Wedding Wednesday
Inspiration for the first song of the rest of your life
Posted by: Laura Cassidy on Feb 10, 2010 at 07:00AM
In honor of your approaching big day, we’re using this Wedding Wednesday to share the first dance and otherwise special, sacred, and, in a few cases, silly songs that trademarked the nuptials of some of Seattle’s leading celebration specialists as well as a few of our past Real Weddings couples.
Enjoy.
-Amanda Brotman, designer, Amanda Pearl Amado Mio by Pink Martini
-Daniela Faget, designer, Bella Signature Design: We both love reggae so when we got married with 20 friends at our favorite sailing spot in the Caribbean we danced to One Love by Bob Marley.
-Tes de Luna, owner, Velouria: When we get married on March 27 our song will be La La Love You by the Pixies.
-Michelle Mansfield Loretta, cofounder, Sage Wedding Pros: We love Brazil, and I always thought it was nice that I was marrying someone that I could samba with, so ours was So Nice (Summer Samba) by Astrud Gilberto (more recently done by Bebel Gilberto). It’s a beautiful bossa nova song that goes: So nice, life would be so nice / If one day I’d find / Someone who would take my hand / And samba through life with me.
-Cindi Brooks, designer, Brass Paperclip: Frank Sinatra’s I Love Paris because we were engaged in Paris! On a kooky side note, I was once in a wedding where the entire bridal party was asked to join the bride and groom on the dance floor for this first dance; there was an uneven number of guys and girls, so they picked something fun we could all dance to together.
-Nick and Aleah Valley, founders/designers, The Good Life Event Specialists and Fine Line Management and Events: At Last by Etta James.
-Sally Brock, owner, Fancy: The Ship Song by Nick Cave; we weren’t exactly dancing.
-Katie Hanchinamani, featured in Real Weddings: Your Everything by Keith Urban! I am country fan and I have loved that song since high school!
-Liesl Elson, featured in Real Weddings: La Vie En Rose, sung by a good friend of mine, the opera singer Noah Baetge; he was accompanied by our klezmer band, Shawn’s Kugel.
-Michelle Jensen, marketing and public relations, Rosanna, Inc.: Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.
-Jennifer Shea, founder, Trophy Cupcakes: We did not have a first dance because we eloped! But when we finally do have our reception, our first dance will be Northern Sky by Nick Drake.
-Eliza Truitt, photographer, Eliza Truitt Photography: We didn’t have a first dance but Steve and I walked down the aisle to Mitch and Mickey’s When You’re Next to Me from A Mighty Wind. It’s incredibly sweet and if you’ve seen the movie it’s also pretty funny. Hearing it still gets to me.
-Catherine McCadden, designer, Grace Gow: Rod Stewart’s You’re in My Heart
-Natalie Fobes, photographer, Natalie Fobes Photography: We didn’t have a first dance because we got married on the Schooner Zodiac. We had a first sail instead. However, during the ceremony my husband’s niece sang Someone to Watch Over Me. The best song from our wedding was our recessional, though. 76 Trombones from The Music Man. My husband surprised me with it.
-Megan Smith, featured in Real Weddings: Flower of Scotland; our band Ockham’s Razor played it for us.
-Gayle O’Donnell, cofounder, All About Weddings and Celebrations: The most beautiful song I’ve heard at a wedding this past year for a first dance, as far as lyrics go, is The Luckiest by Ben Folds.
-Allison Foreman, featured in Real Weddings: You Are The Love of My Life by Jim Brickman
-Aimee Palacios, featured in Real Weddings: We didn’t have a first dance, but did walk into Tonight Tonight by the Smashing Pumpkins. I’d always envisioned it as our first dance song, but it meant so much to us that we placed it as our processional.
-Marianne Graham, designer, Marianne Graham Designs: My husband choose the first, Kenny Loggin’s Danny’s Song, and as we danced we started signing along to each other. Before we knew it we realized that our guests had joined in too—still gives me chills thinking about it. We followed it up with Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered and twirled, laughed, and danced as our friends joined in. Good times!
-Erin Green, founder, Moms Maids and More: At our reception, we danced to Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes – you don’t realize how long that song is until all your wedding guests are standing in a circle and staring at you for five minutes.
-LaRae Lobdell, photographer, Lifework Images: Cory and I first danced to (drum roll please): It’s Oh So Quiet by Bjork. We were married in Spokane when the music scene there was still very, um, traditional? Only our close friends had ever heard of Bjork. The song cued, we did our own rendition of a waltz to the soft beginning, then when the beat broke into a fast tempo we had fun with it! as our parents got the slow waltz feel and our friends got the alternative feel of the music so it worked well.
-Sean Flanigan, photographer, Sean Flanigan Photography: Scientist by Coldplay
-Nancy Kramer, co-owner, Bella Bridesmaid: My husband and I had our first dance to Cheeseburger in Paradise by Jimmy Buffet. We just got married last May and did a fully choreographed dance! We decided that was our song early in our relationship because of our mutual love of cheeseburgers and the sun.
-Joe Ross, Joe Ross and the Bird Watchers: My wife Laura and I danced to Side By Side a classic from the ’20s but most famously sang by Kay Starr in the ’50s. We had a live band at the Georgetown Ballroom comprised of members of the Jukehouse Hounds and my own band, the Bird Watchers. It was really swinging.
-Jenny Jimenez, photographer, Jenny Jimenez Photography: First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes
- Annette Lefebvre, designer, Luxe Wedding Design We had live and recorded music the pre-ceremony music had all of our favorite old romantic standards from Billie Holiday’s version of As Time Goes By to Nick Cave’s The Ship Song. Henry Mancini’s Moon River was a part of our candle lighting and I walked down the aisle to the 1930’s French chanson by Charles Trenet, La Mer. Our recessional song was David Bowie’s Heroes. Seems dated now, but we thought that was the greatest. It still makes me smile thinking about that triumphant feeling in that moment with the music. But the greatest part for us was our first dance, Herb Alpert’s 1968 hit, This Guy’s in Love With You. Back in 1994, when we first started dating, I put that cheesy, overly sentimental song on our very first mixed tape… and loved it like nobody’s business. In less than a year that song had become “our song.” By the time we got married five years later it had become so imbued with meaning that by the time we were dancing to it at our wedding, Herb Alpert had become an old friend and the song was our anthem of alchemy, love and magic.
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And what about you, what’ll you be dancing to? Let us know!
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