Appropriate Wedding Prep

In 22 years of life I have been to over 60 weddings. Over 30 of those weddings, I have either played music or been part of the wedding party.

After seeing the full gamut of weddings and people behind them, I have a pretty good feeling for what things should look like and how they work best.

Just from the music side of things, the more communication ahead of time, the better. When my band and I were playing for weddings several times a year, I wrote up an entire page of questions that I would ask the bride and groom before the wedding. Often before I even committed to playing for the wedding.

A few of these were big questions like “What song do you want while you walk down the aisle,” or “Is someone else providing the sounds system or will we need to do that?” But I also asked a lot of small nitpicky questions. How long is the aisle? who’s giving the queue for starting music? What happens if we can’t find the bride at 6:05 and the wedding was supposed to start at 6:00?

Some were a bit overkill, but my goal was to ask so many questions so that on the day of and even to some extent the rehearsal, we knew exactly what was going on. I would work closely with the wedding coordinators to make sure that everyone was on the same page.

If I could make it so that during the rehearsal and wedding, no one notices me except for the beautiful music, that’s a success. Being so in tune with what’s happening so that there’s never a moment of weird silence when everyone looks at the musicians wondering what’s supposed to be happening.

Prepare and ask a million questions ahead of time. That would be my biggest piece of advice for anyone who is looking at or working toward doing a paid service for a wedding. Don’t make the bride and groom have to worry about any problems on the day they should be most happy.