Monday, February 8, 2010

I'll take an extra large Jay Z, with a side of Dave Matthews Band, please.

Music is a big part of weddings. No, let me restate the obvious here and say that music is a HUGE part of weddings. You have so many key moments in a wedding for the "right" tone to be set via music. The pressure is on, man! String quartet for the ceremony? Band for the reception? DJ for the after party? I think I might have overdosed on Platinum Weddings this weekend...

Anyway, my point is that music for our wedding is no different. Except for that when it comes to music, Mr. Yankee and I are completely different. The only thing we have agreed on was that we would get a DJ for the whole event instead of a band. After that, it has been battle after battle.

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Take our ceremony music, for example. Mr. Yankee likes the traditional Canon, I like Bach (or even better- the instrumental version of "So This Is Love" from Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'!); he wants to walk down the aisle to some of the old favorites, while I want to mix it up. I'd love to have an instrumental version of a contemporary pop song ('Ordinary People' by John Legend, for example) be what our wedding party marches down to, but Mr. Yankee loves his Canon in D. I want the Rocky Theme played after our first kiss, but Mr. Yankee is fighting me every inch of the way.


You see the problem is, Mr. Yankee and I are from different generations. We only have a 5 year age gap, but it has proved to be a very defining 5 years in terms of pop culture. He loves mid nineties R&B (jodeci, shai and boyz 2 men) where I am more accepting of contemporary music and love my hip hop ('cause you can't mess with the Jigga man, yo!); I'm also a bit more open minded to generational music than he is. I understand the beauty of the greats across all genres like Sinatra, The Eagles and AC/DC, where Mr. Yankee tends to lean towards the jazz greats of long ago (he played trumpet in high school).

So how, you might ask, did we get past this divide?! Say it with me now: COMPROMISE! I had to have Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind," so that meant we also had to have "California Love." I felt that it was important to have music everyone would recognize (read: Michael Buble, Black Eyed Peas, Janet), he felt it was important to have songs his 'peeps' would be able to 'jam' to. I said there was absolutely no way on this earth would I allow Dave Matthews Band, he in turn got to veto numerous choice numbers. The number one thing that has kept us sane is the creation of the top ten. Now of course we want to give our DJ the freedom to do his thing and do it well, but there are just some songs you need to hear when you want to party! And we're still a work in progress, but it has eased the process.

The one thing we need to work on?! The first song. This three minute, 100 year old tradition has caused many an argument in the Yankee household, unfortunately. Hopefully we are able to use our powers of compromise to come up with a solution we can both live with. Stay tuned.

How did you handle the differences between you and your beloved while planning the details?

2 comments:

  1. Great post! Matt and I haven't broached music yet, that's going to be interesting, haha.. like you I'm more into the "new" stuff while he'll want the classics!

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  2. HAHA I am so with you on the Sleeping Beauty waltz for walking down the aisle. In fact your post made me want to listen to and probably not a suprise but in the classical movie cd collection I keep at work is the Sleeping Beauty waltz :-)

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