General Music

Throughout this wedding planning process, I've come to find myself quite funny. I'm finding that things that I don't care about in real life are causing me to do massive amounts of internet searches and spend far too much time thinking about them. See my post the other day on shoes (funnily enough, I barely care at all about the bridesmaids' shoes). Also, I never knew I cared so much about stamps before, but suddenly I'm looking at the different stamps available, trying to see which ones I might want to use for our invitations, and finding nothing that I like. I'm starting to consider custom-printing stamps, people. Someone, please...stop me.

And then there are things that I care a great deal about in real life that I'm giving about zero amount of thought to. Like our cake. I watch wedding cake shows as much as I possibly can. Everytime there's a cake challenge show, or a cake show-down show, I watch it. I used to watch (even DVR) Ace of Cakes, but I kind of got over that, for some reason. And I hate Cake Boss, simply because the guy refers to fondant (FAHN-dunt) by his made-up stupid fancy way of saying it (fahn-DAHNT). But any other show that has to do with make big fancy cakes - I'm all over it. Love them. I follow Cake Wrecks blog because it is hilarious and even badly made fancy cakes are amazing to me. And yet, when it came time to picking out and designing our cake, I was totally blase about it. "Meh, sure, that looks good. We'll take it."

The one that's really surprising me, though, is the music for our special day. In a way, I'm kind of giving a lot of thought about it, but not nearly as much as I thought I would. And I say that because, well, I'm obsessed with music. I require it to breathe - it's seriously like oxygen to me. Even when music is playing around me, I'm listening to it in my head. I have a very strong connection to music, and it has the ability to deeply affect me. There are songs that make me laugh out loud when I hear them because of something that someone said or did while I was listening to it, and there are songs that make me burst into tears because of the beauty/pain of the lyrics or even the notes. So going into this process, I thought that finding the perfect playlist would be a huge obsession of mine. Turns out...it's kind of not.

When I spoke to our DJ the first time, and he asked me what kind of music we wanted to have played at our reception, I just said, "We like all kinds of music. Stuff from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, mostly. Fun, upbeat stuff is great, to get people on the dance floor, but we also love the Allman Brothers and the Dead. We don't really like current "club" music, but there are a few songs that we would like to hear." Super vague, right? And maybe a little confusing? But, I mean, how much direction am I supposed to give the guy? He's a professional, for crying out loud; I would think he could come up with a great way to play all of that and make it sound normal and keep the party going. [Sidebar: I did a lot of research about DJs and this company, and this DJ, in particular, got really good reviews. Especially from people who specifically said, "We gave him little to no direction." That sounded like someone we wanted to get on board with.]

Funnily enough, I am a little obsessive about the cocktail hour and dinner parts of the evening. I provided the DJ with a list of specific artists that I want him to play during the cocktail hour and a separate list of artists to play during dinner. I want to create 2 similar yet different vibes for those two hours of the night. I want them both to be mellow, but the cocktail hour should be a bit hipper, cooler, and upbeat, while dinner should be really laid-back and jazzy. For example, my "playlist" for the cocktail hour includes (but is not limited to): Brett Dennen, Ingrid Michaelson, Adele, Joshua Radin...that kind of vibe. The dinner hour "playlist" includes (but, again, is not limited to): Bruce Hornsby, Norah Jones, Ray LaMontagne...you get the picture (or sound).

Other than that, though, we've given him very little direction, and I don't really plan to dictate much of what is played during the actual party part of the reception. I have a few songs that are absolute must-plays, like "Oh What a Night," by the Four Seasons (?) for my girls, because it's a tradition that we've had since high school, and "Yeah," by Usher, for my sister, because it's a song that reminds me of our trip to Europe and what was one of the best nights ever, out at a Madrid nightclub with all our hostel-mates.

So that's the general musical feel of our reception. Stay tuned for specific song choices for the important moments of the night.