Wedding Music

With that in mind, we feel successful on all accounts. We chose an inexpensive but delicious catering option that fed our craving for home-style cooking, and we found Korie Lynn who totally rocks our world when it comes to capturing amazing photos. To be fair, when it came to music we initially wanted to hire our favorite band, The Bridge. But when they announced they were parting ways last year, (despite our desperate attempts to keep them apprised of our wedding plans), we knew we'd have to take another route. We were lucky, though, that by having already fallen in love with the idea of hosting The Bridge, we were already set on a live band. I've been to plenty of amazing weddings with DJs that rocked the house, but my husband (giggle, giggle) and I are major live music fans, and we knew this was an element of our lives we wanted to incorporate into our wedding.

So cut to a few months into our engagement, we're sitting at The Rockfish enjoying a Friday night, and this band that we've seen, I don't know, maybe half a dozen times (all by pure coincidence) starts playing a second set and I immediately tell Aaron I want to dance. A few hours later we were laughing and having a great time when it occurred to us--maybe this band should play our wedding.

I called Doug Segree of the Doug Segree Band that week and knew right away that he had the band for us--despite the fact that he was a Florida fan :) (Go Vols!) A few weeks later Doug invited us to a Redskins game to see his band play the pre- and half-game show. On the way I texted and asked "Do y'all play that song by The Roots--Send Me On My Way?" His response was "You mean Rusted Root? Yea, we can play that." If you know me, you know I always confuse things like that. The second we walked into the show, the song changed, and Doug said "This is one of my favorite songs... I think it's by The Roots." My sister, fiance-at-the-time and I were stoked.

I can't tell you how happy we were with our decision. I'm not exaggerating when I say that at at least three different points during the reception I looked out to the tables and not a single person was sitting. I looked around and everyone was on the dance floor. We'd talked to Doug earlier in the month about specifics: Aaron and I wanted to dance to Ray LaMontagne's You Are The Best Thing, and I wanted to danced with my dad to an original version of You Are My Sunshine. The Doug Segree Band nailed it on both.

I'd had to do a little begging to get them to prepare Rocky Top (Tennessee's song), and Call Me Maybe. But one of my favorite parts of the night was when Doug invited Aaron and I to sing (and rock the tambourine for) Old Crow Medicine Show's Wagon Wheel. A perfect testimant to Doug's memory and attention for detail--I'd made a note on our requested play list asking Doug to "please not play this while we're making our table rounds--it's one of our faves and we want to be on the dance floor for it."

During the wedding multiple people commented that they were the best wedding band they'd seen, and since the wedding we've continued to check them out live, and our friends and family are still chatting.

The moral to our awesome story is that if you want to have a good time, get a musician--band, DJ, etc. that you love. It rained our entire wedding day and I barely noticed. The food could have been terrible, we could have run short on chairs--the bar actually did run out at one point--and a monsoon could have blown through and we still would have had a blast. I learned quickly that the key to a "fun" wedding is great music and a positive attitude, and I am so glad that we had both.

After all, don't these look like people who were having fun?