story short and tell you the ending only. We finished the list about a week before it was due to the DJ. That’s the good news. The bad news? It doesn’t really reflect B very much. In fact, he keeps thinking about it and laughing about the reaction of his friends who will be at the wedding talking about how the music isn’t much of B’s style at all. But I swear to you that he helped, that he had a say in each and every song that we picked.

Our reception music ranges from timeless classics like Frank Sinatra to new country artists like Taylor Swift and classic country singers such as Hank Williams, Jr. And just for kicks and grins? Vanilla Ice and Sir Mix a Lot might be making an appearance as well. What? You can’t blame a girl or guy for wanting some good booty shaking music to bring back fond memories, right? Of course not. We hope that our guests like our selections as much as we do...and we hope that the dance floor stays packed all night long.

Next up...ceremony music. Because that’s a post all on it’s own!

Did you struggle with music selections or did it come easy for you? Did you find that the music reflected one of you better than the other?