If music be the food of love…

We love a bit of music in this house. Well, most of us do, Allie listens to James Blunt.

Swiftly moving on……music is a really important part of your big day, and we can help. It’s not just about the song you walk down the aisle to, or your first dance, or having Sex on Fire blasting out at a quarter to midnight; music can be around you for the whole day.

Let’s say you’re marrying in a civil ceremony at 2:00PM, we’ll be serving your welcome drinks at 2:30PM. Chances are there’ll have been guests arriving since 1:30PM. Your ceremony takes 30 minutes or so, and we’ll generally be calling you over for your wedding breakfast sometime around 4:45/5:00PM. So, there’ll be around three or four hours for you to meet and greet your guests, while they enjoy their canapes and drinks and the photographer does their thing.

Now, if you love live music (and who doesn’t), you might be thinking about hiring a professional outfit to provide some lovely background music for the afternoon. Great! I used to be a bit of a musician myself and always loved playing at weddings. We’ve had all sorts of musicians here over the years – choirs, harpists, acoustic duos, sax players…..but they do of course, come at a cost. And, there’s the question of where they set up for maximum impact. So, what’s the alternative? Well, if you’ve ever visited Gorcott, you’ll have probably noticed we always have music playing in the house. We’ve got a fabulous networked sound system here, with music being piped throughout the downstairs of the hall, and also into the gardens. So why not make (free) use of this, and curate your own, personalised wedding playlist? You’ll have a load of fun (and maybe a few fights!) putting it together, and all you need to do is send us a link to your playlist (Spotify or Apple Music) a few days before your big day. We’ll download it onto our system (we don’t stream it, just in case we happen to lose the broadband on the day), and look after everything else for you. You’ll need up to four hours of music (around 60/70 songs).

So, what will you choose? Make it personal, make it special to you two, and make it memorable. Want a few ideas?

• What was the song you first danced together to?
• What was number one when you were both born (https://www.thisdayinmusic.com/birthday-no1)
• What song makes you both go a bit gooey because it reminds you of a special time, a special place, or a lost loved one? (or just each other)
• When you’re apart, and you’re missing one another, what song makes you think of the other?

Here’s ours:

• Cruel Summer by Bananarama (ask your parents)
• Mark – Hey Jude by The Beatles, Allie – Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys (also, ask your parents)
• How Long Will I Love You by Ellie Goulding
• Anything by Bear’s Den reminds Allie of Mark, Breakeven by The Script reminds Mark of Allie (don’t read too much into the lyrics here though!)

So, come on, it’s never too early to start. You can start messing around with this now. If you get bored of a tune later on you can always change it. Oh, and I won’t judge. All music is art.

Unless, of course, it’s by James Blunt.