Making music for my friends’ wedding

A few months ago I got asked if I wanted to play music on my friends’ wedding that took place recently. I felt very honoured to do this, because I think this is such a special event and I got to be the person having an important role and making this even more beautiful. I really wanted everyone and especially my friends to like it.

That came with relatively high expectations to myself - though they were more my own than those of my friends (there will definitely be a post about perfectionism in the future :-D my friends were really chill and gave me a lot of freedom). In the end it was a very wholesome experience for me, I learned to much and I had a lot of fun playing. What fascinated me about it was that it brought together a lot of musical things that I had done before while at the same time challenging me to rehearse something new. For my concerts I only play what I find most suitable and what I like to play, this time it was also about what my friends had in mind versus how I think I can contribute to their ideas. I liked that approach as well because it gave me a little bit of a frame while my friends left me a lot of room for creativity. Of course there was also a certain kind of nervousness because like I said - I wanted them to like it in the end.

At first, we talked about the songs that I would play during the ceremony. That gave me the opportunity to think about what could be good songs to cover. Last year I started to accompany myself on the piano more while singing (when I started to write my own lyrics) so I could already use those new skills which relieved me so much. Preparing this and talking to my friends about their musical wishes it became clear very quickly, that more rock-oriented and fast songs could be more complicated to turn into a piano-and-voice-version and would also sound very different in the end while some other songs would be easier to cover. I had to come up with ways to play the chosen songs on the piano capturing their style and including some of their characteristic elements. This creative work was very much fun when I figured out how I wanted everything to sound.

There was one song that we also sang together with people from our friend group (a very sweet idea from a close friend of the bride). We met before the wedding a few times, divided the song into different parts (for different people to sing) and practiced it. After that we hung out and had dinner together which was very nice as well :-) Playing and singing together with a group I had already done in my singing workshops so that was something not completely new to me. Another friend and I also did a song as a duet since I love singing in different harmonies and it came closer to the original this way.

After the ceremony there was a time slot where I just played background music on the piano (without voice). I was free in the choice of songs and I have my own instrumental program so that was quite easy. But I noticed that most of my instrumental songs were a little melancholic while my pop songs are a lot happier (which I think is more suitable for a wedding :-D). So I practiced doing instrumental versions of my pop songs and mixing them with some of my happier instrumental songs. I also left some room for improvisation (which I find a lot easier when making background music instead of being the center of attention during a concert). Having my pop songs as a “happy backup” is something that I will definitely use more in the future!

So all in all I feel like there were a lot of different musical things for me during this wedding which took some time to practice and which also challenged me a bit. At the same time I also had a lot of fun doing it and it makes me happy to be able to contribute to my friends’ wedding in such a special way. Several people (including the couple) gave me positive feedback which I was glad to hear :-). It also gave me the confidence that I am able to do something beautiful for these kind of events (if people like the style of what I do of course). So if you marry, celebrate your birthday or throw some ofther kind of party and you want me to provide the music for it: let me know, I am prepared now! ;-)