Stupidly agreed to play a few friends’ weddings in my time. 60-70% of those I swore I’d never do it again and 30% were an absolute blast. The 30% was always down to being asked by friends who just trusted me to find a nice throughline between wedding bangers and nice vibes / didn’t tell me before it was all up to me and then hit me up with a load of requests I couldn’t accommodate on the day.
Anyway, playing another friend’s wedding later this year, which will most definitely be the fun kind and as somebody mentioned wedding tunes in the ‘end of the night’ thread thought it could be another good topic to hear your choice of best wedding tunes.
refuse to do wedding for various reasons, main 2 being:
yes, you like my music but you’re entire family will moan at me all night. and
you like me enough to ask me to dj your wedding but not enough to invite me to it…
only one i’ve said yes to in years was a friends gay wedding… you’ve never seen a reaction until you play I Will Survive at a gay wedding.
I had a lovely experience playing a wedding.
Pretty last minute for sad reasons.
They asked Van’s Crazy Love as the first number.
Didn’t have but played this and it was just beautiful…
I’d done an overkill of big ones (Come On Eileen, Love Shack, Walking On Sunshine), response was getting less and less and then I threw this on and the place erupted
Our wedding a few years back was quite a giggle - my wife left me in charge of the sound system, etc, so of course, I shipped in a fuck off Funktion 1 rig. Rocky played a late afternoon set of top-notch 50’s/60’s rockabilly and R ‘n’ B, Dave Jarvis then spun some ace disco into the night, (we had the brilliant but lyrically inappropriate “Was That All It Was?” by Jean Carne as our first dance), then at some point I drunkenly took over - was a bit of a blur tbh, but I remember this going down well (with the majority of the guests anyway) - the Irish contingent were a bit pissed off they weren’t catered for, but hey ho, it wasn’t their doo was it…?
I second the refusing most weddings decision - here in Brazil it’s particularly hard to please people who want to hear pretty much anything except good music at a wedding.
However
I did play 2 which were blasts. Tried to keep to positive love songs, that kind of thing, but one tune that always gets people pumped when I play it - and was a personal request from both couples - is this:
Agree with the general advice to swerve all wedding gigs. You can’t win.
If you do have to do it I’d suggest getting the bride/groom to email all guests beforehand asking them to suggest a tune they want to hear on the night / something that reminds them of the happy couple etc.
That’ll sort most of your playlist and massively increase your chances of pleasing the crowd.
two of my pals did this a couple of years ago and it was great because in amongst all the usual Dancing Queen/Brown Eyed Girl stuff there was some really welcome things like Operator (DJ Koze Remix) and Inspector Norse.
When I first got my decks in the late 80s I’d get all kinds of requests to do Engagements/Weddings etc.
Did a couple, never again! I’ve stood strong against much attempted persuasion over the years.
I have done a few, some brilliant and some OK. The brilliant one was for a fellow resident of the same night, the dancefloor was made up of the people that went to the same party for years on end. It was essentially the same night but with wedding clobber on. I played ‘Strings Of Life’ at 1am to a very loved up crowd.
I got married in Ibiza in 2019 and the wife and I decided to do a first mix instead of a first dance. It was extremely hard deciding which records to play and took many hours of debating as we wanted the music to be recognisable (in main) but also to still be credible. Anyhow it was recorded and I think we got the balance right, everyone had a ball anyhow old to young
I’m getting married in September and have been thinking Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line” would be a good slow swayer for the sappy portion of the evening. Also Londonbeat’s “a better love”. Grover washington’s “just the two of us” maybe Change’s “love 4 love” Don Laka’s “stages” oof
Just prepping a wedding this weekend and figured I’d pop on here, thanks for the above suggestions. Still looking for more too if anyone’s got additions to this thread. Here’s a few from me to add, all tried and true:
Also, if you don’t want the look of Michael Jackson nowadays, just play this which is essentially the same song as “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPfO10i6gdU
