Choosing the right music for your wedding should be one of the most fun and relaxing parts of planning your wedding. It is a time where you can be creative and really reflect the personality of you and your future spouse. There are enough places that music can be used, that you can incorporate everyone's wishes without having to sacrifice your own.
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Think of your wedding music as a soundtrack for your wedding, such as one created for a movie. The selections should reflect your style and personality while also setting the tone and mood of the wedding and entertaining the guests. In fact, creating a CD of some of the more memorable music choices from the ceremony and reception will be a great way to remember the day later on.
There are many moments during both the wedding ceremony and the wedding reception that you will want to consider choosing the music that is played. So many, in fact, that you might want to consider prioritizing which ones are most important to you. Select those first, then if you run out of time or energy for the task, you can delegate the rest of the choices to someone else or ask the DJ or musician you hired to choose.
The best way to get started is to brainstorm about your wedding and your music styles. The bride and groom should do this as a couple since the music should reflect both of them as a couple. Think about what genres you like and do not like: country, rock, jazz, blues, hip-hop, R&B, reggae, or classical.
Next, think about any songs that have special meaning to you. Consider selecting songs from the soundtrack of the first movie you saw together (or movies that you particularly love) or that were on the radio during a special moment.
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Then, start thinking about what musical artists you like. Almost every artist has at least one song that can be used during some portion of the wedding ceremony or reception. In fact, Sarah McLachlan's song "Push" was written specifically because she had so many people tell her that they used her songs during their wedding. McLachlan did not feel they were that great for this purpose, and wanted to give her fans a better alternative.
If at anytime a conflict about music comes up, remember that here are millions of songs out there. Is it more important that you get your way or that you both are happy with the music selected. The trick is to find a middle ground. If one of you has a song that they absolutely feel is necessary to use, but the other one hates it, consider using it during a moment of the wedding where you will be occupied and not listening to the music. (We will explain all about that on our wedding ceremony page.)
Here are a few other considerations you should keep in mind:
Once you have done your brainstorming and talked about it together as the future bride and groom, it is time to start thinking about specific places during your wedding ceremony and wedding reception that you will need to select music. For this purpose, we have broken things into two major categories: Best Songs for the Wedding Ceremony and Best Song for the Wedding Reception. From there we have divided things even further. You can see a complete list at the bottom of this page.
On each page, we have included some basic information about that spot as well as some guidelines to keep in mind when selecting the music. For your convenience, we have included links to the sheet music on Sheetmusicplus.com as well as the CD on Amazon.com whenever available. If you are looking to purchase the mp3 or would like to listen to a sample, then click on either the Amazon, Rhapsody, or iTunes links.
Rhapsody provides both music subscriptions as well as individual mp3s for sale in WMA format and iTunes only provides MPEG-4 audio files for sale. However, Amazon does offer mp3s that are compatible with both Windows Media Player and iTunes. For more information about where to purchase music online, we provide it on our Music Downloads page or our Music Subscriptions page.
Where to Find:
Find the Best: