Save time booking your music for your ceremony
Just last week I was chatting with a bride, a couple of months after her wedding. This woman had planned out everything and the day was absolutely stunning. It was an honor to be a part of it.
She said something important:
“Of all the gazillion details to plan for, the ceremony was just about the last thing on my mind. And now, looking back, I realize…that was the whole wedding. That was the most important piece of it all.”
There’s a huge push for booking your venue and your photographer first. Your music, your readings, the things that comprise the actual union, are often after-thoughts or things left to the creative last second.
In previous posts, I’ve given you some reasons on why you want to care about the music in your ceremony and how to get started planning your music.
I know it can be overwhelming to deal with vendors, paperwork, and even discovering how many things you need to think about on your day! Heck, depending on the day, it can take a gargantuan effort for me to even clear off my desk, let alone plan a major event. Receipts? Contracts? I don’t want to deal with them.
I feel you.
Wedding planning can be a looming burden, even when it’s fun, especially if you’re in school, have a job, or are otherwise disinclined to fall madly, deeply in love with the process of making a gazillion executive decisions.
So let’s make it painless for you.
Here are 3 quick & easy steps make booking your ceremony music absolutely painless, and fast.
1. Discover the deal-breakers from your partner before we speak. As a ceremony musician, it is extremely important to me for both the bride and the groom to feel supported by the music woven into the day. Some brides are absolutely crystal clear on the music they want in their ceremony. If you’re not, I’m going to be helping you get there. At some point, I’ll ask you if you know how your partner might feel about our tentative vision. Why? Because if string quartets are his idea of a slow death, I certainly don’t want to take you there. Finding out from him the deal-breakers before we speak saves potentially weeks of phone tag time.
2. Get clearance to make an executive decision on the music. In order to reserve the date for you, we’ll need to put a contract in motion. Let your ceremony musician know that you’re in control so that we can feel great that you have the support of the other most important person in your day. Given enough lead time, we can always make tweaks to your musical plan going forward.
3. Decide if you have a song you’re attached to. If you want to save time in the booking process, just make a little quiet time for yourself, take a deep breath, and see if a song bubbles up that has you shouting, YES! I want THIS SONG in my wedding! Just knowing this one detail can help speed along your booking process because if you can tell me the song title, or the song genre, I can tell you with less back and forth time how to make that song a musical success – what instrumentation, where in the ceremony it should go, etc. Again, this is not a requirement, but it does make it faster for you once we start talking.
And finally, it’s that time to be booking for spring 2013 weddings. With holidays around the corner, a quick email to me can put your wedding ceremony music in motion with way less stress than it will feel come January. You will seriously feel so much better knowing that it’s checked off your list, and with music in motion, you have just stated to the universe that you will INDEED have a glorious, unique ceremony, from start to finish.
This post was written by
Heather – who has written 72 posts on Heather Hightower.
You are way more musical than you believe.
