Musical Weddings

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal article entitled "Disc Jockeys Left Spinning by Couples Who Program iPods for Wedding Music" covered a topic rapidly becoming near and dear to my heart. As the parents of the groom whose wedding is scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend, my husband and I will not be providing the wedding music. Not within our responsibility, thankyouverymuch. But you can bet I emailed the link to the article to my future daughter-in-law.

The gist of the article is that wedding DJs are losing ground to couples who rent the appropriate stereo/sound equipment and then run the wedding music from their iPods or laptops. In truth, the DJ whom the bride, her mother, and I met with a month ago did just this as his demo for the wedding.

That was not the interesting part of the article to me. What stood out was the following statistic: in 2005, 72% of the weddings had musical entertainment vs. 30% of the same number in 1992. Hel-lo. Let's go back farther. Musical entertainment? When we married in 1972, that was the organ playing the bride's entry number.

When did all weddings have to have entertainment and music? Way back when, only the country club set in the big city would have done so. A wedding where I lived was a walk down the aisle, 15-20 minutes of a service and a reception--no music, mind you--in the church fellowship hall. Beyond cake and punch, maybe coffee and a groom's cake if the family were really upscale, no one was fed.

Somewhere along the way the wedding industry turned weddings into productions. Think the greeting card industry and every week is someone's special week. Our Thanksgiving wedding is a destination wedding, complete with wedding dinner. It will be lovely and loads of fun--and with plenty of specialty DJ-provided music which the bride and groom will be supplying. Probably from their iPods or laptops.

Sisker, welcome to the new wedding world.