Hey Mr. DJ

Music is most definitely the area in which we procrastinated most.  And by "we," I mean Daniel.  This was his big job, and though I offered to take more of a leading role after what happened with his mom, he wanted to do it himself.

And so it was that we were still working on it on the drive up to Tiburon the day before the wedding.

But we got it done, and it actually worked out quite well.

We didn't want to waste money on a DJ and knew we couldn't afford a band, so we decided to do the music ourselves, iPod-style.  This was one of the easiest ways to save money, and I definitely think it was worth it.

To put our dancing music together, we basically went through my iTunes and threw songs that we liked and would be good for dancing into a folder.  We consulted a few friends as well and added their contributions, and we bought a few songs that we knew we wanted.  After all of that, we had seven hours of dancing music.

We only had two-and-a-half hours of dancing time to fill, so the hard part became narrowing down the list.  Some songs were easy to throw out, mostly the ones that I had put in because I think they're funny and not because they are good for dancing.  Or listening to.  Especially for people who don't get the joke (for instance, Skullcrusher Mountain).

However, once we got down to four hours, it became harder to get rid of songs.  We tried to keep the ones that we both really liked or were good for dancing or one of us REALLY wanted to keep.  Still, we had to let go of some gems, like Once upon a Dream (what can I say, I'm Disney-obsessed), Do You Believe in Magic?, and Thriller (that was a tough one for me, especially since my dad promised to dance to it).

We tried to group songs into categories like fun songs, slow songs, contemporary songs (of which there were, like, three), older songs, and songs beloved by all.  We distributed as evenly as we could, taking into account lulls for cake cutting and serving dessert and such.

Finally, after many sacrifices and much redistributing, we got our list down to the bare minimum and in a good order.

And despite the fact that Daniel hadn't even started on the list until six days before the wedding, the music actually worked out really well.  Lots of people told us that they liked our list, and there was literally no time when the dance floor was empty.  I know because I danced to every single song we played.

I know it can be tough to think of songs sometimes, so I've posted our list below for your stealing pleasure.  This is the list we had before the night started mind you, and not all of these songs got played due to circumstances beyond our control.  But that's a story for another time.

Our Dancing Playlist:

At Last by Etta James (our first dance)
I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas
Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves
Twist and Shout by The Beatles
Hava Nagila (aka The Hora for us gentile folk)
Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin
Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
Proud Mary by Tina Turner
Don't Stop Believing by Journey
When I Fall in Love by Nat King Cole
Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle (father/daughter dance)
Y.M.C.A. by The Village People (I had to fight for this one.  It was awesome.)
Just Like Heaven by The Cure
Mambo #5 by Lou Bega
You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate
I Can't Help Myself by Four Tops
A Whole New World from Aladdin (I had to)
Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra
California Gurls by Katy Perry
Say "Shava Shava" from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (Bollywood song, will explain later)
Livin' La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin
I Melt with You by Modern English
Anyone Else but You by The Moldy Peaches (very glad I fought for this one)
Jump in the Line by Harry Belafonte
Macarena by Los Del Rio (Shut up!  Everyone danced to it!)
I Love Rock and Roll by AC DC
Pon de Replay by Rihanna
I'm a Soul Man by James Brown
Can't Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley
I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie
Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Seger
Cha Cha Slide by Mr. C (had to fight for this too, and it was awesome as expected)
Lady Marmalade from Moulin Rouge
Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet
Tubthumping (I Get Knocked Down) by Chumbawamba
My Girl by The Temptations
Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (while people left...or were supposed to)

As you can probably tell, I did a lot more fighting for my songs, songs that some might consider lame...because THEY are lame...*sticks tongue out*, than Daniel did, but I'm really glad we had some of those classic group dancing songs (like YMCA) because a ton of people danced to them.  AND a ton of older people danced to them.  I'm glad they were able to have fun too.

The only thing I would have done differently with our playlist is cut some of the longer songs.  "The Macarena" is a prime example of a song that was fun but did not need to be six minutes long.  This would have allowed us to keep more songs that we wanted but had to cut without sacrificing the long songs entirely.  Alas, we ran out of time.

Overall, this was one of the things that turned out well with limited effort.

How did you pick your music?  If you did a iPod wedding, did it work out for you?  Would you dance to the Macarena or YMCA?

Musiconomy

Neither of us is particularly concerned with the music at our wedding.  We like music and want people to dance, but there are a lot of other things we care about more.

We are having an iPod wedding.  Or rather, a MacBook.  Frankly, I don't understand why more people don't do this.  It's like a personalized DJ.  I have a reasonably large selection of songs, and if we think we need more dancing music (or just a higher proportion of Disney : Non-Disney music), we can always buy it on iTunes.  Still way cheaper than a DJ.

Originally, Daniel wanted a live band.  This was before he knew how much weddings cost.  Once numbers started coming out, this idea was scrapped completely.

But the idea of live music never really left him.  His cousin, Barrett, is a professional musician, and my brother aspires to be one, so asking one or both of them to play for a bit was always an option.

Recently, he approached me about having Barrett do the music for the ceremony.  At first, I rejected the idea.  You may have noticed that I'm a bit of a control freak.  I want everything to be perfect.  Using pre-recorded music to me is more likely to go as planned, and part of the reason I never wanted live music is because I think recorded music sounds better, so that is what I wanted to walk down the aisle to.

Then Daniel said something that made me take a step back:  "You're not going to change your mind on this, are you?"  Crap, I thought, am I becoming that girl?  I don't want to be that bitchy bride who gets everything she wants.  This is our wedding.  It shouldn't just be about me.  So I said, "If this is something you want, then let's talk about it."

When we did, I realized that Daniel didn't even want live music for the whole ceremony, and we were easily able to come to a compromise that made everyone happy.  We would ask Barrett to play acoustic guitar before the ceremony started, and everyone would walk down the aisle to recorded music.

We'll probably have a similar arrangement for the reception.  Most of the music will be pre-recorded, but I will probably ask my brother to do a set for us...that is if he will agree to play non-depressing music that people can dance to.  This way, we'll be able to have some live music at our wedding without spending more than a few dollars for iTunes.

And so a musical compromise was made, and a big thing was checked off the list.