Comments on: LOVE/HATE: The * and *** Edition

By: me

me — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:15:52 +0000

Keep it clean! I know the wedding is a celebration of you and your spouse, but other people are there to celebrate with you. Yes, some rap songs have great beats to which you can dance (though most of them don’t) and you can easily find some that don’t have excessive swearing. Sexual innuendos are more difficult to avoid, though.

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:52:38 +0000

I went to a wedding last year where the DJ started playing gangsta rap and the bride and her friends started booty dancing with all the guys. Call me a prude, but this made me quite uncomfortable…I mean it’s a WEDDING, for God’s sake, not a swinger’s party.

I have to agree with LaBellaDonna – I don’t think it’s very auspicious to start your marriage off with misogynistic gangsta rap. What message does that send?

By: class-factotum

class-factotum — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:41:51 +0000

Related note: I have been kind of surprised at the music played for the aerobics classes at the Y (as in Young Men’s Christian Assoc). One song has lyrics like, “I’m throwing up my skirt but I only want to flirt… I’m on my knees because I dropped my keys.”

I know it’s way too much to expect to hear music I can’t stand just for the (lack of) melody if they don’t even have standards about the lyrics. (Middle-aged white ladies really don’t want to work out to hip hop, I don’t think.)

By: La BellaDonna

La BellaDonna — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:53:42 +0000

My own feeling is that if there’s family there, keep it family-friendly. I figure surely there’s enough music in the world to make it through a handful of hours without cursing? Of course, I don’t particularly like cursing in music. And I despise gangsta rap. I don’t generally think “bitches/marriage celebration” go hand-in-hand, but then, I’m a fossil.

Going back to soak in the tar pits, now.

By: Kristina

Kristina — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:15:17 +0000

So I guess the Divinyls “I Touch Myself” and pretty much any song by the Violent Femmes is out?

I love Marc Cohn’s ‘True Companion’. But when I played it for my fiance, we both cracked up imagining swaying in front of 130 people(one of which will be my father) to the words “Then I’ll take you home and with wild abandon…make love to you just like a true companion”. However, we will play it later in the night when most of the more uptight people will no longer be there so we can crack up together.

And as much as I love ‘I Will Survive”, is it really the best song to play at a wedding? Yet – I hear it all the time.

By: Twistie

Twistie — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:36:18 +0000

I don’t want to play anything that’s going to offend guests, and I tend to notice lyrics far more than the average person. I can also see merit to KTB’s comment about knowing your audience.

Actually, if we’d had a band that did a lot of vocal music (they were instrumentalists, and there was never any question of trying to set up a DJ or sound system out in the woods where we married), we would have been very careful about the lyrics going out.

The unusual thing is that we would have been editing the list for our own delicate sensibilities rather than Great Aunt Mildred’s or Little Benjy’s. No problem with swear words or adult themes, more a case of what we find appropriate for the occasion.

By: Evie

Evie — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:29:02 +0000

I think this is one situation where the reception afterparty can be a good idea, especially if your guests have a wide range of ages and tastes: if it’s important to you to have a nightclub-esque bash on your wedding day, save it for after those who might not enjoy it have turned in for the night.

Otherwise, there’s no rule saying the only clean options are oldies or motown (both of which I personally loathe). There are so many danceable mainstream pop songs that aren’t profane (or are at least only very mildly profane), that it’s not like you won’t have anything to dance to if you cut out the gangster rap. Or what about doing fun themed music, like swing or salsa or afro-cuban?

By: Melissa B.

Melissa B. — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:08:13 +0000

Dianasaur — yikes!!

I think a good DJ can keep it clean without calling attention to the fact that he’s editing his playlist. A week after the wedding I talked about in my comment, we attended another wedding (yeah, I know, it’s that time of year!) where the DJ did a great job playing for a crowd that included the bride’s 5-year-old half-sister and the groom’s 87-year-old conservative Southern grandma. The guests danced up a storm, and no one was awkwardly looking at Grandma and the flower girl to see if they’d noticed the m-f- word.

By: Dianasaur

Dianasaur — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:16:25 +0000

I don’t like cussing, it gets stuck in my head when I hear it. So I especially don’t want to hear it at weddings. But songs about sex are even more awkward. The most awkward was at a wedding where the first dance song was all about making love, and most of the people in attendance knew the main reason the groom was marrying the bride was because she wanted to wait until marriage. Guess who picked the song? Yep, she was so embarrassed.

By: Bitter

Bitter — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:33:09 +0000

We will likely solve this problem by not having dancing and instead hiring a harpist and my cousin who is a semi-professional flutist to play. No potentially offensive lyrics for my sister-in-law who is beyond uptight and something that doesn’t stand out as needlessly edited to pretty much everyone else at the event.

Comments on: LOVE/HATE: The ***** and ******* Edition