After the seating of the guests and family (see post on this), the ceremony proper begins with the entrance of the wedding party (bridesmaids procession) .
Suggestions: The music you pick for this portion of things should be pretty and an appropriate length for the size of your wedding party. Professional musicians will know how to adapt the length of a piece but we’ll review this with just in case. Some traditional classical choices are:
- “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (J.S. Bach). This is a lovely piece which sounds great with any ensemble from solo guitar to string quartet. listen
- “Air on a G string” (J.S. Bach). Avoid this one if you only have a solo guitarist, harpist or pianist. Any other group or soloist should be great with this one. listen
- “Canon in D” (Johann Pachelbel). This is the most popular selection for the wedding party entrance, but there are a couple of things to watch out for: 1) this piece should be played by at least 3 musicians to sound good; a string quartet is ideal and 2) it takes about 45 seconds to get to the recognizable part of the song so we don’t really recommend the Canon unless you have at least a string trio and at least 5 bridesmaids in the wedding party. listen
- “The Flower Duet” (Lakme) listen
- “Meditation” (Thais) listen
- “Entré Act” (Intermezzo) from Carmen (Bizet) listen
You don’t have to use traditional classical selections, though. Read more about this in our post on this very topic!
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Filed under: Ceremony music
