The conversation went something like this: "Should we hire a DJ?" "How much does that cost?" "Too much." "Then what?" "What if we just make a really good playlist?" "What about transitions?" "There are people with laptops."
And that was it. Decision made. We spent the next month arguing about songs instead.
The shape of the evening
A wedding has three or four soundtracks. The dinner one (background, conversation-friendly). The first-dance one (a single track, then back to background). The dancefloor one (where we earn the right to play September by Earth, Wind & Fire at least twice). And the slow-down one, the end of the night, when the lights come up and people start hugging for too long.
We're building four playlists. We're curating them ourselves. A friend who does music for a living has volunteered to be on "transition duty" — which mostly means queueing the right playlist at the right moment and not letting the energy drop.
The three songs we already fight over
- 01First dance, candidate ALuna's pick — slow, quiet, slightly embarrassing
- 02First dance, candidate BMeliko's pick — upbeat, danceable, secretly also slow
- 03The opening trackThe song that plays while everyone walks in. We both love this one. Suspicious.
Spoiler: we'll probably let Luna's pick win because she cries at slow songs and Meliko secretly wants to see that happen.
What we'll skip
The traditional wedding playlist. The "we built this city" moment. The Macarena (unless someone asks very specifically). The hora, the electric slide, anything that requires a coordinator to instruct people on the dancefloor.
What we'll play instead: whatever makes the people on the dancefloor feel like dancing. If the playlist ends at 1am and people want to keep going, the friend with the laptop will queue another hour of music from their phone. If nobody's dancing by 11pm, we'll switch to slow songs and let people sit on the dancefloor.
Submission form
If you're coming and you have a song you think we'd love (or one you absolutely need to hear on a wedding dancefloor), there's a form in your save-the-date. Use it. We will read every entry. We will not promise to play every entry, but we will absolutely play the ones that make us laugh.