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I live in asia now and I've play couple of weddings here, and it seems like wedding gigs here are recipe for chaos. It's not usual to have people ask me to bring my own keyboard, only to find out they have a piano there already.. and sometimes nobody knows where we are supposed to be playing at until 5 min before the gig starts... and you almost always have to deal with a sound guy who "thinks" he knows what he is doing.

I've heard some really weird stories from other musicians. This bass player told me he once had a wedding gig and as soon as they started playing he noticed that the keyboard player already had a bass and drum tracks programmed into the keyboard. He asked the person in charge what was going on.. and the guy basically told him that he didn't have the play the instrument, all he needed to do is pretend and act cool.

I guess it kind of make sense, because the bass player was European guy and they just wanted the bass for the looks. So made really good money pretending to play the bass.

A saxophone player told me a story where he was asked play a wedding.. and on the day of the gig he went there, and there was a piano, and the guy in charge asked him to sit on the piano bench. The sax player asked what the piano was for and the guy said "well you know how to play the piano don't you?" The guy in charge was clueless... just because he was a really good sax player, it doesn't mean he is able to play piano on wedding gigs.

So the sax player did the only thing he could think of.. he started playing the saxphone and walked from table to table as he played.

Thanks Etcetera! Since I'm married to a bassist, I love the bass story.

The banquet department of the castle where I have my steady gig just called me looking for a STROLLING SAXOPHONE player for a wedding reception. As much as I love sax, I just can't imagine such a thing. This would be a good gig for your friend, but alas, you're in Asia, I'm in Germany. I booked a nice guy named Torsten, and he thought it would be fun.

Haha, considering the fact that he ended being a strolling saxophone player by accident, I doubt he will choose to do it on purpose. lol

I can tell you that playing in asia is a very... unique experience. A friend of mine went to china with a concert pianist as a staff/helper.. and she told me that it was incredibly chaotic. They literally didn't know which city they were flying to perform till the day before, or even on the day of the performance.

My friend Greg Thymius, a woodwind player on Broadway (who also plays weddings) had to play the THEME FROM ARMAGEDDON at a recent wedding. Now there's a good way to start a marriage.

I've been a substitute church organist but never played at a wedding....just thought this might be amusing:

When my sister got married years ago, she decided she didn't want the usual "Here Comes the Bride" - too old-fashioned/cheesy or something, she said. Instead she chose Mussorgsky's Promenade (our side of the family is mostly Ukranian). She said the organist at the church looked at her like she was nuts at the request, but agreed to play it anyway. I, as the only bridesmaid, had to figure out how to march down the aisle alone (in high heels no less) to this being played on the organ:

Pictures at an Exhibition, Part 1 (Mussorgsky)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCbKfqf9TPg

Fortunately, they chose the traditional Mendelsohnn's beautiful "Wedding March" (from A Midsummer NIght's Dream) for the ending.

Love this, Elssa! How I wish you had a video of YOU walking down that aisle, with a frozen smile on your face, trying to figure out where the downbeat is.

Very funny to imagine. I must say, I admire your sister's good taste in music, although that piece ain't exactly marching tempo.

Thanks for posting!

Yeah, the Promenade's a great piece. It's just that the meter (alternating 5/4 and 6/4 ) isn't exactly conducive to walking up the aisle in a rhythmic, dignified manner (the heels and poofy dress didn't help either).

Oh, well... As an organist I know once said, anything's better as a musical request for the opening march up the wedding aisle than "Send in the Clowns".

Thanks for starting this thread, Robin. Very interesting!

I was asked to provide background piano music as guests entered the church for my sister-in-law’s wedding in a very small Midwestern town. I play a lot of ragtime and jazz and don’t have much in my normal repertoire that would be apropos for a wedding ceremony, so I bought a bunch of sheet music and learned a few classics – Pachelbel’s Canon, Jesus Joy of Man’s Desiring, etc.

I was burning through my prepared list but there was still more time to fill, so I played a ragtime piece called Robert Clemente, which is a very beautiful, pensive, and graceful rag. Halfway through it, my wife’s aunt walks over to the piano and says with contempt and no hint of humor, “What’s with the saloon music??"

-FB

I played for about four years in a standard "Wedding Band" and have been playing in an "Oldies" band that sometimes does weddings for the past fifteen. I'm guessing my tally is at least 300 weddings, maybe more. I sometimes feel like Margaret Mead among the Trobriand Islanders, studying the elaborate mating rituals of the natives. After twenty years of weddings there's much too much to write in a forum post. Here are a few tidbits:

Someone else mentioned Long Island weddings. That's most of my experience too. Even though most of these affairs are the culmination of over a year of planning -- poring through stacks of two-inch thick magazines, visiting a dozen halls, agonizing over flowers, invitations, centerpieces, bridesmaids' dresses, tasting cocktail hour food and , of course, attending twenty band showcases, to get everything just right -- they tend to be very much alike. This becomes especially apparent when you do a double; two weddings in the same day, or three in a weekend. Nevertheless, there are always a few oddities, accidents (happy and otherwise) and memorable people that stand out from the general blur.

... The bride's uncle has been a few degrees atilt since the cocktail hour, wobbling slightly like a top running down. They bring him up to make a special blessing. "I'd like to say a prayer for the bride and groom (who had a bassinet between their large rounded chairs), a prayer I have recited every night for the past thirty years .................................................Ummmm..................................................." Despite several attempts, he could never recall a single word of it.

... The bride's mother is the matriarch of the family and master of all she surveys, which is soon to include the hapless groom. No one dares make a move without her assent. The bride comes over to the band while we're still setting up, "If it's OK with my mother, my cousin is going to come up and play drums with the band". We hinted that our drummer might want to have a say in the matter as well; drunken doctor cousins eager to impress can do a lot of damage with a pair of wooden sticks. Incredulous that someone else's opinion might matter she added "It's OK, he's a doctor." We played the party with frequent visits from the Queen's embarrassed emissaries - "SHE says it's too loud, turn it down". The drummer played Disco with brushes. The sax player turned off his mic. Guests eager to dance begged us to approach audibility. We referred them to SWMBO. The cousin never did come up to play, but our drummer did an emergency appendectomy "It's OK, he's a drummer".

... Wardrobe malfunctions:
Men at catered affairs wear clothing that approximates the clothing they wear every day: Pants, shirt, shoes, jacket; reliable garment designs that have stood the test of time and seldom cause the wearer any social embarrassment. Women, a few women anyway, see such occasions as an opportunity for innovation and experiment. Fantastic fabric contraptions that only vaguely follow the shape of the wearer (or follow it too closely) are held together with flimsy straps, ribbons, tape and hope. Bits of body parts normally hidden peek out from strategic openings. While outright failures are rare (but they do happen, and even if the cousins, the neighbors and the in-laws miss it, be advised, the musicians see all) women in such garments spend the evening tugging, pulling, twisting and generally readjusting.

In one notable incident the upper part of a young woman's dress was not adequately designed for vigorous dancing, but dance she did, with abandon. The young lady's inebriated escort saw the mishap but neglected to inform her. After a few seconds the girl discovered her predicament and scanned around to see if anyone had noticed. Our bass player, only a few steps away, had, and shrugged his shoulders. The girl then gave her (soon-to-be former) boyfriend a roundhouse right to the face.

I can also remember seeing more of a certain bride than, in gentler times, her fiance would have seen before the wedding night. The groom wasn't much of a dancer, but the bride was, and so was one of the gay male guests at the wedding. They did a dramatic pas-de-deux culminating in a deep back-bending dip on the part of the bride. The slip was brief, but must have been caught by at least a half-dozen video cameras and, of course, seven musicians.

…Ceremonies
I’m not a classical player. In fact, before joining the wedding band, I had more or less only played rock and pop songs. I was in the process of learning the repertoire at the gigs. By the third or fourth wedding I was feeling pretty comfortable with the core material. I had nearly finished setting up in one of the rooms at a very large wedding-mill, when the Mother of the Bride rushed in (in the ungainly way that you rush in a long dress and high heels) to say “Where’s the guy who’s playing the ceremony? It’s almost starting!” It had never occurred to me that playing at the ceremony might be one of the duties of a keyboard player. I assumed that would be up to a church organist, but not everyone gets married in church these days. A couple of us ran my gear down to (natch) the polar opposite end of the very long building, but getting there was only half the fun. Now I had to improvise the Processional and Recessional. The “Here Comes The Bride” melody was easy enough, and I guessed that none of the guests would be familiar with the rest so I sort of made stuff up to fill the space. The recessional was worse; I really could only recall the one recognizable line, and played it over and over, for an interminably long time.

Having survived that episode, our bandleader decided to get me the sheet music for the Recessional. My wife was taking vocal lessons at the time and had recently brought home a professional-looking eight-page set of music for an aria she was learning; learning for fun I might add. What I got, the semi-pro musician of the house, was tiny scrap of paper, maybe 8” by 3”, with three single staves on it. It was a twelfth-generation Xerox of part of a fake-book page; three single staves with the melody and chord symbols, some scratched out and changed, and faithful reproductions of a decade of cocktail-hour stains. And that’s how I learned it. I have still never seen sheet music for the Processional

…Strange First Dance Songs
“Every Breath You Take”, by the Police. This is only appropriate for women who marry their stalkers.
“Good Hearted Woman (In Love with a Good-Timin’ Man)” By Merle Haggard. I wish them luck.
“Beauty and the Beast” – Enough said.

...Garter Oddities
I’m amazed that the whole bouquet and garter circus still sometimes goes on. We had a whole list of songs to play as background music: “Getting to Know You” for the removal of the garter from the Bride, “Higher’, by Sly and the Family Stone for putting the garter back on the embarrassed “winner” of the bouquet toss. But some people still feel the need to be creative.

One bride’s bouquet was a cluster-bomb, actually twelve mini-bouquets that took different trajectories when she threw them. This was apparently planned. After a rugby scrum among the eligible bachelorettes, our front-man had to organize a circle of 12 chairs for the girls to sit on while the guys who caught the 12 garter belts… you get the rest. It took a half hour.

I have always wondered if one particular groom lived to see his wedding night. When asked to gently remove the garter from his innocent bride’s leg, he first donned a sort of doctor’s headlamp and proceeded to put his entire head under her dress. Among the things he pulled out before the garter was a rubber chicken. (incidents like this are why fiction is entirely unnecessary, in my opnion) Many people in attendance thought this was riotously funny. The father of the bride, who at 6’3” and at least 300 lbs. was among the larger human beings I have ever seen up close, did not. He turned a series of unhealthy-looking colors as this went on.

There’s so much more, but it’s late. You’ll have to wait for the book.

Thank you, FB, for your story. I always say a little saloon music livens things up!

And Greg, good grief, you are the wedding music expert. These are wonderful—wonderful!—stories. And, hey, you're a great writer. Do we know each other? I was in NYC from 1979 to 1994—but I was on the Manhattan hotel circuit, not the wedding circuit. I got into the wedding thing once I moved to Germany. My stories are similar to yours except for two things.

1. I play solo (which means I've got no one to shared these things with as they're happening)

2. It's, you know, GERMANY, which gives each event that added Mel Brooks touch of goofiness, like playing a wedding NEEDS to be any goofier.

Anyway, nice to meet you—and keep writing! And playing, that too, so you have something to write about.

I always hear them play "Daddy's little Girl"..when the father dances with the bride.. or when the older couples who been married for 50 yrs get up to dance.."When Your Old Wedding Ring Was New"

Sentimental choices, but at least they make sense!

I don't think so. Back before there were so many mobile DJs there were quite a lot of musicians playing in wedding bands.

In the old days, long before I was playing weddings, people would usually book the band through the hall they were renting. They'd tell you you pretty much had to book the "house band" or else there would be insurance issues, union issues and generally much more hassle than you'd want to take on. If your party was at the Sapphire Room, you'd get Frankie Diamond and his Sapphire Orchestra, or some such name.

They would even tell you how many pieces you had to hire, based on how many guests you were expecting. "No, Mrs. Edelstein, three pieces really won't do for 140 people, you'll need at least five." The logic behind this, except from the salesman's point of view, is hard to decipher. Certainly the instrumentation needed to play the desired music was not the deciding factor. If your party was large enough, you could end up with 7 or 8 musicians, including even a trombone, but still no bass player. The scourge of "left-hand bass" was one of the things that kept me from considering wedding band work earlier.

Your five Sapphires would not generally be an intact, rehearsed band either. They'd be five guys selected from a the Sapphire Pool, depending on how many Orchestras were needed that day.

As engaged couples got younger, they began to want music that a ragtag bunch of generic "Gemstones" could not deliver. They'd still want some Cha-Chas and Standards for the older relatives, but they wanted "their music" too. Worse, they wanted to actually see the band ahead of time. The Wedding Band Showcase was born. Agents were loath to surrender to this sort of anarchy so easily, though. They'd send out eight or nine of the more skilled Gems to the showcase to impress you, but whatever promises might be made, the actual composition of "your" band would still be variable.

Six months down the road after the showcase, the wedding couple would probably forget exactly what the band looked like. If a few of the people were the same, they might not notice the substitutions. And if they did, well, "Jimmy broke his wrist", or "Angela's 5 months pregnant" would be offered by way of explanation.

But sometimes the "variability" was stretched to the extreme. These were called "screamers". The agent would send out a completely different band than the one that was hired, figuring that the clients could hardly just send them home. It would be up to the hapless bandleader to mollify the clients, and collect the rest of the money.

In what is probably my favorite story, my friend Willie, an excellent singer, was hired as a "sub" to fill in at a wedding. The band played as the guests were ushered into the hall and then played a few songs from the "light" repertoire that is typical for the beginning of a party. At this point there is usually a break in the music; the waiters need the guests seated so they can take dinner orders.

A man approached my friend. "You're not the band we hired". Willie, a little sheepishly ,started to say something like, "Well, the band's singer was sick, so they called me to ...", but was interrupted.

"I don't mean just you. The band we hired was Black".

Willie, taking a mental inventory of the pale-skinned sextet behind him, referred the man to the bandleader.

By the time I started doing weddings, the arms race between clients and agents had ratcheted up a notch. Many if not most of the bands were actually rehearsed units. This had become a practical necessity as people had begun to demand really tight bands who could convincingly reproduce a very wide range of styles. But the horror stories were by then well known. People came out to three and four showcases with video cameras to make sure the same group members showed up each time.

That's a fascinating history Greg!

I'm a little curious about your comment "As engaged couples got younger, they began to want music that a ragtag bunch of generic "Gemstones" could not deliver." For some reason I thought that the average age of engagement has been increasing for most of the last century. Is it possible that the rise of rock and roll created a generation gap in which the couples weren't necessarily getting younger, but - for the first time - their musical taste was completely different from their parents'?

Greg, you're killing me. This is hysterical stuff.

Agents often just send anyone at all to an event, and hope that the musicians can make it right. Vamp till ready. I know about the screamers. What a funny term that is.

An agent in Pittsburgh—from an agency called ENTERTAINMENT UNLIMITED (a name that sets you up for failure if you ask me) once booked me on a gig where the client was promised a snake dancer, whatever the heck that is. Instead they got me, in my college-girl version of a cocktail dress, performing selections from Chorus Line. I have done a lot of crazy things in my life, but singing and playing with a Burmese python draped around my neck is one line I refuse to cross.

Soupy Sales once said: "I don't have an agent, I have an Egyptian curse."

You are living and working in the land of slick weddings. With the talent pool in the NYC area, there are some damn good players working these gigs.

Oh, I just remembered another story! My husband played in a quartet for his good friend's wedding. The friend in question—Mark P— was an excellent drummer, but since he was the groom, he didn't play the gig. Anyway, halfway through the night—probably bored with the bouquet toss and scrummage—he decided to sit in with the band. As he was playing, the banquet director came over and yelled at him for being too loud.

"But he's the groom," said one of the musicians.

"Yeah, well I don't care. The mother of the bride is complaining."

There you go.

I like the stories, thanks!

I've only played one wedding, a friend requested that I play for the ceremony... I'm a rookie, and only had a month to prepare so all I did was the bridal chorus and wedding march. The rest of the time I popped in a CD, haa

Wasn't there for the rehearsal so I had no idea how the ceremony was supposed to go, instead I'm watching carefully what's going on, which was hard to do while also trying to concentrate on the music... But it was going well until I mistook the maid of honour for the bride coming down the hall and launched into the "here. comes. the bride!" theme. My hands turned to ice and I was all in a panic trying to figure out how to fix it. My solution was to fall apart and stop for a few akward moments. Fortunately I managed to get it together before the bride came in and she was completely unaware (but EVERYBODY else caught an earful of disaster).

Next was to play the wedding march. It took a lot longer for everyone to leave than I expected. I don't know how many times I repeated that short piece but I really wished I had something else to play.

It was a learning experience...


This year two more friends want me to play for their weddings, and I've got more time to prepare so I'm thinking it will go better this time. Perhaps the ball will roll and I can start doing this on a regular basis

Hi there 1RC—

Very brave of you to make a debut in front of a church (or synagogue) full of people. YIKES! How I relate to that ice-cold hand thing.

Yeah, they walk down the aisle quickly, but it takes FOREVER for everyone to leave the church. For the "leaving the church" music, just pick some pieces that you have fun playing, and go with that. As long as it's spirited and played with conviction, no one will question your choices.

You'll be a pro before you know it, and hey, you must have sounded great, or the other friends wouldn't have asked you to play. Good for you!

That is more like what I meant. It's a bit of a "point of view" slip on my part. The wedding couples have started looking younger, to me, as I have advanced in years.

When people ask what kinds of jobs we do, I sometimes mention that we do second marriages; our particular repertoire now favors people of a certain age.

I have played almost exclusively with rehearsed bands, with one conspicuous exception.

I was in my twenties. I was arranging demos for songwriters using the then-new MIDI technology, but I had not played live regularly for a couple of years. A drummer, a friend-of-a-friend that I had met once or twice, called me in a panic to play at a Bar Mitzvah. For those without any Jewish friends, a Bar Mitzvah is a sort of "coming of age" ceremony for a 13 year-old boy. In some circles this may be accompanied by a quite elaborate party.

The drummer, "Rick" if I remember correctly, was a fairly intense fellow. He told me that his keyboard player had suddenly moved to Florida and he was in a tight spot. He had a gig coming up on a party boat that went around Manhattan. (NY City)

While my chops are just average, I have always been unusually good at playing songs without preparation. That has always been my most notable musical skill. Having said that, this was maybe 25 years ago, before I'd had much experience playing a wide range of styles. I was a little apprehensive.

I told Rick that I had no experience with this sort of gig, but that if the rest of his band was a tight unit, I could probably follow whatever they played. He assured me that yes, this was his regular band, minus the recent defector to Florida.

I met Rick at the pier on the West Side of Manhattan. We were the first musicians to arrive. We carried our gear up a steep ramp to the boat's upper deck, and then down a narrow flight of stairs to the party room, which was roughly at the same level we started at on the pier, par for the course for working musicians. We got set up.

The other players began to arrive. The bass player was first. He introduced himself to me and Rick. The guitarist was next. He said Hi to Rick and introduced himself to me and the bass player. I suppose I was a little dense, but I had not yet picked up on what was going on.

A male and a female singer then arrived together, introducing themselves to me, the bass player and the guitarist. Next came sax and trumpet; introductions all around. Perhaps because I was completely unfamiliar with this kind of gig, I still had not grasped the obvious.

After everyone got situated, I became vaguely aware that there was a sort of football huddle forming to my right. I looked over, and could hear little fragments of sentences, "Do you know Devil With a Blue...", "What key do you sing...", "Have you got the lyrics for...", "I think I have the sheet for...".

The realization finally set in. While most of the musicians knew Rick, with the conspicuous exception of the bass player, who he'd met a week before, hardly any of them had ever laid eyes on each other.

The female singer had a stack of sheet music. I brought her over to the piano. She didn't know what key she sang any of the songs in; it could be any one of the eleven that weren't on the sheet. I asked her to sing the opening verse of maybe four songs and then wrote the key at the top of the sheet. I told her to give those to the bass player, and hoped he could either transpose or play them by ear.

And then we started. We opened with one of the songs I had "rehearsed" with the female singer. It soon became apparent that the bass player was simply not a guy who could "wing it" successfully. I started to shout the chords over to him, which was pretty difficult as he had set up on the other side of the drummer.

The boat rocked from side to side, the Bar Mitzvah boy made his entrance down the grand staircase, and we survived the first song. Seeing that I was apparently now the leader, the male singer came up to me, sang a line or two of his song, and off we went into the second song.

Most amazingly, we started to do four and five songs together as medleys. When we got near the end of a song, whichever singer was "off" at the moment would come over an yell, "Let's do 'Respect', you know, 'What you wa-ant, ba-by I got it...", while we were still playing. I'd scream, "Respect, in Aaaaayyyyyy!" and we'd lurch into the next number.

This went on for the better part of an hour. I was hoarse from yelling "Aaayyyy, now Deeeeeee, B minor, NO, I said BEEEEEEEEEE minor" past the drum kit. We finally took a break. Either the boat or my head was spinning.

A couple walked up to me. Uh Oh.

The woman said, "You guys are the tightest band we've ever heard, how long have you been together?". I looked at my watch, "About an hour", I said. They laughed and said that was very funny. I thanked them for their kind words and went up on deck to get some air.

Thanks for the kind words Piano Girl! I think everybody's stories are pretty damn brave! (playing a surprise Beethoven Romanze with a stranger, showing up and finding nobody in the band knows anyone else )

Yeah I'm stoked just to have a practical application of this music I love. A month from today I should have another wedding story to offer.