Every wedding is carefully laid out (or half-hazardly laid out) to reflect the personality and style of the couple.  Favorite things, hobbies, inside jokes, and special places are often incorporated somewhere into the wedding ceremony, reception decor, or menu.  This makes sense because, after all, the day should be about the bride and groom, so why not let your guests indulge in a few of your favorites? 

While we were planning our wedding, I had countless ideas of things that I thought were lovely, clever, or charming, but I had a hard time at first finding something that we could incorporate that would say US.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't think my husband or myself are boring people...it's just that we're so different.  I'm a non-stop talker who likes to shop for antiques and dabble in graphic design while my husband is a much more quiet handyman and sci-fi fanatic.  Hmm...so what did we have in common that could be used at our wedding?  Well, we both like good food and drink, so we decided to draw our guests into our world by offering them a favorite local beer alongside of our delicious food.  A small gesture that we thought would not make that much difference but made us happy turned out to make EVERYONE happy.  We added a keg of Bent River Brewery's Mississippi Blonde pilsner to our bar menu.  Guests who were from around here recognized a local favorite, and our out of town guests were totally thrilled with the delicious beer option that sat along side other favorites like Bud Light. 

It got me thinking about what other locally made items could our Quad City brides and grooms add to their long lists of wedding details.  Here are a few that I came up with:

Local Drinks: Bent River Beers, Lavendar Crest Wines, Blue Cat Brew Pub Beers,

Local Candy/Food:  Lagomarcinos, Produce from the farmers' markets, Whitey's ice cream

Local Music:  Your favorite local band or musician!  (We have a really great band that we used that I'll be posting about soon!)

So this is a small sad list to start out with, but let's add to it!  What local items do you love and could see being incorporated into someone's wedding (maybe your own)?  I'll add items as they are suggested! 

When it came time for us to pick out our wedding ceremony music, I hesitated.  Hesitation turned into procrastination, and procrastination led to us picking out ceremony music a few days before the actual ceremony.  For someone who is so overly decisive with usually too many ideas to pick from, why did I find finding music so difficult?  

I think that it boiled down to the these factors:  1)  I don’t know a lot about music.  2)  I haven’t ever been exactly moved by music at wedding ceremonies that I’ve attended.  3)  I wanted our ceremony to match the fun and relaxed atmosphere that we were going for with the reception.  

All these ideas in my head made finding music for the ceremony tricky for me.  I didn’t want to have like an all out jam session for the ceremony; I mean, we did want to have a somewhat traditional look/feel to our ceremony.  On the other hand, I didn’t want to pick out music that felt cliched or boring to me.  So in short, I wanted our guests to listen to the music and say “Hey this is a ceremony AND I really like this music!”  

In an offbeat random spurge of luck, I stumbled upon a discussion board talking about the Vitamin String Quartet.  Wha??  I had never heard of them, but all I saw were rave reviews from many, many people who also dropped some key words such as “non-traditional” and “fun” in their comments.  I was intrigued, so I hunted down a few tracks of theirs to listen.

What did I find, you ask?  A goldmine of appropriate and fun music selections for all parts of our ceremony.  Basically the Vitamin String Quartet is your traditional string quartet, but they only play versions of classic rock and pop songs.  The result of their genius are tracks that sound totally appropriate for a special occasion that people can relate to because they sit and listen and start to think to themselves, “Hey, isn’t this ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by GNR???”

Here are some of the tracks that we ended up using for our ceremony prelude music:

The effect was exactly what we wanted.  Judging by our guests who were standing in the cold mist to attend our ceremony, the music was not putting them to sleep, nor was anyone yawning.  Later, one of the biggest compliments we had was our music.  People loved it!  If you'd like to see more songs by the Vitamin String Quartet, click here to go to their YouTube channel where there are dozens of other memorable songs turned into "classical-esque" remixes. 

What have you decided on for your ceremony music?  Something traditional?  Something trendy?  Something in between?  Share your thoughts on the message board!  

My mom had been telling me about this song that she had thought might be a winner for something to be used as a processional tune or something of the sort, and I must admit that listening to a random song was something that had fallen off of my full plate.  Today, I finally sat down and listened to the song that she recommended, and I love it!  Thanks, Ma!  Sorry for doubting the magnitude of this song!  

I liked it so much that I thought I'd share it with you all.  It's a song called "Simple" by K.D. Lang, I believe, and it says it all perfectly.  I hope you enjoy it!  

What songs make your heart melt? What are some of those must have songs that are going to be played on your big day???