One of the hardest things when starting a project is just getting started. Planning your wedding ceremony music is no exception for most people.
Something I can’t stress enough is that you should avoid getting ahead of yourself. If you start worrying about little details too early, you’ll end up feeling completely overwhelmed.
So don’t start with the small stuff. Instead, start with the big stuff.
Try this approach
The first of the “big stuff” steps is to figure out what you consider to be absolutely essential to your wedding ceremony.
Filter out the non-essential
You have many ceremony ideas (music and otherwise) in your head, I am sure.
Write down the items you think are essential. In other words, the items you can’t possibly imagine having your ceremony without.
List everything essential (mandatory) to your wedding ceremony. Go ahead and list things not-related to music if you want. Certain non-music ceremony details will have an impact on the music anyway. Besides, just having all your important, for-certain things in one place will make your overall planning easier.
Some ideas
If you’re having trouble figuring out what’s mandatory for you, here are some ideas to get you thinking:
- A certain musician
- A particular musical instrument (organ, violin, piano, etc.) or voice
- A certain piece of music (you may even know where in the ceremony you want it; for example, you might absolutely want a certain piece to be your recessional)
- The location of your ceremony
- Having ringbearers and flower girls
- Having a Unity Candle as part of the ceremony
- Including your grandmother’s favorite hymn
The goal here is to define the essential items, but not to actually sort it all out right away. That will come later.
For that, I recommend following an orderly approach recommended in our free downloadable, summarized in the article “Are You Following These Stress-Free Wedding Music Planning Steps?”) and comprehensively detailed in our “Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music“.
The key is understanding which items are essential and which are not and then using that to prioritize your work. As you plan, sort out the essential things first and worry about non-essentials later.
This approach keeps you focused what’s really important to you so you end up with the ceremony you’ve dreamed of, rather than being distracted and hung up on details that don’t matter as much to you.
It’s OK if your list of essentials grows over time. When starting out, you’ll probably already consider a few things essential. But you’ll also likely add a few more to the list as your planning gets going. That’s fine.
Here’s what you can do now
Try to get started now if you can. You’re thinking about ceremony music right now after all. In a few moments, later in the day or next week, you may not be. Take advantage of the opportunity to make some progress this instant.
What items do you consider essential to your ceremony? Leave a comment below and help out other readers. Your comments are always welcome and appreciated!
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