Choosing Music For your Civil Ceremony
This weekend I spent a few hours choosing some music for our ceremony. In a civil ceremony you can more or less choose what you want for music as long as it is not religious in any way.
I am having a piper to pipe me into the ceremony, but wanted some nice classical music to play on a CD as guests were arriving and while we were signing the register.
I am not very knowledgeable about classical music so I spent a while listening to clips of classical music on
Tesco Downloads and finally suggested the following pieces:
For Guests Arriving:
- Serenade in D Minor (London in Phillharmonic Orchestra)
- Meditation from Thais (Yo-Yo Ma & Kathryn Stott)
- Air from Water Music (Berlinner Phillharmoniker & Riccardo Muti)
- Canon in D (Acedemy of St Martin in the Fields and Sr Neville Marriner)
For signing the register:
- Air on the G String (The National Phillharmonic Orchestra Baroque Ensemble)
Labels: Wedding Music
Our Wedding Band Booked!
Finally - I can tick something of that huge to do list! Hooray!
After listening to all these wedding bands last night on
Hireaband I emailed my short list of 5 bands to check on availability and price. 3 of the bands we had chosen were unavailable but the other two were available and cost £850 and £800 each. A bit higher than the original budget, but this is going to be our entertainment for half of the wedding. The lady from Hireaband also gave us a list of other bands that were free on our date ranging from £550 to £800, but we didn't like any of them us much the two remaining bands on our shortlist.
In the end we decided on a band called Pulse, with two male and one female member. They have great voices, the demo tracks sound good and there is a varied playlist so I think people will enjoy them. All I have to do is send a £100 deposit and then pay the balance 28 days before the wedding. The woman I spoke to on the phone seemed very friendly and helpful and said to give her a phone if we had any special requests that weren't on the play list and she would see what they could do.
So that's one more thing done, only 30 more or so to go!
Labels: Wedding Music
Choosing a Wedding Band/Disco in Edinburgh
As I mentioned earlier I am concentrating on sorting out all the big things for the wedding just now - that is the band, the photographer, videographer and the dress.
Stuart and I have just spent the last couple of hours tonight listening to bands online. What would we do without the internet? Well, I imagine we'd have to pour over the Yellow Pages, phone lots of people, ask for their demo CD, wait days or weeks for them to arrive and then make the decision.
Instead we just sat on the sofa and listened to almost every wedding band listed on
Hire a Band. This site is a great resource, listing over 50 wedding bands, along with their photo, information about the band, their setlist, testimonials and most importantly some sample tracks.
It took a while but we made a shortlist of the 5 that we liked best (from the 2 & 3 piece bands) and sent an enquiry off to find availability and price.
I'll make another post here when I have more news on that front. At the moment I am dying to tick something off that big to do list of mine, but a band needs very careful consideration - after all they will be playing for your guests for the whole evening, probably 4 hours or more. So I am not going to rush into a snappy decision.
Other obvious ways to find a band apart from this website are:
- Check the Yellow Pages (or
Yell)
- Search Google or Yahoo for "Wedding Bands", "Wedding Music", Wedding Entertainment" or "Wedding Discos" in Edinburgh/Scotland (or wherever you are)
- Visit a Wedding Fair - there are usually a few bands giving out their contact details/CDs
- Ask your friends - sounds obvious, but most people have been to a wedding recently or know someone who has
- Check out the ads in the Scottish Wedding Directory
If you know of a good band, please feel free to post a comment here too!
Labels: Wedding Music
