Most couples spend weeks on the first dance and about ten minutes on the ceremony music. Then, on the day, the ceremony is the part everyone is sitting still and actually listening.
The good news is that ceremony music is not one long playlist. It is four short moments, each with a job to do. Get those four right, tell the person pressing play exactly when to press it, and the rest looks after itself.
The four moments
1. While guests arrive. Usually the twenty minutes or so before the ceremony, while people find a seat and say hello. This is background music. It should be pleasant, fairly quiet, and not something anyone needs to listen to. Instrumental versions of songs you like work well here.
2. Walking in. The processional. This is the one people remember, and the one that most often goes wrong on timing. More on that below.
3. Signing. While you, your witnesses and the officiant sign the paperwork. It takes longer than you think, because the photographer will want a picture of it, and it is the part of the ceremony where guests shuffle and whisper. Plan two or three songs rather than one.
4. Walking out. The recessional. You are married, everyone is on their feet, and this is where you can be as loud and cheerful as you like.
Some couples add a fifth moment, a song or a reading set to music in the middle of the ceremony. If you do, keep it short. Four minutes feels long when a room of eighty people is sitting in silence.
Civil ceremonies: what the registrar will check
If you are marrying in a register office or a licensed venue in England or Wales, the ceremony has to be non-religious. That applies to the music as well as the words.
In practice that means:
- Hymns and worship songs are usually out, and in many districts that includes instrumental versions. A string quartet playing a hymn tune is still a hymn to a lot of registrars.
- An incidental mention of God can be fine in a song that is otherwise not religious. Whether your song passes is the registrar's call, and interpretations genuinely differ from one council to the next.
- Most councils want your music list in advance, often at your final meeting with them, and some will not let you change it afterwards without asking.
So send the list early, with the exact versions you mean, and ask if anything on it might be a problem. It is much easier to swap a song in October than to find out on the morning.
If you are having a church or religious ceremony, the rules run the other way. Talk to the minister or celebrant first. Many churches have their own organist, sometimes with a fee, and some have views on recorded music.
A humanist or independent celebrant ceremony is the most flexible of all. Humanist weddings are legally recognised in Scotland but not yet in England or Wales, so couples there usually do a short legal ceremony separately and can then play whatever they like at the celebration.
Signing the paperwork
In England and Wales, couples no longer sign a marriage register at the ceremony. Since 4 May 2021 you sign a marriage schedule or marriage document, along with your witnesses and the officiant, and the marriage is then entered in an electronic register. It makes no difference to the music, but it is useful to know what you will actually be signing, and that someone needs to get the schedule back to the register office afterwards (for most religious ceremonies it has to be returned within 21 days).
What matters for the music is that the signing is a pause. The couple are sitting at a table, guests cannot see much, and the photographer is moving about. Two or three calm songs give the moment room without anyone checking their phone.
Timing the walk in
The classic mistake is a song with a big moment two minutes in, and an aisle that takes forty seconds to walk.
A few things that help:
- Walk the aisle at the rehearsal, or at least time it. Most aisles take well under a minute at a relaxed pace.
- Choose the part of the song you want, not the whole song. A good musician can start from a particular point, repeat a section until you reach the front, or fade on a cue. With a recording, trim it in advance.
- Separate the wedding party from the entrance. If bridesmaids and page boys walk first, one piece for them and a change of music for your entrance makes the moment clear to everyone.
- Agree on the cue. Who signals the start? Usually the officiant or the venue coordinator nods to the musicians. Decide it, and tell both of them.
Live or recorded
Live musicians are lovely and they can adjust on the spot, which solves most timing problems. A harpist, a guitarist or a string duo is often enough for a ceremony room. Ask whether they need power, a chair without arms and shelter if you are outside in autumn, and whether they are happy to learn a song they do not already play (and how long they need).
Recorded music is perfectly fine, as long as someone who is not in the wedding party is in charge of it. The best man is standing next to you. Your sister is in the front row crying. Give the job, and a written list, to someone with nothing else to do: a friend, the venue coordinator or the DJ if they are setting up early.
Test the sound system in the room, at the volume you want, with the actual files. Put the phone or laptop in aeroplane mode so a message notification does not play through the speakers during your vows.
Write it down
The simplest way to make ceremony music go right is a short running order that everyone involved has a copy of:
- Guest arrival, from 1.30pm, background list.
- Wedding party entrance, song and version, starts on the officiant's nod.
- Couple's entrance, song, from the chorus, fade when you reach the front.
- Signing, two songs in this order.
- Walking out, song, full volume.
In Build The Day you can keep that list in your wedding plan, share it with your musicians or DJ, and add the ceremony times to your wedding website so guests know when to be seated. The fewer people who have to remember it, the more likely it happens the way you pictured.
Four moments, four decisions and one person in charge of pressing play. That is most of it.
Header photo by Alexander Mass on Unsplash
