Selecting Wedding Background Music
Music is one of the most memorable parts of a wedding. It sets the tone for each part of a wedding day, directly affecting you and your guests’ mood. Many couples overlook their wedding background music by only selecting the featured songs for their wedding day, such as the ceremony processional or first dance songs. They then leave the remainder of music choices up to their DJ. While your DJ is fully capable of putting together a great playlist for your wedding background music, we encourage couples to have a greater influence on their wedding atmosphere by choosing music outside the standard wedding playlists.
Incorporating songs that bring back memories from the early stages of dating as a couple, or your favorite bands, are great ways to personalize your wedding background music. Whether your preferences are for indie, rock, jazz or pop music, there are several parts of a wedding day that any genre can fit into seamlessly. Wedding background music is split into three main categories – Ceremony, Cocktail Hour and Dinner. These are parts of your wedding where non-dancing songs should be played.
Wedding Ceremony
Your wedding ceremony is a great place to input songs that are unique to your style as a couple. Music for this part of the wedding is generally played 20 minutes prior to the wedding start time, during guest arrival. The songs you select should be conducive to a wedding ceremony, with a subtle feel. Remember, the ceremony gives guests the first impression of your wedding day.
We had a couple that loved Metallica, but this is not a type of music that is conducive to a wedding. However, we found that Vitamin String Quartet had several cover versions of their songs in classical renditions. Incorporating these songs made the wedding ceremony unique to this couple!
Examples of both non-traditional and traditional wedding background music:
- Vitamin String Quartet’s classical renditions of modern songs
- Acoustic songs
- Classical songs
- Live instrumental songs
Photo Credit: Genevieve Nisly Photography
Cocktail Hour
This is part of the wedding day where it is nice to incorporate upbeat music. The traditional wedding ceremony is complete, and now guests will want to start celebrating. Cocktail hour is where the most socializing takes place during a wedding. During this time, you’ll want to play the majority of fast and celebratory songs that you have selected.
Photo Credit: Becker Photography
Dinner
We recommend starting dinner off with a few slow songs, to help transition the atmosphere to sitting down for dinner. Towards the middle or end of the meal, incorporating upbeat music will start the transition to dancing that will take place afterwards.
Take a look here for more tips for planning your Hudson Valley wedding!
