Soundtrack of the Day

Of all the decisions to be made when planning a wedding, our reception music was not one of them. A friend of Mr. BB is a professional DJ. In fact, on most "Thirsty Thursday's" in college, I could be found at the very club where he spun his tunes. Since then, he has continued to work the college club scene, and, through persuasion from mutual friends, has branched out into wedding's to help create memorable nights like this:

Personal Photo

The decision to hire him was a no-brainer. We know him, we like him, we've seen his work many times over and he's cheap. Boom. Done.

Ceremony music involved a bit more work on our part. For years, I've harbored a burning desire to have an elegant string quartet play as I gingerly walk down the isle towards my future husband, the sounds of Canon in D by Pachelbel guiding my way. This fantasy is somewhat coming true.

Turns out, string quartets are expensive. Who knew? Financing that sort of splurge was pushing it even before I got injured and our budget got slashed, so it was even further out of reach after.

When cutting (or as I like to say, revising) our budget, I knew that I wanted to keep some sort of live ceremony music because I felt that it would make a big impact (ie: class it up) for a relatively low cost. I figured the price of a string quartet would be divided in half if we cut the number of instruments in half! Novel idea, huh? And it was true...by cutting down to a duo the price was cut down by just as much. I further deduced that the same logic would apply if we cut it down to just one, solitary instrument. I was right again! Man, I should be a detective or something!

Personal Photo - The Case of the Declining Vendor Cost!

Next, we needed to decide which instrument. For me, this was either a solo violin or harp, and after we considered it further, we decided a harp would have more depth.

At this point, the hard part was over. Turns out, there aren't many harpists in Massachusetts, and to weed through those few, we used our never-fail, vendor-review tool: Google. From there, we personally contacted every harpist who had consistent 4-or-5 star ratings, and narrowed it down to the two who had the lowest price. Of the final two, one harpist had over 60 reviews (all 5 stars!) and has her doctorate in the harp! Cool, huh? At that point we were pretty sure she was the one!

Dr. Lizary Rodriguez. Image via Gig Masters

She hosted us in her home a few weeks later and began playing selections for us so we could hear them in person. I think she loved us because, aside from the few songs we picked for the ceremony, we gave her free reign to play whatever she pleased for the cocktail hour. Anything from Bach to The Beatles. Are we laid back or what?

It took about an hour to narrow down our ceremony selection:

• Processional Music:
• Seating of the grandparents/parents: King William's March
• Attendants: Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring
• Bride: Canon in D 

• Recessional: Pavane

Clips from these songs can be heard, played by our harpist, here.

Beautiful, huh? We're so happy to have found such a great talent and we're even more excited to have live music during our ceremony and cocktail hour!

Are you having live music for your ceremony? If so, was the process of booking the musician(s) easy or difficult? How did you finally decide on the right vendor for the job?