When the APW staff started discussing ceremony music, it quickly became very clear: you were either a person who would have pop music for your processional, or you were not. (The middle ground, of course, is having pop songs played by string quartets, but gimmie a second and we’ll get there.) Maddie’s processional was “Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” (which is totally adorable, but still, idea of me personally doing that is a stretch). My processional was a Hebrew love song, but only because we couldn’t have amplified music and couldn’t afford musicians, otherwise it for sure would have been some sort of trumpet voluntary (ideas that left Maddie baffled).
Today’s post is for you music traditionalists. The wedding web seems to give you lots of modern choices for processionals and recessionals, but if you’re a classical music type, you’re stuck with those horrifically cheesy CD’s of classical wedding music with blurry black and white pictures of brides in long veils on the cover. Barf. So today, crowd sourced by APW and edited by me, we have some non-cheesy classical music selections for your wedding, guaranteed to not make you feel like you’re watching the montage part in a movie where people are running through fields. As he was listening to me select music, David pointed out that my taste perhaps ran a bit towards British-Royal-Wedding-Meets-Masterpiece-Classic, but I told him that while he was not wrong, he was also insulting my parents wedding recessional, so he could get out of my office. MARRIAGE!
Our next playlist will cover religious music (since you can absolutely use classical music in a secular ceremony, this genre needed two posts). But in the meantime. If you used a classical interpretation of a pop song (“Wild Horses” played by a string quartet anyone??) leave your favorites in the comments, and we’ll round those suckers up for you as well.
But for now, our APW Classical Wedding music mix tape, with even more ideas that didn’t make the mix.
xo
Meg
- Trumpet Voluntary by Jeremiah Clarke
- Sinfonia from Cantata 29, BWV 29 by Johann Sebastian Bach
- Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G major: Prelude, BWV 1007 by Johann Sebastian Bach
- Prelude to Te Deum by Marc-Antoine Charpentier
- Allegro from Trois pièces brèves for Wind Quintet by Jacques Ibert
- Rondeau from Abdelazer by Henry Purcell
- Alla Hornpipe from Water Music, Suite in D Major by George Frideric Handel
- Rondeau from Sinfonies de fanfares by Jean-Joseph Mouret
- Air On the G String, from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 by Johann Sebastian Bach
- Prelude and Fugue in E-Flat Major, “St. Anne,” BWV 552 by Johann Sebastian Bach
- Variations on a Shaker Melody from Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland
- Nocturne from a Midsummer Night’s Dream by Felix Mendelssohn
- Movement Nos. 3 & 4 from Excursions by Samuel Barber
- Clair de lune from Suite bergamasque by Claude Debussy
- Chorale from Jupiter from The Planets by Gustav Holst
- “St. Columba’s Tune,” Traditional
- Vltava from Má Vlast by Bedřich Smetana
- The Flower Duet from Lakmé by Léo Delibes
- Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major by Franz Schubert
