During the evening at our wedding reception, we featured music in the following sections:
- Dinner-time background music (all instrumental)
- General great music - part 1
- Our first dance
- General great music - part 2
- End-of-night dancing
- And finally...
This page gives more information about each of these categories. We've now updated these lists to reflect the actual music played on the night. Apologies if your favourite didn't get played - if it's any comfort we missed absolutely loads of our favourites too! The worst instance was the 'General great music - part 2' list, which we'd created about 3½ hours' worth of, and in the event actually used just 35 minutes of. Fortunately we had put the tracks in some kind of priority order, just about.
Dinner-time background music
While eating, we played a selection of the finest instrumental music we own, ranging from classic soul to modern indie-rock, and including one of our guests' requests! The full instrumental playlist was as follows:
- Herbie Hancock - Cantaloupe Island
- Penguin Café Orchestra - Scherzo and Trio
- Michael Nyman - Chasing Sheep is Best Left To Shepherds
- Fleetwood Mac - Albatross
- Kinobe - Slip Into Something More Comfortable
- Barry Adamson - Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Herbie Hancock - Bring Down The Birds
- The Field Mice - Holland Street
- Pram - Track of the Cat
- Spearmint - Best Ballroom
- Add (N) To (X) - Adding N To X
- Blur - Lot 105
- White Town - Theme For A Mid-Afternoon Game Show
- The Moog Cookbook - Hotel California
- Cornershop - Butter The Soul
- The High Llamas - Glide Time
- The Moog Cookbook - Basket Case
- Floyd Cramer - Last Date
- Paul and Edith - Mulder and Scully (Big Band Version)
- The Noveltones - Left Bank 2
- Spearmint - My Missing Days
- Just Brothers - Sliced Tomatoes
- Magicdrive - The Revenge Of Maczilla
- 18 Wheeler - Planesong
- The Divine Comedy - Europe by Train
- Bob Leaper Orchestra - Danger Man (High Wire)
General great music - part 1
Following the speeches, we put on a playlist of great music in the background, while the guests chatted in the bar and the main room was reorganised for the evening's activities. This playlist was as follows:
- The Magnetic Fields - Zebra
- Grandaddy - A.M. 180
- Ben Folds Five - Underground
- The Divine Comedy - Absent Friends
- Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire
- Rosemary Clooney - Sway
- The 6ths with Anna Domino - Here In My Heart
- Belle and Sebastian - The Boy With the Arab Strap
- The Flaming Lips - Fight Test
- The Gipsy Kings - Volare
- Edwyn Collins - The Magic Piper (Of Love)
Our first dance
The song we chose as our first dance was Let's Get Together (In Our Minds) by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. Being in 6/8 time, we had the choice of doing a very fast version of the traditional first dance waltz, or a more manageable speed of non-waltz. Fortunately we can't dance anyway so it didn't really matter what we did! Paul's half-hearted improvised headbanging in time to the chorus raised a few laughs, so at least we were entertaining, eh?
The song's lyrics are nowhere to be found online, so we're not going to risk any embarrassing mishearings by transcribing them ourselves! Let's just say it opens as follows:
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Let's Get Together (In Our Minds)I fell in love with you - or was it your picture?
I loved you here; you loved me there.
For a couple who started going out without ever having spoken on the telephone, let alone met, this song somehow seemed appropriate!
General great music - part 2
The next part of the evening was filled with great background music of a range of styles. We managed to incorporate some requests, too, which was good. We tried to keep the music fairly upbeat so that people could dance if they felt so inclined, but we weren't holding our breath on that one, although a few people did do us proud! The playlist was as follows:
- Spearmint - We're Going Out (which was playing, by sheer coincidence, when Edith said yes to Paul asking her out online!)
- The Field Mice - Missing the Moon (zoolyweds edit)
- bis - Kandy Pop
- Pizzicato Five - Twiggy Twiggy/Twiggy vs. James Bond
- Chemical Brothers featuring Noel Gallagher - Let Forever Be
- The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows
- Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel - Come Up And See Me (Make Me Smile)
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Nature Boy
- Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime
- Fosca - The Agony Without The Ecstasy
- Kylie Minogue - Confide In Me
- Goldfrapp - Utopia
- Gorillaz - 19-2000
- Madness - Drip Fed Fred
That last track was played in honour of Fred, who performed his stand-up routine immediately after it. "We want Freddy for our leader! Freddy is a man of class!" :D
End-of-night dancing
For the last hour or so of the reception, we turned the music up a bit and put on all the most populist, danciest music we could bring ourselves to play ;) Fortunately our selection seemed to go down very well and lots of people joined in with dancing, as we trod the fine tightrope between things we like and things most other people like! Here's what we came up with:
- Martha Reeves and The Vandellas - Dancing In The Streets
- Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - The Tears Of A Clown
- Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston - It Takes Two
- The Isley Brothers - Behind A Painted Smile
- Madness - One Step Beyond
- The Wonder Stuff - Dizzy
- The Monkees - I'm A Believer
- Deee Lite - Groove is in the Heart
- White Town - Your Woman
- Cornershop - Brimful Of Asha (Norman Cook Remix, Single Version)
- The All Seeing I - Beat Goes On
- Outkast - Hey Ya
- Take That featuring Lulu - Relight My Fire (which had actually been dropped from the playlists in favour of Come On Eileen, but somehow sneaked back in to the one we played, whoops. Clearly Dexy's had to come on too, so apologies to Tatu fans, if there are any - 'All The Things She Said' had to be dropped to make way for this. Which wouldn't have been a bad idea to start with, actually.)
- Dexy's Midnight Runners and the Emerald Express - Come On Eileen
- All Saints - Black Coffee
- Girls Aloud - Sound of the Underground
- Abba - Take A Chance On Me
- Aqua - Turn Back Time
And finally...
For our last dance, a song which was a mutual favourite when we first started 'going out' online.
From a Trembling Blue Stars album released shortly before we got together, the track Dark Eyes is sung from the point of view of a man who rues his lack of love life, but then does nothing to change the situation, instead sitting at home, waiting and hoping that someone will somehow turn up and get together with him, out of the blue.
Most listeners to this track would presumably conclude that it is most unlikely anything will ever come of this approach, but hey, some of us know it isn't impossible...
