Sydney Wedding Music The Country Trader
How does a musician celebrate their own wedding?
With fantastic wedding ceremony and reception music of course!
My finace and I were married recently in Sydney. I've been working in the wedding industry for over ten years now and have developed some rock solid relationships with fantastic wedding suppliers across Sydney. We had our wedding ceremony and wedding reception at a venue just outside of the CBD at The Country Trader which is within the PYD building in Waterloo.
The venue is BYO, which is great because we were able to supply some great tasting wines. Some of the great people that helped us along the way were our celebrant - Helen Wyld, photography - Rich Alma, catering - Simon Ekas and our wedding cakes by Kathryn from Sparkle Cupcakery. Our wedding was stand up/cocktail - but because of the way the room was set out, there was plenty of seating for everyone. We also had the ceremony and reception in the one space.
Before the wedding ceremony, we had a flamenco guitarist playing for our guests to create a wonderful atmosphere as they arrived. For the actual wedding ceremony, we had a six piece group made up of: A String Quartet, a keyboard player and a female vocalist. I wrote customised arrangements of all the parts to make the music side of things unique and special to us. Even though the same songs might be played at other weddings... it was our music because well... I wrote the parts for us :)
We chose three songs for the wedding ceremony:
Entrance of the Bride: Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
Signing of the Register: Cinematic Orchestra - To Build a Home
Recessional: Coldplay - Viva La Vida
If you would like to listen to these songs - there are recordings of all of them on this web site. It was just magic. The minute the musicians started performing "To Build a Home" for the signing of the register the entire room went quiet as everyone stood mesmorised by the music.
When the wedding ceremony concluded, we went off to have photos and the Jazz band started performing for pre dinner drinks and canapes. The idea of using softer Jazz and light pop songs before having dancing later on was to shift the mood out of the formal wedding ceremony and create a warm party atmosphere.
Once our photos were taken we came back in to greet our guests and have some food. When the Jazz Band finished their final set, and we had a short amount of speeches... cutting of the cake...etc.
For the dancing following the speeches, we had a 7 piece band. My wife and I decided to go against tradition and did not have a first dance... Even though we only had 100 guests, having all those musicians playing was like a magnet for our guests to the dance floor. We cut the cake, the band started playing and EVERYONE got up and danced the night away.
We had such a fantastic time - it all went so quickly... which is why we are so happy to have our wedding photos to share. Below are photos focusing on the music that we had at our wedding.
