When my best friend showed up for my wedding weekend, she handed me a mix tape that she’d made titled “Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue.”
The first song was Natalie Merchant’s Kind and Generous.
Then Carole King’s I Feel The Earth Move.
Then Joan Osborne’s most excellent cover of Son of a Preacher Man
…and so on.
So, naturally, I thought she had chosen the songs according to a theme of love and lust and friendship.
Imagine my surprise when I heard Carole King’s It’s Too Late!
And it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can’t hide
And I just can’t fake it…
:eek:
As it turns out, she had just thrown a bunch of songs that she thought I’d like onto the tape without giving one iota of thought to what the lyrics might be! She was so mortified.
But I get to make fun of her for the rest of our lives about the horrible wedding tape that she gave me.
A good friend of mine served in Turkmenistan while in the Peace Corp. While there, she attended a local wedding. They played one song over and over because they liked the beat (even though they couldn’t understand the words) - Smack My Bitch Up by Prodigy.
I don’t get to weddings very often. Mostly I hear other harpers talking about music that has been requested. And most of the harpers I know play Celtic/folk kinds of tunes.
So I hear about brides wanting the tune “Jock O’Hazeldean.” It’s a song about a woman running away with another lover instead of the man she’s SUPPOSED to be marrying.
We live in OK (not great, just OK), about 2 hours from the “Precious Moments” tm chapel in Missourri. When we recently celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary, I wanted to do it by inviting our closest friends and family up to MO for a little renewal ceremony at the chapel.
I’ll set the scene: sweet little chapel painted in pastel colors with murals of “Precious Moments” cherubs scattered about. Cue the music: I Hate Myself for Loving You by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. In I walk, dressed all in black gothic grunge, heavy dark eye makeup, maybe a black or scarlet cape… you get the picture.
I always wanted to do a goth wedding at the Precious Moments chapel. What a hoot!
BTW, I am not a goth by any stretch. So, our guests would get a kick out of it, too. Alas, we settled for a nice dinner out. sigh…
I went to a wedding about 10 years ago where the DJ played all slow, melancholy tunes for the whole night; the one that stood out in my mind was Rainy Days and Mondays by the Carpenters.
My then-girlfriend(now wife) and I sat there and made fun of the DJ all evening.
*While I still appreciate you,
Let’s find love while we may.
Because I know I’ll hate you
When you are old and gray.
So say you love me here and now,
I’ll make the most of that.
Say you love and trust me,
For I know you’ll disgust me
When you’re old and getting fat
An awful debility,
A lessened utility,
A loss of mobility
Is a strong possibility.
In all probability
I’ll lose my virility
And you your fertility
And desirability,
And this liability
Of total sterility
Will lead to hostility
And a sense of futility,
So let’s act with agility
While we still have facility,
For we’ll soon reach senility
And lose the ability. *
Friends of mine got married very young and very quickly and played a lot of Billy Joel at their reception. We kept waiting for "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant " to come up. (It didn’t. And they’re still happily married)
My boyfriend’s parents danced to “Red House” by Jimi Hendrix. About a man who comes home to his girlfriend after having been away for a long time and his key no longer unlocks the door. It ends with:
I might as well go back over yonder
way back over yonder 'cross the hill,
(That’s where I came from.)
'Cause if my baby don’t love me no more,
I know her sister will!
Cause there’s nothing more romantic than talking about sleeping with your bride’s sister!
When my husband and I got married, our “unofficial theme song” was “Take The Money And Run” by the Steve Miller Band. We actually got our DJ to play the first few bars of that song before he started our real wedding song.
One of my cousins wanted the Dave Matthews Band’s “The Best Of What’s Around” as her wedding song because it was allegedly playing on the stereo when she met her future (ex-) husband. Once we talked her out of that, she tried to switch it to another DMB song, “Say Goodbye,” which is probably an even worse choice. (She’s on her second divorce now.)
I actually KNOW people who chose “Every Breath You Take” as their wedding song. Not still married, probably for the best. I also once had to sit (and snigger) through “Black” by Pearl Jam as a wedding song - great song, REALLY bad for a wedding.
Other weird choices: “Come Monday” for a mother-son dance (??), “Why Don’t We Get Drunk And Screw?” for a father-daughter dance (seriously), and “Highway To Hell” as a bridal party song. Again, all good songs, just … well, weird … in those contexts.
Another song that I have heard at weddings or see on DJ lists is Sting’s “When We Dance.” The lyrics aren’t that appropriate, folks, unless you have an unrequited love for the bride.
I got married in July, and every time we tried to discuss what music we wanted for the ceremony, it turned into us firing off titles of the most inappropriate songs we could think of. We didn’t have dancing at the reception, so all we needed was something for the groom’s party to enter, then the bridesmaids, then the bride, and a recessional.
After months of wrangling over it, we finally settled on him walking in to “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (allowing him to live out his boyhood dream of entering like wrestler Ric Flair), the bridesmaids entering to a light instrumental from the Almost Famous soundtrack called “Lucky Trumble”, and I marched in to “Ride of the Valkyries”.
I was more than happy to go the goofy riute with music because if we’d gotten sentimental, I would’ve started sobbing and I really didn’t want that.
Oh, for the recessional we used Dick Dale and the Deltones’ surf-rock version of “Hava Nagila”. ;j
Bonus story: I once went to a wedding where the couple had to be talked out of using Tears for Fears’ “Woman in Chains” for their first dance. They weren’t the brightest stars in the galaxy, and it had to be carefully explained to them, breaking down the lyrics line by line, that the song was about spousal abuse. :wally
(Wow, I’ve really abused the smileys in this post.)
Picking up from another thread: “Alison” by Elvis Costello, a song about a miserable man who has a love/loathe attitude toward his miserable ex, who rushed into marriage after someone knocked her up.
My friends have a thing for Paradise by the Dashboard Lights at weddings.
The DJ at my wedding was told NOT to play it (I find it wildly inappropriate for weddings, undanceable, and I don’t like it, at all). My husband was in charge of the DJ.
Midway through the reception, the DJ calls my husband over…
“I’m getting a whole lot of requests for Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, but you said not to play it.”
“No don’t play it. If you play it, I will get divorced and you will not get paid.”
The DJ didn’t play it. I wouldn’t have divorced him - but it would not have been a pleasant honeymoon.
Of course Pearl Jam’s got an even better bad wedding song - “betterman”.
“She lies and says she’s in love with him/can’t find a better man.”
I remember an episode of ‘Nash Bridges’ which had this as a joke (and considering the target demographic, they probably didn’t expect many people to notice) - a young couple were arguing over including it at their wedding, with the guy saying “I love that song!”
Tom Petty et al. - “Even the Losers”
Simon & Garfunkel - “Mrs. Robinson” (just for the association)
I was at a friend’s wedding when a song by a certain group was being played; she got upset and mentioned they’d really stressed that the DJ wasn’t supposed to play anything by them. Apparently the DJ thought it was cute to completely contradict any recommendations they’d made (as he continued to do later).
The reason he wasn’t supposed to play any songs by that group was that it always reminded the bride’s mother of her first husband.
Her mother’s first husband, who was killed a week after they were married.
