Beyond the bridal march – how to choose your wed­ding music

Noth­ing is more con­tro­ver­sial than putting togeth­er a playlist for a party…there will always be some­one call­ing for a song no one else wants (dare I say Nick­el­back) and there will always be some­one who says ​‘I can’t dance to this’. And that’s just for a Sat­ur­day night shindig. Now…imagine choos­ing your wed­ding music and the pres­sure to per­form ris­es exponentially!

How do you choose the best wed­ding music? Can you please every­one? Includ­ing yourself?

Find the balance

There are two schools of thought. The first: it’s your wed­ding so you should have wed­ding songs that make you hap­py. The sec­ond: you want your guests to have a good time and make your wed­ding mem­o­rable for the right reasons. 

Here’s the thing: the two don’t need to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive! All you need to do is find the bal­ance between the two. For exam­ple, your first dance. That is untouch­able! Regard­less of what it is – Meat­loaf / Chris De Burgh / Ken­ny G – that is all you. 

But when it comes to your playlist for the recep­tion, here’s where you can com­prise and make sure you reach a broad­er ranges of tastes while still choos­ing wed­ding music that means some­thing to you.

The wed­ding songs playlist

The one ques­tion we get asked is where to start when choos­ing your wed­ding music. The best place to start is by choos­ing songs that have a per­son­al mean­ing to you – kind of like the sound­track to your romance. Think about the song that was play­ing in the car on your first date with your fiancé, or the song that was play­ing in the pub when you met. 

Music, espe­cial­ly wed­ding music, evokes strong emo­tions and mem­o­ries and this will res­onate well with your friends and fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly if they know the mean­ing behind them. Talk to your wed­ding band or DJ before­hand and make sure they can include these tunes in your wed­ding songs. 

The next step is includ­ing songs that maybe don’t have that much of a strong emo­tion­al con­nec­tion, but still pull on mem­o­ries – like pop­u­lar songs on the radio from the time you met your fiancé, new­er songs that you know your cir­cle of friends like, or tak­ing direc­tion from your wed­ding band or DJ on what brings peo­ple to the dancefloor!

The most pop­u­lar wed­ding songs

You’re not alone in try­ing to choose the per­fect wed­ding music playlist! Which is why there is so much space online ded­i­cat­ed to what cou­ples lis­ten to on their big day. 

So to give you an idea of where to start with get­ting the best wed­ding music, here are some of the most pop­u­lar wed­ding songs accord­ing to Spo­ti­fy:

• All of Me – John Legend

• Mar­ry You – Bruno Mars

• Think­ing out Loud – Ed Sheeran

• A Thou­sand Years – Christi­na Perri

• Ho Hey – The Lumineers

• Mar­ry Me – Train

• Lucky – Jason Mraz, Col­bie Caillat

• You are the Best Thing – Ray LaMontagne

• I’m Yours — Jason Mraz

• Home – Edward Sharpe & The Mag­net­ic Zeros