Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Here Comes the Bride?

When you envision the bride walking down the aisle at a Christian wedding, you can surely hear the familiar notes of Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus (Here Comes the Bride)” playing out in your head. When I imagined my wedding day, I automatically saw myself walking to this melody, too.

But after hearing and reading that “Here Comes the Bride” is a “theatrical” piece that many Catholic churches frown upon, I armed myself with plenty of unique and different options, though all traditional church songs, before meeting with our officiating priest and rehearsal director over the holidays.

Well, to my complete and utter surprise, our particular church is not only fine with songs like “Here Comes the Bride” and the well-known “Wedding March” recessional by Mendelssohn, but also with plenty of other non-traditional tunes, as well. So, without further ado, here are our picks, which I’m absolutely thrilled about!

Wedding Party Processional 


I love this march, “Trumpet Voluntary in D Major,” especially when played on the organ, which we’ll have available at our church.

Bride’s Processional

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to walk down the aisle to a revised version of the wedding processional from The Sound of Music, one of my favorite classic plays and movies. I can’t wait to walk to this melody, which we’ll shorten and tweak so that the song doesn’t launch into the “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” portion.

Recessional

We’ll ask my bridesmaid Gianna, who will be our cantor throughout the ceremony, to sing a couple verses of  “The Lord of the Dance” as we make our joyful walk back down the aisle together.

Which song will you be walking down the aisle to, and how will your ceremony music mesh with or break away from the conventional wedding “norms” in your faith or culture?

11 comments:

  1. I did think about Clarks trumpet voluntary too but me and the bridemaids are going to walk down to Handel's 'Arrival of the Queen of Sheba' then having Handel's 'Hornpipe from the Water Music Suite' for us all walking out.

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  2. I haven't put any thought into ceremony music yet! I have always loved the Trumpet Voluntary. It gives a "wedding feeling." haha

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  3. We totally broke free of all tradition with our wedding march and I walked down the aisle to an Enya song. It was really fitting for our venue. :)

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  4. we're in the process of deciding. but we're going to stray from the norm and maybe do a beatles song or something.

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  5. Love the ones you picked! We won't be having any ceremony music as its not something done during Greek weddings

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  6. “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” Wow. I can imagine it and seriously I'm at smiling with the image in my mind. Definitely a nice choice. I can imagine you smiling and walking slowly while they are playing that and I think that it's so wonderful. So exciting.

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  7. “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” Wow. I can imagine it and seriously I'm at smiling with the image in my mind. Definitely a nice choice. I can imagine you smiling and walking slowly while they are playing that and I think that it's so wonderful. So exciting.

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  8. Hi Heather!

    I'm accidentally leaving duplicate comments on your posts since yesterday. I apologize for that. I'm having connection errors and was not aware that with the error my comment was published and so I post it again.Hope you understand.

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  9. We are totally breaking from tradition and doing the pop culture route. I will actually be walking down the aisle to a song that will be playing in a video we're showing at the ceremony. It's a Rascal Flatts song called 'The Day Before You'. The recessional will be to the Platters song, 'With this Ring.' I love how upbeat and high energy it is :)

    I just realized that I do have some sort of 'classical type' music in the ceremony as the wedding party will walk down the aisle to the Royal Philharmonic Symphony's instrumental version of Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins :)

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  10. My girls walked down the aisle to Chapel of love and I walked down to At Last by Etta James. Old school classics.

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  11. My friend walked down the aisle to Trumpet Voluntary and played on the piano and it was really beautiiful.

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