April is rapidly coming to a close, and while I’ve made strides, I’m likely not doing nearly enough ahead of time.  So…despite it being a gorgeous day here in New Haven, I’m hankering down and as God as my witness, I’m going to finalize our CD-favor playlist and subsequently finish creating our CD cover.

We’ve had something in mind for well over a year–we knew that our focus would be “what would be fun to listen to in the car?” instead of just rehashing songs that were played at the wedding.  So if I hear something I love (which, admittedly, happens quite often) and it could be a good fit, I’ve been adding to my “october road trip” playlist.  It’s far from complete, but here are the songs that we’ve thought of so far:

I apologize for the lousy quality–my computer is being difficult.

There are a few songs on this list that are non-negotiables for various reasons:

• “Masterfade” by Andrew Bird–our wedding song!
• “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”–the runner up for our wedding song, but it just didn’t feel wedding-y enough to me.  Also, there are some who are expecting this and it’ll be fun to surprise them.
• “Ceremony” by New Order–because I just love this song.  And it’s fun to drive to.
• “Each Day Gets Better” by John Legend–because it’s peppy and has an amazing old-school Motown feel to it.
• “Inside and Out” by Feist–because this is one of Michael’s favorite covers (it’s crazy-sexy) and because we’ll be playing the BeeGees version at the reception.

The others can be excluded at whim.  So this I pose to you, dear readers:  what are YOUR favorite road trip songs?  What never fails to put a smile on your face?

One of the biggest challenges in planning a wedding from a long distance is getting a feel for who might be reliable vendors.  With the plethora of options available to a girl in a major metropolitan area, how on earth does one go about narrowing down the options?

A Google search for “wedding djs philadelphia” gives you over 1.8 million results in…0.28 seconds.  If only if going through all of them to determine a good one took as little time.

That’s when it really helps to work with an established reception site–a good one will give you a list of vendors that they tend to work with the most.  We’ve snagged our photographer, “limo” and DJ from that list, and the excited claims of “Oh!  I’ve worked with (X vendor) at X weddings at the Mendenhall–X is/are great!” are probably the nicest reassurances we’ve gotten during this whole process.  Even so, the most confident call I made on choosing a vendor came from talking with our DJ (Tom Barrett)–I was sold when he said that they had done “at least a dozen weddings at the Mendenhall…when the actual DJ was a no-show.”

Holy moly.  Talk about dedication.

So the dependability sold me, but what made me genuinely excited to hire his group was the fact that we could riff on music for a good twenty minutes–he established his bone fides from his past as a DJ on WWDB in Philly…back when it was a jazz station, he could easily talk about Ella Fitzgerald and Beck without missing a beat, and mentioned that they update their 250k+ library with at least 500 new CDs every month.  Between the reluctant groom and I we have a sizable music collection between CDs and MP3s, but 250,000?  Not so much.

And if that wasn’t enough, we chatted about the pros and cons of creating a very set playlist for the night–yes, we would have ultimate control over what was played when (and we may do this during the cocktail hour and dinner hour), but the reason to hire a professional, especially when it’s time to get down, is that they know how to get people out of their seats by playing the right songs at the right times.  Since our mix is going to be all over the place, covering Motown to indie to French electronica to jazz, I became convinced that we could give whoever was our ultimate DJ a list of “songs we’d like to hear” along with certain tracks to be played at certain times (introductions, cake cutting, and the bouquet/garter toss if we decide to go down that particular road) and the DO NOT PLAY UNDER CONSEQUENCE OF DEATH list, and let the professional do his/her job.

Now…what to play?  I haven’t been slacking on that task! 

What were the magic words that sold you on your vendors?  Did they live up to their promises?

You see, Madonna was right:  music really does make the people come together.

Right?

Right?

Well, that seems to be the case at this particular wedding.  The FI and I are very much music people, and while we have yet to do our pre-cana (more on that debacle later), we have been thinking about the kind of music we want to have at our wedding.

First off, given that our song is by Andrew Bird off of The Mysterious Production of Eggs:

                       image from amazon.com

Want to know what it is?  Join me after the jump! (I know, I’m such a tease.)

The song in question is “Masterfade,” which is an adorable song with all of these wonderful instruments, like musical saws and Mr. Bird’s masterful whistling and violin-playing.  No wedding band can replicate that.  So we’ve gone with a D.J.  But he deserves his own post, to be honest.

Anyway, being the indie-loving snobs we are (and this being fairly well-documented with my parents, as they know my brother and I talk music whenever we’re in the same room together), some concern from their quarter was expressed to me quite a while ago during one of my many visits home:

Mom (slightly worried tone):  You’re going to have Motown at your reception, right?

Me (incredulous):  Um, we want to get people up and dance, don’t we?

My mom has pretty good taste in music–even now, when I’m bored and want something to do as I hang out in my childhood bedroom, I’ll swipe the circa-1975 Fisher-Price record player out of my brother’s old room and bust out her old Beatles and Motown 45’s, because it’s much more fun to listen to them on record:

(image from flickr.com)

Needless to say, I’m a huge proponent of having a variety of music at a reception, especially if a D.J. is running the show.  Yes, even including Motown.

Anyone have suggestions for successful combinations?  How did you or are planning to address the multi-generational aspect of your party?