Our wedding playlist was way too long. I'm talking, the reception and dance playlist was 20.2 hours long! We knew we had to refine the list, so last month we met up with some friends for after-work-Friday-drinks and I pulled out my iPhone. I started listing off some of the songs and our friends got really into voting on which songs were good choices and which weren't. A while later we met up with another friend, Karen, for dinner. Then we continued going down through the list. By the end of dinner Karen said, “You guys need to have a party so we can review your whole playlist!” By the end of the night we decided that we would host a “Stereo Love Party” (namely because our friend Steve kept telling us that he wanted to request a song called Stereo Love to be added to the list).
The rules of our Stereo Love Party were this:
- We would give our friends one request and one veto (but of course, we have unlimited vetos to cancel any vetos that we don't agree with).
- We also vote whether the song is for 1) mingling music for in between the ceremony and reception, 2) reception music, 3) fast dance song, 4) slow dance song, or 5) I need a break from dancing, let's go get a beer.
This is how our Stereo Love Party went down:
So we started with 20.2 hours of music but we ended up with five hours of mingling music and nine hours of dancing music. We still have a lot of refinement to do but now we have a better idea of what our friends really want to hear and have a better idea of which ones we should cut back on.
It became apparent early on in the Stereo Love Party that five options were clearly too many for our friends who may or may not have been under the influence of adult beverages. 🙂 So we decided to reduce it to either 1) mingling music or 2) dancing music. Two options seemed to reduce the confusion.
Our friends also decided that they needed voting signs so they were quickly written up on plain paper. Some decided that illustrations were needed just to be sure.
How our friends helped us whittle down our wedding playlist
We had four friends come over, we ate some tacos, tested the whiskey fountain, and we voted on music. The people represented some pretty different... Read more
We had the list of songs imported into excel and I was keeping track as our friends were voting. I had to arrange to have someone tally the votes because between people changing their votes while I was counting and trying to maintain the file as the songs were being cued proved to be too difficult.
It took a while to get the voting going, but once we did it was so much fun to see how into it our friends got! Between reminiscing about songs from back in high school, to professing disgust regarding a particular artist, or professing love regarding a particular song, it was an interesting way to narrow down the playlist.
A couple of times I caught people saying “Krista, I'll vote for this song AND I'll dance with you when it comes on!” after seeing that I was disappointed that the majority wanted to vote against one of my favourite songs. Or hearing “Oh yeah, Maria… how you gonna dance to that?! Show me. Show me now.” It was funny to see how one person would consider a song to be a dancing song whereas others thought that it was impossible to dance to it.
Other times we caught friends bargaining with each other to sway the votes, like when I caught Steve bribing to use someone else's vote because he didn't like the way they were voting.
It was also cool that our friends who are getting married the weekend after us were there and were taking notes on particular songs that they wanted to remember to add to their wedding playlist.
All in all, it was a fantastic way to hang out with friends and be wedding productive! 🙂
This is a GENIUS idea! I thought we’d have so much fun making our playlist and it turned into a huge long slog that devolved into the hubster whining that he “didn’t WANT to listen to ANY more slow songs,” and me replying “well, we HAVE to have MORE slow songs so you’re just going to have to SUCK IT UP.”
Ahem. Anyway, I wish we had been smart enought to think of this!
Hottie Hubs and I had the same experience, though we degenerated into a “Find the Most Stunningly Inappropriate Dance Songs For Our Wedding” contest. We started out slow, just picking songs we knew the other person didn’t like that much, or funny older songs that we both don’t like (disco’s not our thing, for example), but then he brought out his speed metal with screaming growly vocals, and I started in on some really sexually graphic hip hop. Please let me be clear – I’m not saying that speed-thrash metal or sexually explicit hip hop is a bad choice for a wedding. If that’s your thing, go for it, and I will always admire your awesomeness. But it would not have gone over well with our wedding guests, and picturing parents and grandparents and other super straight-laced conservative relatives slam-dancing to System Of A Down or “Electric Slid-ing” their way through David Banners “Play” made us both fall over laughing.
I expect to have a stunningly similar experience when we get around to discussing wedding music. i can’t wait! 😀
(also: Prince’s Cream. no-one EVER listens to the lyrics…. muahahahaha….)
That’s great! My fiancee is a true 80s music fan, and I have a much more eclectic taste in music. Don’t get me wrong – there are many 80s tunes that I listen to, but when he was describing his ideal playlist consisting of def leppard, AC/DC, and hair metal gems from that decade that I’d never even heard of, I thought we were going to resort to fisticuffs to settle the playlist dispute. (kidding) I like this idea much better. 🙂
This is SUCH a good idea! Especially for me and DF who have such vastly different music tastes. Unless we want to have an all-Beatles reception, I think we should enlist the help of our friends!
oh, but all-beatles-reception!! how fantastic could that be???
I know it wouldn’t be the *WORST* thing, but I figure our guests might want a smidgen of variety, heh.
When do we get to see the list?! This is amazing!
Oh we have plans to run “the list” as one of our Real Wedding Playlists soon enough! Mwahahaha.
Ooooh, VERY soon I hope as I’m getting married in a month and totally into making the list atm myself 🙂
This looks like a blast! I wish I was there to vote (and drink adult beverages!) 🙂
It looks like you had a lot of fun
Be still my over-planning, loving-organizing heart!
What a great idea! Looks like so much fun. I’ll have to remember to do this
I could really do with a post on songs that make people dance. I really want a packed dance floor but can’t afford a DJ. And the music I listen to isn’t really ‘dance’ music. A post suggesting songs that get people up and dancing would be so awesome.
I’ve been looking up other people’s wedding spotify playlists. I’ve found some great songs by listening to other people’s compilations!
This would of been SOOO much more fun than me sitting in the dark at night in front of the computer screen for 2 months trying desperately to narrow our 14 hours of music down! Great idea!
Thank you! Now I know how to organize for “self DJing” our playlist!