DIY wedding music

We spent most of our reception having 7,000 pictures taken of us. The music was mostly for our friends and family. Some people do it differently with a lot more ceremony, but for us, homemade CDs were just fine.

001 - Against the Wind main theme, computerifically slowed down by 30% to make stately bridal waltz
002 - Righteous Bros - Unchained Melody
003 - Barry White - You're the First, the Last, My Everything
004 - The Mamas and the Papas - Dream a Little Dream
005 - (?)
006 - Madness - It Must Be Love
007 - Proclaimers - Let's Get Married
008 - Elvis Costello - She
009 - Billy Idol - White Wedding
010 - Robbie Williams & N Kidman - Something Stupid
011 - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Make Me Smile
012 - Erasure - Oh L'Amour
013 - Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
014 - Sonny and Cher - I Got You Babe
015 - Dolly Parton - I Will Always Love You
016 - Janet Jackson - Together Again
017 - Tom Jones & Art of Noise - Kiss
018 - Elvis Presley - Love Me Tender
019 - Ten Sharp - You
020 - Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
021 - Wannadies - You and Me Song
022 - Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U
023 - Proclaimers - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
024 - Darkness - I Believe in a Thing Called Love
025 - Wham! - Freedom
026 - Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper
027 - Britney Spears - Baby One More Time
028 - Eurythmics - Here Comes the Rain Again
029 - All Saints - Never Ever
030 - Cher - The Shoop Shoop Song
031 - Cornershop - Brimful of Asha
032 - Gloria Gaynor - I Am What I Am
033 - Elvis vs JXL - A Little Less Conversation
034 - Men at Work - Down Under
035 - Nina Hagen - African Reggae
036 - Natalie Imbruglia - Torn
037 - The Pogues - A Rainy Night in Soho
038 - Pulp - Disco 2000
039 - OutKast - Hey Ya
040 - Las Ketchup - Asereje
041 - Donna Summer - Hot Stuff
042 - Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
043 - Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
044 - Christina Aguilera - Beautiful
045 - Ennio Morricone - The Godfather Waltz
046 - The Cure - Lovecats
047 - Los Del Rio - Macarena
048 - Die Doraus und die Marinas - Fred vom Jupiter
049 - B-52's - Love Shack
050 - ABBA - Rock Me
051 - John Coltrane - My Favorite Things
052 - Jokke og Valentinerne - Aftenbønn
053 - Madonna - Ray of Light
054 - Justin Timberlake - Cry Me a River
055 - Macy Gray - I Try
056 - Kim Larsen & Gasolin' - Spillemand
057 - Snap - I Got the Power
058 - Sir Mix-a-Lot - Baby Got Back
059 - Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life
060 - Stacie Orrico - Stuck
061 - Pet Shop Boys - Being Boring
062 - Holly Valance - Kiss Kiss
063 - Imperiet - Du ska va president
064 - Jimmy Cliff - You Can Get It If You Really Want
065 - KLF ft Tammy Wynette - Justified and Ancient
066 - Kraftwerk - Das Modell
067 - David Bowie - Heroes
068 - Curiosity Killed the Cat - Down to Earth
069 - Althea and Donna - Uptown Top Ranking
070 - Beyonce ft Jay-Z - Crazy in Love
071 - Dum Dum Boys - Slave
072 - Jokke og Valentinerne - Sola skinner
073 - Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
074 - Suede - She
075 - Sugababes - Freak Like Me
076 - Sophie Ellis Bextor - Murder on the Dancefloor
077 - Soul II Soul - Back to Life
078 - Prince - Alphabet Street
079 - Destiny's Child - Independent Women
080 - Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet
081 - Jon English - Six Ribbons

It looks a bit ragtag random (even to me now), but made sense at the time. Plus, who'd complain about the music at a wedding? "Your union seems less solid due to lack of R.E.M./Sousa/Furtwängler"? Everyone will (or should) be content to go with your idea of fun.

multi multi xpost: Pleasant Plains's idea is actually wonderful, as long as you make sure to enforce play of the songs one or both of you feel should be present before jukebox is turned on.

No, no, you misunderstand... have a friend do it, tell them what you want, and let them do the work... it's more.. well, human than a dumb iPod.

(xp!)

Idea: Jukebox not accepting actual $$$s but tokens, of which every guest has been supplied a limited number? In dark corners, black market may evolve.

Oh and and and congratulations mookieproof!!! Marriedness is exactly as before, except more so, at least if it was good before!

Yeah. I had 30-40 minute conversation with my DJ about the music to be played, but at the time of the wedding he played whatever corny crap I had asked not to be played (except for the Chicken Dance, so I guess it could have been much worse). So either get a friend who you know isn't going to fuck things up or go with the ipod/mix idea.

AWESOME. Are Tom and I really this charming or do you just wanna get drunk catering style twice? ;) I offer the same to you (though if you ever heard my radio show maybe you don't trust me to push buttons correctly)

We are going to have to play pretty much 18 tons of Clash and Billy Idol records to appease our crowd, I think.

Ahem.

If i ever get married (god forbid) i will play diamanda galas and miles davis's fusion years if I want to.

Duh, duh, duh. I sat there four hours ago trying to figure out how to circumvent putting a bowl of actual quarters on every table, and that is exactly how to do it.

You can't have it be "free" or some people would enter in their favorite song over and over. But you can't have it actually cost something. The token idea is akin to my company's Christmas party where we get drink tickets for the open bar.

(And the drunks descend onto the sober ones to scanvege their tickets, but that's another thread.)

Anyway. Here are the songs that were played at our reception:

Wild Night ... Van Morrison
Old Fashioned Love Song ... Three Dog Night
Just the Two of Us ... Bill Withers & Grover Washington, Jr.
Roseanna ... Toto
Could It Be I'm Falling in Love ... The Spinners
I Can't Tell You Why ... Eagles
True ... Spandau Ballet
A Girl Like You ... The Smithereens
Black and Brown Blues ... Silver Jews
No One Like You ... The Scorpions
Magnet and Steel ... Matthew Sweet
I Can't Help Falling In Love ... Elvis Presley
Reminiscing ... Little River Band
Cruel To Be Kind ... Letters To Cleo
For Once In My Life ... Stevie Wonder
Plateau ... Meat Puppets
More Than This ... Roxy Music
You Make My Dreams Come True ... Hall & Oates
You Are the Woman ... Firefall
Lookin' Out My Back Door ... Creedence Clearwater Revival
Thing For You ... Alex Chilton
___________________________________________________________

The One Thing ... INXS
Fade Into You ... Mazzy Star
Heavy Heart ... You Am I
You're My Best Friend ... Queen
Beyond The Sea ... Bobby Darin
I Was Made to Love Her ... Stevie Wonder
La La Love You ... Pixies
Take Me Out ... Franz Ferdinand
She's A Lady ... Tom Jones
Love And Happiness ... Al Green
She's Got A Wa ... Billy Joel
My Wife ... The Who
I Saw The Light ... Todd Rundgren
Passionate Kisses ... Mary Chapin Carpenter
The Killing Moon ... The Quake
Living on a Prayer ... Pastel Vespa
Another Night ... The Tremors
Save Tonight ... Eagle Eye Cherry
You Are The Sunshine Of My Life ... Stevie Wonder
I Can Dream About You ... Dan Hartman
Send in the Clouds ... Silver Jews

Pretty pedestrian, but like I said, we weren't kicking up a lot of dirt at the actual reception anyway. It was more or less background music as the guests drank champagne and milled about on a cold and happy January night.

She phoned the band and told them that she didn't care what else was played - this was the most important.

So, the band came on and fucking sang Angels by Robbie Williams! Not wanting to make a fuss, they danced to it anyway, but it really took the shine off their day.

I have a feeling mookie is a good dancer...I just SENSE it somehow

:)

This was the principle we applied. We had about 5 mix CDs in the end and the two of us loved every single track. Didn't care overly much about anyone else, because it was our wedding and if nobody but us was dancing then so be it. We were total control freaks about the whole day I guess but why when you spend so much time planning every other detail would you let the music be decided by someone else?

As it happened everyone else liked our choices too (or was drunk enough not to care).

i have djed weddings before from cd-rs. it is a really good time! and no one has to wear a foam hat. THAT'S A GUARANTEE.

(so, if anyone needs a dj ...)

Can't complain too much cos he did it for free (son of a friend of my mum's) and drove us to the hotel afterwards, but still, I know which one I'd go for with hindsight.

Any reason not to just get a friend or some local hipster bar DJ instead?

Wedding planners strike me as people in the business of convincing you to spend money you don't have on things you don't want, though they should know a thing or two about potential logistical problems that you don't know.

On a self-made wedding mix (ok, a playlist) how many Prince songs is too many?

Should I include "slow songs"?

Will people dance to "How Deep is Your Love"?

I included one slow song for about every five uptempo songs. This worked out well early in the evening, but it seemed like after an hour or two, people just wanted to dance dance dance. So if you're programming your playlist in order, maybe keep the slow songs to the first half of your playlist?

I think we only had one Prince song, but it was near the end of our playlist and people kept asking "Why aren't you playing any Prince?" and eventually I skipped ahead to the Prince song so people would shut up about it.

haha ok.

That seems smart re: slow songs early in the evening.

if you're programming a list in order here's my never-fail slow-dance one-two punch:

Unchained Medley >>> Wonderful Tonite

Those are basically the only two slow songs you need in the last two or three hours of dancing; play them back to back.

I am DJing a friend's wedding this weekend and have spent much more time on it than I expected. Some of the songs they wanted me to play I had to search out and download, and now they're having me make two back-ups: a second iPod and then all of the songs on audio CDs.

I am a little torn as to whether I want to actually "play DJ" -- i.e., pick and choose on the fly among the 150 or so songs I have in a playlist on my iPod -- or just sequence a mix beforehand. The former would be more fun, I think, but the couple is so particular about what they want played that it's not like I'm going to be suddenly wowing the crowd with something unexpectedly awesome. Plus, my girlfriend wants to dance with me without me having to rush over to the stereo after three minutes to cue up the next song.

Also, I have learned two things from having informally done this in the past: a) you can never have too many Prince songs and b) you need to have "Livin' on a Prayer" or else drunk guys will yell at you.

are you getting paid?

No.

Processional: "Isis" -- violin, guitar, drum instrumental
Recessional: hand yanked bells
Cocktail hour/Dinner: ipod shuffle of 1950s rnr n lee perry tunes
First Dance: "Sea of Love" -- percy vers for the heads
Father Daughter Dance: "I Wonder Why" -- Dion/belmonts
Bouquet Toss: "Edge of 17"
Garter Toss: "Pour Some Sugar On Me"
Last Dance: detroit techno banger with fireworks
--we had our pals tag team Djs with equpiment borrow from all over the country, but then again our pals are all superhuman .... NOTE:
All above worked like gangBUSTERS!!!, (except 50s music alienated no-kids baby boomer contingent to a degree)

then just do the playlist and dance with your GF.

XP

Bouquet Toss: "Edge of 17"

Mikey/Freddie used to play that at Plant bar, once that was the only record he brough, and he played it over and over again.

oops actually reverse that:
Bouquet Toss: "Pour Some Sugar On Me"
Garter Toss: "Edge of 17"
...this union thing gets confusing
(sounds like she's singin who who who)

I've dj'd 3 friends weddings in the last year, each time with a large set of CDs called "the ultimate wedding songs according to Dan" and I will be selling it soon on late night TV via Ronco.

I will say selecting songs on the fly is pretty important, less about wowing and more about adjusting to the crowd. If nobody's dancing then the mix goes into some 80s hip-hop staple or something and everyone's dancing, it'd probably be smart to play a few more songs like that and not just let the mix move onto whatever genre is next.

The most recent wedding I did was for good friends who were serious indie-rockers, so I was nervous. I know I've seen people DJ stuff like that before, but it's not my forte. But I pulled out some alternative dance classics and mixed it up with my usual stuff (disco, new wave, mostly).

Suprising and effective segways:

Violent Femmes-Blister in the Sun followed by Neil Diamond's Cherry Cherry
Outkast's Hey Ya followed by Iggy Pop's Lust for Life
The Humpty Dance followed by Cannonball by the Breeders.

These aren't the kinds of segways I normally would put in a set, but I was trying to please many folk. Generally I think you want to make all these groups happy...the really old people, the parents, the drunk cousins, the close friends etc etc. I found I was able to move between lots of different genres and as always rely on certain key transition songs to help move between disco and rock or whatever else.

Basically I opened with the oldies following the dance with the parents, Build Me Up Buttercup, some Motown or Stevie, then move into a more 70s old-school vibe into disco then using something like Blondie's Heart of Glass or Bowie or Queen Another One Bites the Dust to go into a some 80s and New Wave, staring with disco-y/clubby New Wave like New Order then moving into the Cure Just Like Heaven for a bit of an alternative set and so on...and from 80s stuff Madonna or Prince can take you back to more clubby/old-school stuff. Maybe later when I have my CDs out I'll list the most effective tracks. Anyway this all depends on the kind of wedding and kind of crowd, I think if I was at a wedding that expected or required Living on a Prayer, I wouldn't want to be djing.

And I still don't know what the Cha Cha Slide is.

We had neither drinking nor dancing at our wedding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_1RdxXNt4

i got married in january in a hotel room with 4 other people present besides us. no one drank. we all danced to 'love at first sight' by kylie minogue on my bluetooth speaker and then got dinner downstairs.

congratulations!

i meant crowd situations.. though i neglected to say

congrats map! (didn't know you got married!)

crowd and dinner situations

like when do we pull these tables aside

and

nope

:/

Thanks everyone. I think I am good now. Karl raises some good notions. My priorities are 1) groom/bride wheelhouse (they will add a few crucials to my playlist) 2) bulk of the wedding attendees that I know nothing about 3) our friends 4) cred picks (I will grant myself a few and get some cred)

Check out the rehearsal dinner i.e. "welcome party": groom and myself and another groomsman and the groom's bandmate that the groomsman and I have never met are forming a cover band (groom wanted this at his wedding but we talked him out of playing drums during his own wedding reception, so we're playing the night before and things got a lot looser and more carefree). We're are practicing once together up where they live on the street outside of his building, with a power cord lowered out of his 2nd story window. What could go wrong with any of this?!?

Stoked. Playing some Mary Chain, Cure, Springsteen, INXS, New Order, more tba. It's gonna be a blinder.

groom wanted this at his wedding but we talked him out of playing drums during his own wedding reception

you did a good thing

honestly need a full map wedding mix (even if it didn't precisely happen that way)

Stoked. Playing some Mary Chain, Cure, Springsteen, INXS, New Order, more tba. It's gonna be a blinder.

i mean, to me, i'm attending and i'm extremely happy :D

philosophical question: if the couple getting married loves some categorically awful stuff, and the cool hip attendees of the wedding like cool hip music, which one do you play while they're all dancing?

the couple getting married, dumbass.

sorry, that last part wasn’t cool.

weddings bring out a lot of emotions

groom wanted this at his wedding but we talked him out of playing drums during his own wedding reception

you did a good thing

This was a big philosophical question for us. He was so stuck on this vision of a live band at his wedding, but there was no available drummer aside from him. So we were faced with a quandary: do we just do what the groom wants? Or talk him out of it?

The cover band playing at the "welcome party" the night before is the compromise. Can't tell how bummed he is about it all but we pretty much refused to let it happen at the wedding. Hopefully he'll think it was the right choice after everything's said and done.

i think someday, with the benefit of perspective, he will look back and be thankful that he spent his reception with his new bride instead of playing drums with his pals.

for our wedding we had extensive convos with our DJ about what we wanted him to play during the dancing portion, and what we wanted him to *not* play (equally crucial imho). we made sure to include in the former category stuff that we remembered dancing to w/ our friends who were attending, stuff we both personally liked and wanted to dance to, and a couple of “classic” songs for the scant number of boomer-aged ppl in attendance. ironically, after all was said and done i can name maybe four or five songs that i remember dancing to that night because it was all such a blur (and not even a drunken one! i had maybe three drinks that whole day).

last wedding i DJed the couple gave me a curated playlist to work off of which was like 75% 2000s NY hipster dance stuff that the couple was obviously nostalgic for and 25% 21st century stuff like Miley & Kelly Clarkson which arent ABBA but certainly still feel like standard meat & potatoes type wedding jams. i tried my best to split the difference but pretty quickly found myself caught in the "who do i please" conundrum as aunts & uncles were vocally annoyed with anything from the hipster column & dgaf about the fact that these were the couples favorite songs that they asked to hear. i deferred to the couple bc they were having the time of their lives & it was worth it for the moment near the end of the night when the bride dragged her grandma out onto the dancefloor and asked me to play Lightning Bolt and they both headbanged together

honestly need a full map wedding mix (even if it didn't precisely happen that way)

― mookieproof, Friday, April 15, 2022 2:55 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

honey child every mix i do is a wedding mix

i'm going to be that guy for a second on this thread and say weddings are weird and overblown and maybe not entirely congruent with the spirit of love. but my baby has good health insurance now which was tbqfh the most important part of doing it.

i was such a dumbass during my wedding that i ended up djing my own wedding because the guy who was going to do it was too wasted. prince had just died so i played a bunch of that in a row, with extensive outros that left people shuffling around while making fun of me. it was a great time

please tell me you dropped “Automatic”

i still have my playlists in itunes! this is how things kicked off

https://i.imgur.com/gnUQlAB.png

honestly i would have been happiest with a complete purple rain LP listen party, but compromises were made.

anyway, going back to the thread, sorta, i think most of my friends were happy to dance to a bunch of prince songs in a row. not because we used to do that together - i'm not much of a dancer and hadn't really danced with friends on a regular basis since my early 20s - and not because prince is awesome - although obviously that - but because it was me and my partner's night, and we were very happy to be dancing to prince and hoped that they would be too. i don't know. maybe i'm alone in that, but if i go to a friend's wedding and he's super into ben folds five, then for that night i am going to channel my BFF fan days and hope that they play a deep cut from whatever and ever amen

I'm currently planning on doing this for my own wedding (DIY DJing from my own playlist(s)) so this thread has been useful food for thought. Unfortunately, I lost the argument that our first dance should be to "Feel U Up" by Prince and we are instead opting for the more palatable "I Only Have Eyes for You" by the Flamingos so I will definitely goose the playlist with loads of Prince, including "Feel U Up" somewhere deeper in the mix.

My husband and I made our own playlists and got my cousin to be in charge of switching as needed. We had time period playlists ie before dinner, during, first few hours after, “people are drunk now” and for the most part the decades went in line as well- 40s and 50s stuff before, 60s during dinner, start dancing with the 70sish. We kicked the dancing time off with Rockin’ Robin and made sure to have Crazy in Love. Around midnight, I sequenced a rick roll to cut off California Love. Ben Folds loving husband had our first dance be to The Luckiest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We did have song requests on our invites so everyone had a small say. Even our friend who always requested NIN’s Closer.

Best laugh to me was us using Then He Kissed Me/Then I Kissed Her back to back for garter and bouquet toss. Whichever was second, someone rushed up to me concerned that the song was starting again.

Ben Folds loving husband had our first dance be to The Luckiest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i would be crying my eyes out in the audience. i'm such a sucker for stuff like that <3

It was kinda sweet, except for the bit where the old man watches the kid bike past! Heh

lol

What if I'd been born 50 years before you
In a house on a street where you lived?
Maybe I'd be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?

yeah, that is a very odd sentiment from mr folds there! because at first you think, well this could be a grown person riding on a bike, there's nothing inherently - and then you remember "50 years before you", so the best case scenario is that you're born 50 years before a...40 year old, so you're 90, and you're watching her bike and thinking "could that have been the one for me?"

was Howard Marshall II the luckiest?

Re: the weddings are weird comments - yeah I think weddings are pretty weird, especially at my age. Maybe everybody goes through this, but a ton of my friends, including myself, got married within a span of three or four years. It started with "whoa you're getting MARRIED? That seems so SERIOUS!" to "I've been to so many fucking weddings and I'm spending all of my money on plane flights from California to the East Coast" that I kind of never got into them on an sentimental level. Even my own was almost more of an excuse to throw a super elaborate party. Like, it felt great to get married, but it wasn't overly emotional. Probably because it smack in the middle of the Great Wedding Onslaught. People flew to that shit from overseas. I feel guilty about it now if I think about it.

Anyway, this wedding I'm involved in next week... I love the bride and groom so much so I'm mainly just so happy that they are so happy. They do seem pretty lovey-dovey about all of it and it's pretty wonderful. I wish I could feel that way!

Karl I Wanna Be Your Lover is one of the first tracks on my "off the hook" list! We'll see what happens.

Holy crap, Lightning Bolt at a wedding!? I was just concerned about playing Buffalo Stance.

xposts methanietanner

one piece of advice i got and was too lazy to heed was to give the playlist a quick check to see if there are any with extended outros, silence, strange codas, etc. it didn't end up being too big of a deal at my own - there were definitely a couple times where there was an awkward extended song, and i'd just walk over to the computer/mixer and say whoops! and hit fast forward. but if i would have listened to that ahead of time i probably would have been more prepared, and probably gone to the trouble of doing quick edits of certain tracks to fade them out early or cut at a certain length