Early on in the wedding planning, Mr. Pencils told me he wanted to be "involved." Involved in the planning, the decisions, the excitement. We've always had the partner mentality- we are equals in our relationship. We often refer to each other as our "co-pilots" and we take pride in the fact that neither one of us has an "upper hand" in the relationship (wow, that was a lot of theoretical quotations).
But this could go two ways- we could get along great over the course of our 21 month engagement, making decisions as joint partners, with equal input....or, the complete opposite. I didn't anticipate it would go the second way, but I have heard horror stories of bridezillas gone awry...and I didn't want to become that! So I quickly agreed that our wedding and all of its planning glory would be a hand in hand adventure for us.
In reality, this was a good thing, as I am notorious for being bad at making decisions. Not at important, large ones- like major educational decisions or moves- but I definitely inherited my father's inability to make snap, quick decisions about insignificant details. For example, my future family knows (already, and knew within 1 hour of meeting me) that I need to order last at a restaurant because it takes me that long to choose what to order. Ridiculous, I know, but alas, true.
However, I also knew that I wanted the freedom that comes with making so many important wedding details. I wanted to labor over our colors, our thematic elements, the flowers, the bridesmaids dresses....and I wanted to Mr. Pencils to handle the things that he would be good at and that it would take me too long to even consider deciding on...
Enter the music. Music is a vital element of every wedding- it sets the tone for the day, and allows people to see a side of you that can almost speak for itself (via lyrics, that is). Mr. Pencils loves music. He loves all types of music. Our musical tastes are pretty similar- we both can rock out to Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, and the list goes on... but we also really enjoy Celtic music, bagpipes (a product of our upbringing- blame it on our respective fathers) and bluegrass.
So Mr. Pencils was given the task of choosing, planning and arranging all the musical elements of our wedding. We chose our DJ (mostly because they had been given rave reviews by every vendor we spoke with, and there was $100 discount at our venue if we went with them) and he began downloading and listening away.
The Pencils' first endeavor: our first dance song. This may seem easy for a lot of people, but for us it proved to be the most discussed, thoughtful and longest decision of the wedding process. We began thinking about the wedding song when we first got engaged in July of 2008. Here we are, a mere 17 months later and we have finally chosen our song. Why did it take so long? Well, you asked for it..
As I mentioned, we both enjoy a wide variety of music. There is a lot to be said for contemporary music- there is nothing better than Jack Johnson or Jason Mraz on the radio. That being said, we immediately agreed that we didn't want a highly popular or recent song for our first dance. Not that we don't love "I'm Yours" or "Better Together"- we just both knew that people had heard these songs so often, and we even knew people who had used these songs in their weddings too that somehow they seemed less special to us.
This decision also quickly ruled out a top contender- Keith Urban's "Making Memories of Us." We had found a sweet acoustic version, and I must admit, it was a solid ten months before we agreed to let it go off of our list.
So, to make the decision (hopefully) easier for Music Man (Mr. Pencils), we set down a few points and guidelines for our song:
1. It had to be upbeat and dance-able. Not fast paced, mind you, just positive and with a more lively beat (think Michael Buble or Frank Sinatra).
2. It had to be classic rock or somewhat obscure. This way it was sure to either be so good it didn't matter if it had been heard before, or somewhat random so not many people had heard it before.
3. It had to somehow speak to both us and make us think of each other, what we mean to one another, and the journey we are about to embark on as a married couple.
Flash forward to 15 months into our engagement, and we had narrowed it down to essentially three songs:
Crazy Love by Van Morrison (LOVE him)
Change the World by Eric Clapton (Mr. Pencils is a big fan of him in general, thus...)
Believe in Life by Eric Clapton
We liked each song for different reasons but also had doubts about each as well. Van Morrison's song is really well known and popular for wedding dances...but also undoubtably amazing. And short! We didn't really want to dance awkwardly in front of people for longer than necessary...which was a big drawback for both Eric Clapton songs, as they are around 4 minutes each.
Mr. P scoured every possible place for inspiration- theknot.com, wedding blogs, iTunes genius bar...and a dozen or so emails sent back and forth between us with youtube clips of songs we thought we might like. We were getting nowhere.
Enter weddingbee. Yes, fantastic weddingbee. After some searching, I came across Miss Cowboy Boot's old post about about her first dance. She had listed about ten songs she and Mr. CB considered before going with Harvest Moon by Neil Young (how cool as they got married on the actual Harvest Moon!) And there it was...the elusive song we had been searching for. I am happy to report that after a quick gmail conversation, three listens on youtube, Mr. Pencils and I have finally chosen our wedding song.
It is upbeat, sweet, and by someone whom we have both loved since "One Headlight"....
Jakob Dylan's "Something Good This Way Comes"
See it here:
And now, I am finding all sorts of ways to incorporate that one amazing line into our wedding planning. I know, a long story, but in the end, we have found the perfect song and the hours spent searching were definitely worth it.
Did you spend longer than you initially imagined on one aspect of your wedding? What was it and how did you eventually come to a decision?
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