Tips For Making A Rocking Wedding Music Playlist

*Tips on making a wedding playlist that avoids being generic or groan inducing. Here we’ll cover the process of how to get your selections pre-planned and timed. If you want to see the songs I selected for my own wedding (complete with iTunes links, so you can preview and add to your own playlist) click here.

So, you’re recently engaged, and have started on your wedding plans. Stressed yet? There’s lots of excitement and anticipation involved in gearing up for the big day, but the planning can be a wee bit overwhelming.

When my wife and I were in the planning stages, wisely I deferred to her for most of the arrangements. I simply asked to be in charge on one thing, and that was the music. Why? Because I live and breathe music, and I knew I’d enjoy doing it.

We could’ve gone with a band or  DJ, but I figured since weddings are insanely expensive, why not save some $, make an iPod playlist and keep it simple?

So my goals were:

• pick music that avoids being boring or clichéd.
• make my selections appealing to different age groups while still not pandering or picking songs I hate
• make sure I have enough songs to avoid any dead spaces.

When I started making selections I got the running order. You need all these bases covered:

• Cocktail time (about 30 minutes)
• 1st dances selection (2 songs)
• reception music (about an hr)
• dance music (depends on how long you have your space rented for. We allotted for an hour and a 1/2)
• the tosses (2 songs)
• the last dance

I recommend making separate playlists for each segment. Pick a friend or family member to man the MP3 player and give them the rundown. Make sure they’re a music lover too, that way they’ll take it seriously. Our friend Dave wielded it perfectly, which kept me from getting distracted.

So with these rules in mind, I’ll show you how I picked my selections.

For the Cocktail portion, you pretty much want music that blends in the background so that people can talk to each other without much intrusion. My advice when picking music is to cover various decades for variety’s sake. That way everyone (hopefully) can find something they like. Wedding brings about nostalgia so I focused heavily on music of the 80’s and 90’s as that’s what my wife and I grew up on, but I added newer songs too. Since we got married on a Friday, picking ‘Friday I’m In Love’ by the Cure seemed a no-brainer.

Since Depeche Mode are one of our mutual favorites, I included ‘Home’. Sade always works for romantic occasions, as does Roxy Music. I also find mid 90’s electronic music like Massive Attack helps to set the mood, so ‘Teardrop’ was used.

Now for the 1st dances:

Since the dances involve parents, you have to give a little on this one. As humorous as I found the idea of dancing with my Mom to Danzig’s ‘Mother’, she wasn’t having it. So I picked a song that would appeal to her generation, ‘In Dreams’ by Roy Orbison. But since it’s known to my generation as the song from David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ it’s a win-win. My wife and I danced to ‘Somebody’, a great ballad by Depeche Mode  (yes, they make several entries on the playlist).

My wife danced with her Father to ‘Lone star’ a duet by Willie Nelson & Nora Jones. If I had to have a country song at my wedding, Willie Nelson is one of the few that isn’t intrusive or annoying (sorry, I hate country music as a general rule).

Time for the reception music. Again, this is background tunes, so keep it understated. Electronic, acoustic and ambient music work really nice here. Artists like Air, Nick Drake, The XX, Sigur Ros and M83 are ideally suited.

Now for the dancing. You can’t go wrong with the 80’s. Everyone is at least vaguely familiar with the songs, and it’s the era of electronic dance music so it makes things easy! New Order, The Cure, and Duran Duran are obvious choices (same with Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’). Some 90’s techno works (we went with Prodigy and Lo-Fidelity All stars), some old school rap, some glam rock (T. Rex’s ‘Jeepster’ cuts through all demographics. Classic.).

I had a sight challenge though; My wife and I’s first date was to a Ministry concert. I felt they should be included, but she didn’t want anything that heavy. Solution? We picked ‘Revenge’ and ‘Everyday is Halloween’, back when they were a synth-pop band (don’t believe me?  Check this out). Problem solved.

After that, you just need a last dance. Our choice? U2’s ‘One’. Pretty much perfect.

So that wraps up installment #1 of making your wedding music playlist. I hope you found this helpful for getting your planning off to a running start! Click here to see the full list of songs I chose for our wedding.