What record would you like played first at your wedding reception?

...I suppose a woman who earnestly wants to play Peaches at our reception is either a comic genius or history's greatest monster...

We had The Book of Love, by The Magnetic Fields. I had tried to make a case for Poing by Rotterdam Termination Source, but this was vetoed. Somehow, though, The Gambler was allowed!

"hamburger lady"

'Poing' would have been amazing - you should have tried harder.

I once attended a wedding where the first song was Who's Sorry Now (the Connie Francis version) even though it was very funny at the time it didn't bode well at-all, unsuprisingly the couple went their seperate ways in less than a year.

For me, maybe something slushy by Tom Waits, Come On Up To The House maybe.

'Poing' would have been amazing - you should have tried harder.
If I'd tried any harder, I wouldn't've got wed!

Damn it Elvis, I always thought that would be my song! I love Spiritualized...

That really is a great song to use - esp the full Elvis version.

I love them too. In fact, I'm going to see them tonight!

[Many threads ripe for potential revival re this issue, so I thought I'd go for the one with the most sensible title.]

I've been entrusted with choosing our "first dance" tune in February (the future Mrs No.4 has the power of veto though).

I've veered wildy from the v silly ('Ma Na Ma Na') to the v serious ('Love Songs on the Radio' - Mojave 3), to the fun to dance to ('Twist & Shout' - Deacon Blue), to the thematically inappropriate but beautiful ('Last of the Melting Snow' - Leisure Society), to outright classics ('Let's do It' - Marvin & Kim, 'My Baby Just Cares For Me'), to what could conceivably be seens as (ugh) "our song" ('Nothing Can Stop Us' - Saint Etienne), to something we can kinda act out for fun ('Cinderella Rockefella' - Esther & Abi Ofarim), to the short and jazzy ('I Can't Dance (I Got Ants In My Pants') - Kitty Gray), to "more for me than her, really" ('Cybele's Reverie' - Stereolab).

The missus claims she's more scared about the first dance than the vows, whereas I'm fairly happy just to bumble about for a few minutes and then get everyone else dancing.

But how to decide? Married folks, how horrible was your first dance experience?
Do you even remember it?
Does it fly by or drag on?
Did you arrange for some mates to start dancing at a certain point so you weren't stranded alone for too long?
Are silly songs just a bit embarrassing in retrospect?
Is it worth actually learning some steps? Are big YouTube-bait production numbers a little passe?

Argh.

Our was "Halo" by The Cure.

blimey, lateish-period b-side! 'friday i'm in love' too... garish?

maybe i'm overthinking this, but i don't want people to think "oh god, don't they know this song is about heartbreak/death/other inappropriate thing?" or "wtf is this dreary shit?" or "i'm not dancing to this, they can rot out there...".

I don't know, the song meant a lot to both of us and despite it being cheesy the lyrics worked well. We ended up getting a lot of comments later in the evening from the older relatives about "that pretty song you danced too", so I'm guessing it went over well.

When my wife and I were talking about this, we decided... you know, forget everyone else. This is OUR song to start our married life, who cares what everyone else wants.

to me, it's better to lean toward popularism over hipness in wedding music. our first dance was "i only have eyes for you" which is an awesome song but also one that everybody knows, including parents and (probably) grandparents and random cousins who mainly listen to country music. if the wife is nervous, pick something slow and romantic and no one will care how your dancing is. they just want to be happy for you.

ha that was actually an xpost, not a response to jon's post, even though it reads like one.

I'm getting married, but not for two years yet so I have a lot of time to think about this. Thinking about maybe using Modest Mouse's Sleepwalking (I think it's an old blues song, with lyrics added?) to walk down the aisle. Fiancee isn't too impressed, no one ever is when I mention Modest Mouse but it's a beautiful little song.

Is A Case of You too cynical for a first dance? 'Twas the first song he ever played to me on the guitar and one that got me into Joni Mitchell, who I love now. Sets us up to make everyone try to dance to Raised on Robbery later in the night, too. ;)

Maybe the Shangri-La's Sophisticated Boom Boom for the aisle walk. "I was walking down the street, and it was getting mighty late.."

We just used Palace Bros.' "New Partner" for our first dance. Then the Supremes "You Keep Me Hanging On" to really start the dancing. It went over well. Oh, and we followed that up with "Push It."

Ours was "Born Slippy". My advice would be "do not choose 'Born Slippy'".

to me, it's better to lean toward popularism over hipness in wedding music.

right. and to exactly that end, i've just remembered i've also been considering the beatles' 'all you need is love'!

easy to dance/sway to, everyone knows the words and will bawl the chorus/ba-ba-bas, people will actively want to dance to it (i think), perfect sentiment obv, and, well, it's the beatles.

this is also in the ballpark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_PBQcrKH8

xpost lol @ noodle vague! 'smack my bitch up' more appropriate?

Our was "Halo" by The Cure.

If you had gone with "Halo" by Depeche that would have been...amusing.

I have done plenty of heinous things in my life but I am glad to say that smacking my bitch up isn't one of them.

Anyway, yeah, populist over personalist, imo.

what? it's the first dance! your song! only you dancing! choose whatever obscurity you want! save the populism for the rest of the reception.

Who cares about "popularism" though? It's only the two of you dancing, you don't need to make sure Grandma and Grandpa can dance to it. Obviously you probably don't want to alienate people with something uber-obscure or whatever, but I don't think the "popularism" is that important for your first dance. I think the meaningfulness to you as a couple takes precedence.

Haha lex.

I dunno, I just think of a wedding as a public, social event, even the first dance. I wd rather go with something classic almost to the point of being neutral rather than crate-digging. Realise this probly makes me history's greatest monster or something.

Mrs A and I had a lengthy and largely fruitless discussion period about this before our wedding two years ago - she's much less into music than me and we wanted something that was romantic, not too cheesy and most importantly *short*. It also had to cater for my two left feet. Finally went with "This Will Be Our Year" by The Zombies and revolved slowly whilst clinging onto each other for the full 2 1/2 minutes.

Once the First Dance is out of the way then of course everyone just has fun and any embarrassment over our turn was quickly dispelled by one of my best friends attempting to drunkenly breakdance to Vanilla Ice in front of a bemused crowd of aged relatives.

Nah, I can understand. But thats what the rest of the reception is for, the people to dance and have fun. That first dance though? Time to be selfish.

I got married 10 days ago. The music discussions were awful, because we have pretty different taste. We settled on The Song for the first dance about 20 times, and kept changing our minds. I wanted something that wasn't too emotional, because I am a cryer. We ended up dancing to Sinatra - You Make Me Feel So Young. It was MUCH too long but other than that okay. The dancing thing was a source of anxiety for us both so we did the first dance before dinner so we could relax while we ate.

congratulations!

jon otm

Oh cheers.

xpost

Sigh. One of those big momentous song choices that I will never ever get to make coz I'm never getting married.

I was coming in here to say that I wouldn't marry any lad that wouldn't let our first song be Be My Baby (or Just Like Honey or a mashup of both, somehow) - but then saw that was the first choice in the first post. Perhaps I'll just marry N. so that I can get a nice big wedding party with Be My Baby as the first dance (and a persian carpet from Liberty from my family) and then politely go home with a handshake once the fun party has been had. I get to keep the gifts, tho.

Chuck: serious answer. It's your wedding, it's your first dance, pick what you want to dance to. Your "our song" is fucking fabulous, I'd go with that.

yeah "nothing can stop us" seems a fine choice, especially if it's your "our song"

i intend to hire a hip-hop choreographer prior to my wedding and get some fucking banging moves in there - there will be no awkward shuffling in my first dance! can't wait m8

(went to a wedding @ the wkend which made me feel v happy about being in the age of weddings for the first time - bride & groom had choreographed some steps to otis redding, they were A+)

I requested Queen's "Don't stop Me Now" at my sister's wedding reception. It was a great choice

me and my wife danced to "This Will Be Our Year" by the zombies

I have a friend who's requested "Closer" by NIN at the last three weddings she & I have been to. Might see if I can get the DJ to spin their version of "Get Down, Make Love" at the end of my wedding night, once parents-in-law have gone home (my own family wouldn't care.)

We should start thinking about this. We have till April. It's not going to be anywhere near a traditional reception though, so the pressure's off a little.

Masonic Boom, I've been reading your posts of late and I just want to offer you a nice digital hug.

And I listened to your Myspace page and your music is ace!

i want my wedding to be exactly like the one from rachel getting married except I probably will never get married u no

i want to marry rachel from rachel getting married

We went with Fire In My Heart by Super Furry Animals which went down quite well

i always think Baby I Love You by the Ramones would be a really good one.

I was running around the park the other day and the song "In Love With You" by Fred Falke & Alan Braxe came on---if I could cut it down by like 3 min I think it would work great.

FoF went to a wedding recently where the first dance was in fact two songs, both by The Wonderstuff: 'It's Yer Money I'm After, Baby' and 'Unbearable' (chorus: "I didn't like you very much when I met you/And now I like you even less'") - they bounced around in full-on posho wedding gear and everyone apparently thought it was hilarious...

But. I'm not sure I want people to think our first dance is *funny*, and I suspect neither of us is confident enough to make such obvious and deliberate fools of ourselves!

Ak. Also, my family are kinda used to Richard Curtis weddings and this is def going to be a whole lot more Mike Leigh...

Good to read much Saint Etienne love anyway, although thoroughly unsurprising round these parts :-)

me and my wife danced to "This Will Be Our Year" by the zombies
weird, was just talking to a friend at work today who wants this to be her wedding song. good choice!

did you dance to the recording, or was someone playing it?

i intend to hire a hip-hop choreographer prior to my wedding and get some fucking banging moves in there - there will be no awkward shuffling in my first dance!

^^^yes. but instead of hip-hop, it'd be nice to do a super-formal eighteenth century waltz to a john fahey piece or something.

the flamingos - "i only have eyes for you"

In a jokey sense, I was listening to Notorious B.I.G. feat R Kelly - "I'm F@xking You Tonight" and thought that it would be a very amusing start. With the lyrics reminiscing on the early days of the couple's lovemaking (and the involvement of her sister!) coupled with R Kelly continuously crooning the line "and I'm f@!king you tonight.." Fairly childish but amused me nonetheless.

we got married a couple of weeks ago... for the ceremony itself we used mogwai's 'helicon 1, yma sumac's 'babalu' and eyvind kang's 'marriage of days'.

didn't do the first dance thing as such. I wanted to choreograph some salsa moves to something really inappropriate, but my wife was not comfortable with everyone watching her dance. to be fair, it's awkward enough being the centre of attention anyway. ah well. maybe next time. however, the first tune we ended up on the together on the floor to was secret chiefs 3's 'horsemen of the invisible'.

we had no DJ...I programmed the playlist and it seemed to keep people going. everything from britney, shakira and dizzee through del shannon and sam'n'dave to black flag and QOTSA.

the final run of drunken crowd-pleasers was incredibly uplifting and communal, if pretty obvious: 'I want you back', 'crazy horses', 'superstition', 'hey ya', 'my sharona', '500 miles', 'wuthering heights', 'don't stop believing'.

it was beautiful, man.

*sniff*

I'm surprised at how many of these first dance/general wedding floor-filler tunes/artists I've never heard of!

Yma Sumac? Eyvind Kang? Secret Chiefs 3? The Flamingos? 'You Make Me Feel so Young'? 'New Partner@? 'Sleepwalking'? 'Sophisticated Boom Boom'?

Not a clue, bub. I feel so lame, worrying about whether to choose The Beatles or Nina bloody Simone in the face of such richness...

I've not even (knowingly) heard 'This Will Be Our Year', although I now realise it's on Odessey and Oracle, which I bought on eMusic a couple of weeks ago so I guess I now own it!

[NB Spotify is helping me out re: all the above bands/songs so no need to explain!]