If you want to include a musical instrument, such as a violin, in your church wedding ceremony, you may be wondering how much music to have the musician play.

Should the musician play the whole ceremony? Instruments add a wonderful accent to a ceremony and help make it a personal and memorable event, so should you use them for everything? You’ll be paying him or her, so you might as well get all you can, and then you won’t need the church’s organ or piano, right?

Not quite.

In this article you’ll learn how to answer these questions.

To help you figure out what’s best for your wedding ceremony, I have three points for you to think about:

• Strike a balance in your music
• Can the instrument play alone or does it need another?
• Groups of instruments

Striking a balance

Too much of a good thing is too much.

The reason you’re thinking of having instrument wedding music in your ceremony is most likely to make it extra special.

If you have too much of it—if you have the instrument play everything—the effect is diminished. It’ll be special for the first few minutes and then everyone will be used to it.

Instead, if you use the instrument for some, but not all of the music, it will seem more special when it is heard. The trick is to achieve variety by finding the right balance and not using it too much but still enough to make it worthwhile.

How well does the instrument work on its own?

Certain instruments work exceptionally well by themselves and others work best in combination with others.

Flutes and trumpets, for example, are instruments which are better used in combination with another instrument (even though both can effectively an occasional piece completely solo).

Violins, cellos, and harps, on the other hand, are instruments that can be a standalone source of music (to varying degrees). Of course, they also work very well in combination.

If your chosen instrument is one best used in combination, your best option is to do use it in combination with your church’s organ or piano.

If your chosen solo instrument which works well by itself, you have the option to let it be your sole source of music.

However, I still recommend that you still include your church’s organ or piano, because of the need for variety (as I mentioned earlier).

Both the organ and piano work very well with most any solo instrument you’d want to use. Both can also play some of the music by itself (without the solo instrument) for variety and give the other musician a break.

An example of balance: my recommendation

Use your solo instrument in about one-third to one-half of the prelude music pieces. Try mixing it up so that there’s a piece where the solo instrument is completely solo (if it’s an instrument that works well completely solo) and at least one piece in combination with the organ or piano).

Use your instrument on one of the processionals (assuming you one for the bridal party and one for the bride) and then also for your recessional.

The exception: groups of instruments

The exception to all this is if instead of having a single solo musician, you have several musicians, such as a string ensemble. In this case, it can still be a good idea to achieve a balance by using the organ or piano, either in combination or solo for variety.

But you can much more easily use the instruments for all the ceremony’s music in this case.

The main point you should remember is if you’re thinking of including solo instrumental wedding music, you generally shouldn’t plan to use it for all the music in your ceremony.

Where to turn for more

Be sure to browse around the site. I’ve got plenty of articles written with instrumental music ideas you’ll find helpful.

Sign up for my email newsletter for more tips, information and ideas for help with your memorable church wedding ceremony music!

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

“Do I have to use classical music for my church wedding ceremony? Why can’t it be the music that I listen to?”

I wrote in an earlier article about using classical music for your church wedding music. That article explains what it means for music “to be appropriate” for use in a church.

This time from a different angle

This time, let’s look at it from the “But I don’t listen to classical music!” perspective. After all, classical music doesn’t have the audience it once did. This impacts wedding music planning because it’s very easy to discount it as irrelevant.

If you read the earlier article, you’ll see that you basically have three options if your church doesn’t like your ceremony music choices:

• Deal with it and choose different music
• Don’t get married in a church
• Find a different church that doesn’t place a high value on music

I’ll help you with the first option, since that’s Wedding Music Unveiled’s purpose.

But my goal isn’t to get you to like classical music, only to appreciate its value and in doing so, think about whether it might still be the best choice for your wedding.

Some things to think about

If you’ve been avoiding classical music for your ceremony, consider these points:

• Do you really not like classical music or is it that you just don’t know much about it?

A mother’s “but you haven’t even tried it” line comes to mind here.

• Not everything is suited for every occasion and setting

Not every type of art or expression works in every circumstance. Even the music you love you probably don’t want to hear constantly.

Poetry doesn’t work well in casual conversation. You won’t find line dancing at the ballet. But poetry, casual conversation, line dancing and ballet each have their place!

• Special occasions demand something special, not something familiar and your wedding could not be more special!

What should be used for a church wedding ceremony (a ceremony being a formal occasion)?

Anything formal demands the best available.

A formal dinner party uses the best dinner settings, not paper plates. A formal invitation uses formal language and writing, not scribbling on a piece of notepaper. Your wedding vows will use formal language, not casual street language.

You don’t speak in formal language every day with your friends, but you will still speak in formal language during your ceremony during your vows.

So too, the music should also be appropriate for a formal occasion. (Of course there are weddings that aren’t formal, but those aren’t the church weddings we’re talking about here.)

Your reception might be a more appropriate place for less-formal music that you really want to use.

• Timelessness of classical music

When you look back on your ceremony years from now, do you want to view your church wedding music as timeless or as something that has likely long since been forgotten (and might even make you cringe)?

• Try to stop thinking of classical music as “bad”, “uninteresting” or “uninspiring”

“Classical” is just a classification.

If you like certain music, does that mean you automatically dislike anything that isn’t that style? Probably not. You like what appeals to you, regardless of its classification.

So there’s no reason that some classical can’t appeal to you, especially when given a chance.

But this doesn’t mean it always has to appeal to you. Of course there may be times you’re not in the mood for it. This is also true of even your favorite music.

If you need music ideas (and who doesn’t!), check out my Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music which includes, among other things, 20 pages of music ideas!

Let’s hear your thoughts

Have you overcome not being a huge fan of classical music but still used it for your church wedding music and been thankful you did?

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

Would you let someone else pick your wedding dress or choose your bridesmaids and groomsmen?

Of course not!

It’s your wedding

You also wouldn’t let someone else choose other wedding details. It’s your celebration and you want it to reflect your personal choices.

You make the decisions about other aspects of your wedding because they’ll make the event more personal.

The ability to introduce even more personal elements to your celebration is one of the great things about DIY weddings.

DIY wedding music

It should be the same with your music. I suggest you take a “DIY approach” to your wedding ceremony music.

As with other couples, it’s easy for you to almost completely ignore your ceremony music. Often it’s because they don’t even recognize this aspect of their wedding as conveying powerful emotions.

Music is personal because of how well it conveys emotions

We all know how powerfully music can influence emotions. How can you not carefully plan your music to make it personal?

Other times, the reason music doesn’t get much attention is because couples don’t enjoy classical music or don’t understand it well enough to feel they can make good choices.

And so they hand over decisions about something which should be very personal to someone who they don’t even know!

I’m not suggesting your DIY approach to music should be writing your own music. Just that your ceremony music should reflect your own choices and not someone else’s.

Most couples (or brides) already do a little bit of music DIY when they pick out their own processional music. It’s not too hard to just keep going with the rest of the ceremony music!

And that’s what I encourage you to do.

Which approach is more personal?

Contrast choosing your own music with the approach many couples often take: going to their musician and asking them to choose some appropriate music.

Too many musicians when asked, perhaps out of habit, perhaps out of expectations for what they think a couple wants, simply select the same choices used in so many other weddings.

Which approach do you think results in more personal music?

It’s not difficult and help is available

Even if you don’t know much about classical music, it’s still very much possible to make your ceremony music a personal expression of your joy. All it takes is a little help.

You can get this help by using Wedding Music Unveiled and then your musician as a trusted advisor rather than someone who will do your work for you!

But the choices should still be your own.

Only then you’ll be able to have ceremony music that truly reflects your joy in a most personal and memorable way!

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

Do you want your prelude wedding songs to be a jumbled collection of pieces thrown together?

Or would you like them to sound as if they were crafted together for the sole purpose of making your wedding ceremony an occasion to remember?

Here’s a tip for you that will help make your prelude music work together to help achieve the goal of setting the mood for your ceremony and culminate in its start – your procession down the aisle.

Not random

Having the music played in some random order may or may not be effective at setting the mood.

A reminder: In a church wedding, music is so much more than just setting mood. Music in a Christian church wedding is to be worshipful, but I’m not looking at that aspect in this article. In fact, this tip can be used for church weddings and non-church weddings alike.

After all, does a club DJ play random tracks all night? If so, nightclubs could just put an iPod on shuffle and forget about a DJ!

Put thought into getting the order just right

But no, a good DJ carefully chooses the music throughout the night, making sure that the intensity builds and by the end of the night, the dance floor is packed and the place is crazy.

This would never happen without the DJ putting lots of thought into it.

This same logic applies here, except that the goal isn’t to get people dancing. And fortunately, you most likely only have between 5 and 25 minutes of music to be concerned with.

Build the anticipation and joy

So here’s my suggestion: try to make your prelude wedding songs a progression of music that builds the anticipation and joyful moods of your guests.

It’s much easier than it sounds

Fortunately, this isn’t difficult and is something your subconscious will handle for you very well. You don’t need to over think it and you don’t need to be a musical expert or some sort of great classical music connoisseur to successfully pull this off.

Let your ears be your guide.

Just as the courses of a carefully prepared meal aren’t served randomly, but instead build excitement for what is yet to come, have your prelude music build a joyful mood and make your guests eager for the start of the ceremony and one of its highlights: your bridal processional.

What about the talkers?

You may be thinking: But don’t people just talk during the prelude music? Why spend time on this?

Well, yes, unfortunately there is a disrespectful habit of some people to ignore music and talk away right up until the ceremony starts.

Because of this, many now have the idea that the purpose of prelude wedding songs is only to cover up this background noise.

But that isn’t the purpose!

So don’t think that just because some people may show disrespect that you shouldn’t bother making an effort.

Instead, make your prelude music so spectacular at setting the mood that they won’t want to talk!

It’s your turn to express your thoughts

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I hear all the time how people don’t want to bother with such detail. But sometimes the same people will work out every last detail of their reception table settings or what their reception DJ will play.

I’ve also heard wonderful compliments from amazed and astounded guests when the music was carefully crafted.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in a comment below. It will be most appreciated!

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

Spend just a little time reading this and you’ll have ideas to end your wedding on a perfect note that will leave everybody in just as joyful a mood as you!

In the first part of this article, I offered tips about choosing your church wedding recessional music. This time, I’ll give you some specific music ideas.

Common recessionals

As with music for other parts of your wedding ceremony, avoiding commonly used music is one effective way to help the music be exciting, distinctive and a reflection of you.

Fortunately, despite all the overused wedding music out there (see “6 Wedding Ceremony Pieces of Music Everyone Ought to Avoid”), there’s only one overused piece to really watch out for when choosing your recessional: Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

That piece isn’t allowed by many churches anyway, so it might not even be an issue.

Also fortunately, there are many, many great choices available to you.

11 great recessional ideas

Here are some recessional music ideas. Perhaps you’ve heard some of them already.

I’ve included a few example preview links. If you enjoy these links, you’ll want to check out my Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music. It includes preview links for almost every piece of music.

I’ll include preview links in the next email newsletter (scheduled for July 2o). Sign up (it’s free) and don’t miss out!

• Georg Frideric Handel: Hornpipe from Water Music Suite No. 2 in D Major

For organ or organ plus trumpet

• Leon Boellman: Allegro (Menuet Gothique) from Suite Gothique

For organ

• Johann Sebastian Bach: Allegro from Organ Concerto in G Major (BWV 592)

• Jacques Lemmens: Fanfare

For organ

• Benedetto Marcello: Psalm 19 (The Heavens Declare the Glory of God)

For organ, but I’ve also heard it performed by harp and flute.

• Charles Marie Widor: Toccata from Organ Symphony #5

For organ

• William Walton: Crown Imperial Coronation March

For organ

• Paul Manz: God of Grace and God of Glory

For organ, but could also be played by organ and trumpet or organ and trombone.

• Johann Sebastian Bach: In Thee is Gladness

For organ

• Theodore Dubois: Toccata in G

For organ

• Felix Mendelssohn: Allegro from Organ Sonata No. 2

For organ

That’s it for now

I’d love it if you’d leave a comment with your thoughts on these wedding recessional ideas. Better yet, if you know other pieces that would make a great recessional, share them with us all. Your comments are always welcome and appreciated!

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

Here’s something that should help you with your expectations for how your ceremony music will sound.

Here’s a small article from one of my email newsletters. It got some great feedback so I thought I’d share it with everyone.

Here’s the newsletter article:

Stay In Touch With Reality

It’s very easy to get caught up in all the excitement surrounding your upcoming wedding.

As you try to figure out what music you’ll want, you’ll likely hear many exciting performances of various pieces on wedding music CDs, on the iTunes Music Store and other sources.

You have to keep in mind that what you hear on these recordings may not be what you get at your church wedding.

The recordings were made in controlled settings with highly skilled musicians, orchestras, choirs or other ensembles, in either recording studios or churches with incredible acoustics. If the music is a recording of an organ, the organ is probably a large, well-maintained, and beautiful instrument. The combination of location, instrument, music played and musicians were all chosen to make for a wonderful-sounding recording.

I’ll try to put this delicately. Not every church has the fantastic acoustics, organ or musicians available that Westminster Abbey does. Don’t expect an 40 year old electronic organ in a carpeted church to compare with the magnificence of a world-class pipe organ in a large, stone church.

Even if your church has a great organ, great acoustics and great musicians, the music probably still won’t sound exactly like the recording. Things will sound a little different. Musicians have their own styles and interpretations.

So what can you do?

It’s fine to have high expectations. In fact, you should have high expectations.

But also stay grounded in reality. It can be all to easy for expectations to get out of touch with reality.

Be realistic when envisioning your ceremony, work closely with your musicians, but don’t lose sight of what’s important to you.

Take action

Keep up to date with Wedding Music Unveiled! There are several ways, all easy and just a few mouse-clicks away:

• If you use RSS or a tool such as Google Reader to follow blogs, here’s our RSS feed so you can get updates automatically
• Subscribe to our email newsletter and get more articles like the above plus music ideas and wedding ceremony music tips. It’s free and you’ll also be able to download the Wedding Music Unveiled checklist right away!
• Connect with us on Facebook
• Follow us on Twitter

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

Let me show you a sample wedding ceremony.

If you need more, you can find 30 pages of sample ceremonies with my Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music.

I want to take a closer look at one of them in this post in the hope that it will help you as you put yours together.

Click on the thumbnail image below to see the sample wedding ceremony and then the rest of the article will discuss it.

Note that if you receive my newsletter, you may have already seen this sample wedding ceremony – I included it as a bonus a few issues back.

Sample wedding ceremony:

To protect everyone involved, I changed all personal details – names, city, date, even the name of the church. I reconstructed the ceremony here from the original program. What you see is a page from the bonus materials that come with the Guide.

Let’s take a look at this sample wedding ceremony

I want to point out a few things about the ceremony. Not as a critique, but to help possibly connect it to your situation and give you ideas.

• The ceremony style is traditional and very simple.
• Note the use of two hymns. This is a nice way to reinforce that churches consider wedding ceremonies to be worship!
• The music is pretty sparse. I’ll bet this was a smaller wedding – but not so small that hymns couldn’t be sung (hymns with a very small number of guests might make some feel awkward). Using a hymn in place of a vocal solo can be a nice way to get around finding a soloist.
• The preservice music is brief: it probably began about 5 minutes before the ceremony started.
• No recessional music is not listed. I’m not sure why. Was this an oversight? Was the couple still undecided when the programs needed to be printed?
• There’s also no postlude. Maybe this was a smaller wedding. Skipping postludes is one of my recommendations for smaller weddings.

What you can get from this sample wedding ceremony are some ideas for structuring a simple, traditional-style wedding ceremony. You can also use it as a reference for a smaller wedding ceremony. Check out this article for thoughts on effective music in smaller weddings.

Remember this is just one sample wedding ceremony. The Guide contains lots more!

Your examples

I’d love to see other examples of wedding ceremonies (small or not). Help out fellow readers by posting details from your wedding or a sample wedding ceremony or two that you have laying around and used as an example.

And if you find this article helpful, please be sure to share it with your friends, family or coworkers. You can share the link very easily by clicking on the “share” link below!

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

Who doesn’t love a good disaster story?

When it comes to wedding disaster stories, I like them because there’s often a lesson that can be learned. And when there’s a lesson, some good can come from what may have been an awful experience for those involved.

In that spirit, here’s another wedding music disaster story. From the lesson come three specific tips you can use in your wedding planning.

The Story

At the wedding ceremony, no one provided the musicians with a copy of the wedding program.

By itself, this wasn’t a big deal. But if the musicians had seen the program, one of them could have noticed that the bride had switched the location in the ceremony where the vocal solo was to be sung.

She hadn’t told the musicians about the change. I don’t know if this was an oversight or she thought they’d see it in the program.

Regardless, they weren’t prepared for the change.

When the time for the solo came, they just sat there because they didn’t know. Eventually after a long period of awkward silence, probably sensing what had happened, the minister announced that the solo “would now be sung”. Then came the scrambling as the musicians hurried into position.

I’m sure their performance was not what it could (or should) have been.

As disaster stories go, this one is pretty mild (fortunately for all involved!). It certainly could have been much worse. But it was still an unnecessarily awkward situation.

The lesson to be learned

The obvious lesson here is that communication is critical.

The wedding program wasn’t the ideal way for the musicians to find out about the change. But it was a last chance to spot trouble.

I emphasize communication between you, your musicians and your church in my six wedding music planning steps that you’ll find in my Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music. It’s all geared toward making sure your ceremony turns out perfect.

Tips to avoid wedding music trouble

Here are three tips that would have prevented all this:

1. Set a deadline for yourself to declare your ceremony music details “final”. When you get to this point, inform the musicians of your final plans and tell them it’s final. If you absolutely must make changes after this point, check with your musicians first.

2. Pick someone on your wedding day to provide actual, final wedding programs to the musicians. Do this even if you don’t list the music and even if using the church’s musicians.

One of my experiences: Before the ceremony, I hadn’t been given a program, but I wanted one so that I could review it for any unexpected surprises. The guests were already arriving but I couldn’t find one anyone who knew where they were. We finally found someone who knew that the bride’s parents had them locked in their car.

After tracking them down with just five minutes before I needed to start playing music, I finally got my program!

3. Send draft copies of the program to your musicians well in advance for their feedback. In addition to bringing issues to light quickly, it can help spot both big and small mistakes.

Do you have more tips?

What do you think? What communication problems have you seen (or seen narrowly averted) in your wedding ceremony planning? What other tips do you have to share?

By the way, are we connected on Twitter or Facebook yet?

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

I hear this sad story over and over again:

A couple thinks wedding ceremony music will be a piece of cake. They wait until a month or so before the ceremony and then approach their church’s musician to see if he or she is available (or they start looking for outside musicians).

They quickly discover there’s a lot more to do than they thought.

Combined with everything else they’re already working on, they become completely stressed out. There’s got to be an easier way to plan wedding music.

Common sad story #2

There is also a “piece of cake” approach to wedding music planning. It’s just as sad and goes like this:

A couple just wants music for their ceremony and doesn’t much care what that music is. They find a musician and give permission to play whatever he or she wants. The musician assumes this means the couple wants the same music everyone else uses.

At the ceremony, the music ends up being all too familiar and has no connection whatsoever to the couple. It’s uninspiring. The music may be well-played, but it’s uninspiring because the couple had no interest in it. When it’s over, no one remembers it.

There is a better approach to wedding music planning

The approach I champion is different. It’s a more hands-on, “DIY” approach.

It gives better, more personal results and avoids surprises along the way.

But in case you fear it’s more work, you need not worry. It is more work than the “I don’t care, just play some music” approach, but it’s a lot less stressful than the first approach – because you’ll know about all the work up front instead of having to find out the hard way!

There are quite a few things that couples seem to not realize when thinking about their ceremony music.

These are the things that keep it from being a “piece of cake”. These are the surprises.

My top wedding music planning surprises

Here’s my top 3:

1. It isn’t the musicians that makes your ceremony music special (though it does help!). It’s having distinctive music that you chose (your choices will express your joy the way you want, making it personal). The musicians are there to make your music come alive.
2. Your chosen music may not sound like the recording you probably based your choice on.
3. Not knowing about and working with the church’s wedding music and musicians policies before making your decisions can lead to extra work and frustration.

How can you avoid these surprises?

What can you do about these three wedding music planning surprises?

• Start early.

• Get good, solid advice. If you didn’t start early, get even more advice to make sure you don’t waste any time.

• Listen to your music selections performed by your musician and make refinements if necessary.

• Talk to your church very early and be sure you know the ground rules before starting your planning in earnest.

Share your thoughts

What do you wish you had known up front before starting your wedding planning? What factors were you surprised by in your wedding music planning?

Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.

How much wedding prelude music do you need for your church wedding?

I’ve seen some recommendations for 40 to 45 minutes, but I think that’s ridiculous!

Most of your guests will arrive within 15 minutes of the start time.

My recommendation

So my standard recommendation is: plan for 15 to 20 minutes of wedding prelude music.

But it does depend on the number of guests you’ll have in attendance. For all but the very smallest of ceremonies, you should plan for no less than 10 minutes of music. For larger numbers of guests (150 to 200 or more), consider having more music (25 or maybe 30 minutes at the most).

I still don’t think you’d need more than about 30 minutes. Few if any people will plan to arrive so early. They know they’ll be sitting in a pew from when they arrive until after the ceremony. They won’t be planning for an early arrival.

Choose your wedding prelude music’s “start time”

Once you know roughly how much music you need, you know when the music should start. In other words, if you want 15 minutes of music, you’ll want to plan for the music to start about 15 minutes before the ceremony start time.

Actually, I always plan for the ceremony to start a few minutes late, so I’d plan to start playing music when there’s a little less than 15 minutes (maybe by two to four minutes) (you are planning to start on time, right?).

Other special wedding prelude music

You might be planning on having a certain piece played while the candles are lighted or (more commonly) when parents and grandparents are being seated.

If so, factor this into your timing. You’ll want a seamless transition between your “regular” prelude music and these “special” pieces. You won’t abruptly cut from one piece to the next and you won’t want to abruptly end the special piece when the people are seated. Not factoring this into your timing may mean a late start to the ceremony!

You don’t need to do all this by yourself

Your musician can help you with timing of course. Some pieces can be extended or shortened to make it all work. But you should have a decent idea of how much you need when you start picking music (and for later on if you need to eliminate some because you picked too much).

Need more information?

How much music you need is just one thing to consider in planning your music. There are others. Plus you’ll need music ideas! Check out the linked articles or even the Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music, which will give you everything you need to know to make your ceremony music everything you’ve dreamed it would be!

What do you think?

Do you have any other ideas for getting your wedding prelude music timing just right? Have you been to a wedding where the prelude music was way too short or way too long? Leave a comment and share your thoughts – it will be appreciated.

© 2010, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.