Not starting your planning early enough to accomplish everything is the biggest cause of wedding music stress.
Church musicians I’ve talked to report that too many couples wait too long to contact them about wedding music arrangements.
One or two months before the wedding is very late to be starting to talk about music and does not leave couples with many options.
For more on making arrangements for wedding music, see these articles on meeting with your church and your church musician.
You’ve got a lot to do
From the couple’s perspective, this is completely understandable. It’s easy for couples to be preoccupied with other wedding day details. There is a lot of work to do.
I also hear that many couples whose weddings are very close find themselves way behind and scrambling to accomplish everything.
Do you really know all that needs to be done?
This got me wondering whether couples really understand what all needs to be done for their wedding music. It would be a shame for them to be thinking all along that they’re on track when they’re actually unknowingly way behind schedule.
If you’re working with my downloadable wedding music planning checklist or following my recommended wedding music planning phases, you’ll know up front what needs to be done. If you have my Guide to Selecting Memorable Church Wedding Music you’ll also know how to do everything.
Here’s everything you need to do & why you should start early
In the interest of preventing this kind of stress, here’s a quick, high-level summary of everything that needs to be done for music for a typical church wedding ceremony:
- Find out your church’s expectations about ceremony music
- Determine your primary source of music (e.g., organ, piano)
- Sort out basic ceremony and wedding music details with your church
- Learn what moods & styles you prefer
- Figure out how much music you’ll need
- Schedule planning discussions with at least your primary musician
- Select your music for the entire ceremony (get ideas from your musician(s) as necessary)
- Get church’s approval for your selected music
- Line up other musicians
- Figure out what special instructions to give to your musicians
- Figure out what your musicians need from you or the church (if they’re from outside)
- Coordinate multiple musicians (especially if they don’t know each other and will be playing together)
- Keep musicians up to date with all your music selections (especially as you make changes). Make sure your plans will work.
- Get music and musician information into your wedding program
All this takes time
This is a lot to accomplish in only one or two months—especially when those months are packed full with other preparations.
Make sure you leave yourself enough time to do everything by starting early!
If you need more evidence of how much needs to be done, see my article “Wedding Disasters: Lessons From Stories of Wedding Music Gone Wrong”.
Don’t forget: the things you need to do aren’t the only things that take time.
- Sometimes musicians need to learn your music.
- Maybe they even need to first find and buy sheet music.
- At the very least, they’ll need time to practice.
- Just finding a convenient time to meet with the church and with musicians can chew up several days or weeks.
Less stress, don’t settle
Wedding music is only one part of your wedding day plans. But you’ll stress yourself out if you wait too long to work on it.
Don’t put yourself in the position of having to settle because there isn’t time to do it the way you’d like.
How far before the wedding you should start working on wedding music will differ with each wedding and what you have in mind. But as a rule of thumb, plan to be working on it at some level no less than six months ahead.
Again, find some way to get organized in your planning. Ideally, get a copy of my wedding music and guide. It will simplify your work by taking the burden of figuring it all out and keeping track of it off your shoulders.
Let’s hear your thoughts
What do you think? Do you think couples wait to start thinking about ceremony music because they’re too busy, because they don’t realize just how much they’ll need to do, or some combination?
Did you start your wedding music planning earlier? How has that made a difference for you?
Share your thoughts! I’d love to hear them and get your feedback.
© 2011, Wedding Music Unveiled. All rights reserved.
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