How to Survive Being Hopelessly Behind in Your Ceremony Music Planning

How far along are you with your wedding ceremony music planning?

Are you like most people I’ve talked with and feel hopelessly behind because your wedding date is getting so close?

If your church wedding is less than 2 months away and you don’t have musicians and music finalized yet, you’re not alone.

But you are in the danger zone. I don’t mean to scare you (I know you’ve got plenty on your plate as it is). You’re at the point where it may become difficult to find a musician, to work out the ceremony music selections or even for the musician to get copies of and practice (or learn, if necessary) the music in the time remaining.

Survival tips

Here are some tips for maximizing your very limited remaining music planning time—getting the best results and keeping your stress levels as low as possible.

• First and foremost, if you don’t have your musicians lined up, start on that now! Set up a meeting with the musician at the church where you’ll be getting married. If not available for your ceremony, ask for referrals.

• Start your music selecting right away (hopefully you’ve got the fundamental decisions about the ceremony already sorted out and have an idea of what’s important to you)

• Work on your music selections in order of most important to least important. For many couples, this order is: Bridal processional, bridal party processional, recessional, music during the ceremony (such as a vocal solo), prelude music, postlude music.

• Consider not having any musicians other than your primary musician (usually your organist or pianist) to keep things simple (i.e., no instrumentalists). If you do want other musicians, I suggest you ask your primary musician for recommendations rather than trying to find someone yourself.

• Try to limit your music selections to pieces the musician already knows. There just isn’t much practice time (unless the musician has a wide open schedule, which is rare).

• Stay on top of things! Be proactive. There simply isn’t time to wait for issues to pop up and then deal with them. The more issues you can prevent from becoming problems, the more of your precious time you’ll save and the better off you’ll be.

• Stay focused on what’s important to you.

• Use Wedding Music Unveiled’s ceremony music planning checklist that comes with our church wedding music how-to guide to help prevent problems and save you time!

• You will have very little time to finalize your music. There is no time for indecision: once you tell your musician your selections, change or juggle music selections only if you really must. Dropping a piece or moving it to a new location in the ceremony is an easy change to make. But think very carefully about adding any pieces.

• Start your final preparations (refer to the checklist) as soon as you can. Don’t wait until the week of your ceremony!

• Keep in close communication with your musicians and your church: make sure they are clear on your music selections, especially if you do end up making any changes. Don’t make any changes final (e.g. list them in the wedding program) until you’ve discussed and confirmed the changes with musicians and church.

These tips are from the “Timelines” bonus chapter, part of the Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music, though I simplified some of them so that I wouldn’t need to go into lots of detail about my recommended 6 phases of wedding music planning.

Does this work for you?

Do you find yourself in this situation? Will these tips help you? What other ideas do you have to save time? I’d love to hear your suggestions. Your comments are always encouraged and appreciated.

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Tagged as: church wedding ceremony music planning, getting started, helpful advice, ideas, last-minute, music that reflects you, wedding ceremony music