Music:  My favorite part of a wedding! Provided that it’s music that I enjoy, of course.

Mike and I are die-hard music enthusiasts. We love all kinds of music. From classical to classic rock, from blues to bluegrass, from punk to 90’s alt-rock. Music is our hobby and drives every aspect of our lives. We both play instruments, we collect vinyl, and music is a major component of our travels.

It should be no surprise, then, to tell you that we spent months curating our wedding reception music. We accumulated over 8 hours worth, and it was such a chore to whittle it down to 2 hours of dining and 3 hours of dance.

Be sure to curate separate playlists for the reception dinner, for dancing, for late-night dancing (e.g. uncensored music for when the older folks go to bed) and for your mother/son and father/daughter dances.

If I could redo our wedding music plans, here are the 3 things I would change:

1. Keep more music in our playlists! We whittled down our lists from 8 hours to only 2 – 3 hours for dinner and dancing each. Unbeknownst to us, the wedding dinner portion took over 2 hours! Everything is more leisurely over there for weddings, and the caterers didn’t expect us to want to speed up dinner, the way we thought we were supposed to per U.S. wedding customs! As such, our playlist shuffled through some songs more than once. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was a little silly; not to mention, a darn shame to have spent all that time cutting down the playlists in the first place.
2. Plan for adequate speakers to fill the room you’re in. We brought our small Sonos speaker to Ireland to play our music from our iPhone (downloaded to our phones so as not to be solely reliant on wifi). The speaker is more than adequate for our house, but the room we were in was long and narrow. The music was better for one side of the room, and less buoyant for the other. Bring more speakers than you think necessary, or ensure that the house you rent has working, good-quality, bluetooth-enabled speakers to fill your reception room.
3. Finally, plan your playlists well in advance! We actually didn’t start whittling our 8-hours of music down until the day before the wedding. We simply ran out of time! If your life is as moved by music as ours is, do yourself a favor and figure out your dinner music and dancing music at least 1 month before the wedding. Do not do what we did and spend the day before the wedding closed up in a room away from friends and family sorting out what music to keep or to toss!