Austin Wedding Music

All about Strings Attached and Music for a Wedding

7/25/2011

Subscribe to the Podcast - Download the Podcast

Welcome to the very first MusicForaWedding podcast from Will Taylor and Strings Attached. I am Will Taylor and I am here with my wonderful assistant Amanda Cevallos. Hey Amanda!

Amanda: Hello.

Will Taylor: And this is the first podcast to help you figure out the music for your wedding and all the ins and outs you want to make this fun and if you have any questions for us, send an email to Will@WillTaylor.com and put in the subject field ‘Wedding music podcast’ to anything you want to know. We’d love to help you out, love to hear from you. Just send us an email to Will@WillTaylor.com, any question you have about wedding music.

Today’s main topic, this is our first podcast and we are just going to talk about the role of music in a wedding. Why should we have music anyway in a wedding? What makes it important in a wedding? But before we get to that I want to tell you a little bit about myself and about Amanda.

Since 1989 I have helped couples realize their wedding music dreams and I have played the violin, viola and guitar professionally in the Austin area for over 24 years, including 20 years with the Austin Lyric Opera orchestra. With my group Strings Attached I have worked with artists like Bob Schneider, Shawn Colvin, P Diddy, _______[1:55], Tish Hinojosa, Carolyn Wonderland, Gary Clark Jr. - we bring a lot of experience to the table in helping the couples figure out what they want for their wedding.

Amanda Cevallos went to college at the University of Montana where she studied dance choreography and performance as well as entertainment management at the U of M School of Business. In 2009 she came back to Texas where she was raised and in March 2010 she joined the team at Will Taylor and Strings Attached.

Your musical event planning needs are her first priority. She knows the ins and out of the Strings Attached repertoire built over our 20-year history in the business. But she also has her finger on the pulse of what’s current and popular culture, which makes her an ideal booking agent and a facilitator.

So welcome Amanda. I am so glad to have her here. She has been with us for over an year now. I think we have a really great thing going on and she has a lot to turn in on and I am just going to invite her to interrupt me when appropriate.

Let me talk about music and let me share a few quotes:

“Music is the shorthand of emotion” – Leo Tolstoy.

“Music is what feelings sound like. Music is the universal language of mankind” – Longfellow.

So what is the role of music at a wedding? When you think of a wedding ________[3:22] that is kind of like planning a major life event, in a way it’s like a movie production or producing a play. It’s not unlike that. This is an event that’s going to happen one time in your life and what would it be like if you went to see a play or a movie and there is no music accompanying it? It’s just people talking to each other.

From my standpoint it might not have as much emotional impact and for me the role of music at a wedding is to help the emotional impact. A wedding is very emotional experience. So music can help the emotion be experienced more deeply by not just the couple but all the people that are attending, and that’s one thing to remember is that as you are planning your wedding, this is for your family and your friends as much for them as it is for you and you want them to have this memorable emotional experience.

Now for most people it’s also a religious experience and music is a big part of the emotional impact of spirituality. So it’s like setting the scene. It’s a soundtrack for a grand production that you are planning. So I’d like to ask you to think in your mind and visualize the scene, like a scene in a movie. What is your soundtrack going to sound like?

At this point it might be nice just to talk about one of the parts of the other wedding where there can be music, the different scenes, like in a movie you have a scene. So you start from the top of the movie, of your wedding. Usually the first point of contact is when the guests are walking into the ceremony location. In some cases it will be a church; in other cases it might be an outdoor wedding. So you set that scene with maybe a string quartet. If that’s not your particular style, maybe you have somebody singing middle-eastern music or folk music or you have a solo singer – something to give the guests maybe a little entertainment while they are sitting down and getting adjusted to the ceremony.

Amanda: Something to set the tone so when they walk into something, they walk into something special. As soon as the door is open there’s this beautiful sound coming from wherever the setting is and it really sets the tone.

Will Taylor: Yeah, so think about what is the first impression musically you want to get your guests. Again, I’d like to focus on getting away from traditional should be’s if you have that luxury. Now you may be doing a wedding where the church gives you a specific list of pieces then you want to follow that and share that with your music organizer, whoever is playing to your music.

At Strings Attached we can handle the music from the beginning to the end and we are very experienced in handling these kinds of things. We have done music for up to 20 years. So you want to lean on your provider, lean on your wedding coordinator. We have done anywhere from 100s to over a thousand of these and so we are going to know things about putting together the music and we are going to be able to save you time and effort, so lean on your professionals.

And if you are the asked scenario [7:02] check out stringsattached.org. We love to help organize and make your wedding dreams come true. Amanda will answer the call. You can call her directly at (512) 944…

Amanda: 8407 or you can email me at bookstringsattached@gmail.com and just very quickly before we go I just want to be sure to mention our wedding reception band because I think that’s we get calls for above. We get calls to play strings but we also have a wedding reception band that is fantastic.

And we have another thing called ‘TheClassicRockSeries.com’ and it’s a series of tribute shows and we use a lot of the songs from these tribute shows for the wedding band but we also have other tunes on that website.

Will Taylor: We’d also like to mention, like I said in the beginning of the podcast, Strings Attached can handle the music from the beginning to the end of the reception, the very last note. We are sort of a one-stop shopping source for your live music or live wedding music needs here in the Austin central Texas area.

So we talked a lot about the ceremony music and the cocktail music and we also have a really versatile, exciting, dynamic wedding music variety band and it’s about a six piece ensemble. We can do anything from 60s Motown to 80s pop tunes to Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, a bit of country music, a bit of folk music…

Amanda: Swing, Jazz…

Will Taylor: Pretty much everything that you can imagine we can do at really exhaustive song list online and you can check and see that variety right now. We provide really beautiful lighting systems. We also have a sound system that is high quality and bring our own sound man. We come early and setup and make sure everything is ready to go way ahead of time. We will also MC your event if you have special announcements that you like us to make. We are able to do all that.

Amanda: We’ll create the scripts based on your schedule.

Will Taylor: We’ll create a script based on your schedule and everything will be taken care of – the high quality, it will be dynamic, and if you have any creative ideas we can customize it to your event.

I had a wedding in 2008 where I had a 9-piece band and the client picked every single piece of music. Now we did have to charge for that but we made it happen for them and they had four sets of music and they picked every single piece of music and we worked with them and made it work. So we can go from the extreme, working out every little detail or we can also help you and design with suggestions.

Amanda: We have a client right now that loves us and hired us because they came to our tribute shows and they know what we are capable of. They also have their own ideas too so they are allowing us to be creative and then they are adding a list of songs that they just can’t live without and so we have added eight tunes through our set list for them for a fee of course, but that’s an option. So don’t rule anything out with your wedding band.

Will Taylor: Exactly, and if you want to hear us live we have a monthly residency at the Nutty Brown Café here in Austin, Texas. If you just look up ClassicRockSeries.com you will see a schedule of shows. Our next show is coming up on July 30. Again, that’s ClassicRockSeries.com and also I want to mention that a lot of this information we have talked about, our Frequently Asked Questions, our worksheet – all that is available at celebratewithstringsattached.com or you can email us and we will send you any of this.

If you have any questions, again, just email Will@WillTaylor.com and we will mention these on the podcast in the next episode. If you’d like to record yourself saying the question we will have you on the podcast.

Amanda: If you have a booking inquiry just email Amanda@bookstringsattached.com or you can call me or text me at (512) 944-8407. I am available after 5:00. I have a lot of clients who work all day and can’t really plan their wedding until after they get off work and I make myself available for those clients. So just keep in mind from about 5:00 to 8:00 I am open to texting, calling or emailing.

Will Taylor: Well that’s it. We are going to sign off for now from MusicForaWeddingPodcast with Will Taylor and Strings Attached. Subscribe to this podcast by clicking one of the buttons over there on iTunes. There will be more episodes coming up when we talk more about choosing the music for your wedding and what we do. So we will talk to you and we will see you in the future on the podcast.

Free music for this podcast is available on iTunes. Search for ‘A Bridezilla’s Guide to Classical Wedding Music’. That’s on iTunes at ‘A Bridezilla’s Guide to Classical Wedding Music’.

3 Comments

Trust your vendors and outdoor weddings part 2

7/25/2011

0 Comments

Subscribe to the Podcast - Download the Podcast

Here is a transcript of our discussion with Keri Wootton
Part two of two

Welcome to the MusicForaWedding podcast with Will Taylor where we help you realize your wedding music dreams. Please check out our new app – MyWeddingMusic on the Apple App Store. It’s a free app that has over 40 songs for you to listen to and it helps you organize the music for your wedding. That is the MyWeddingMusic app on the Apple App Store.

Before we get started with our special guest Keri Wootton today who is a wonderful, experienced wedding coordinator in the Austin area, we’d like to encourage you to send in your letters and let us know your questions and maybe we’ll read them out over our podcast. Please send your letters to Will@WillTaylor.com.

*****

Will Taylor:       Well hello there, this is Will Taylor and you are listening to part 2 of my conversation with wedding consultant, Keri Wootton, and I would love for you to check out her website at leavethedetails2me.com.

All right, I am here with Ms.Keri Wootton, wedding planning extraordinaire, a wonderful person that she is, and we are going over funny stories from our wedding history.

As we are talking about this I have got all these images flying through my head of multiple locations around Austin. Here’s one – the Salt Lake Pavilion in Austin is right by that creek and the water is constantly moving. People don’t realize that if you are in the audience and if you are a guest you won’t be able to hear the ceremony. So in this situation, I might need a little amplification and I have actually bought a Bose speaker system to help out with that.

Keri Wootten:   Or you book your venue 18 months out and then we have a drought and now you have no water behind your beautiful lake.

Keri Wootten:   You didn’t know 18 months later there was going to be a drought.

Will Taylor:       That’s right, and so this last night I was at Mercury Hall and we had a little rain, at least in our location, I walked in and the lot of the area where we had to play there was some grass but there is a lot of mud. And then the sun came out and another thing about the sun is that if you are doing a wedding at around dusk, the sun will change. So it was really funny because we had set the quartet up in one position and then it changed and we were in direct sunlight and then we had to move it again. It worked out; we laughed about it but it was funny and the couple was fine with it too.

                        But again, outdoor weddings – you never know. There’s just so many things to think of so just be prepared to have a sense of humor about it!

Keri Wootton:   Be prepared to have sense of humor and also trust the people around you for they are giving you good advice. None of your guests have been involved in the whole planning process so they will not know what was supposed to be there anyway; it’s like if you are an actor in a live theater show.

Keri Wottoon:   No one in the audience knew that ‘xy’ is the line that you missed.

Will Taylor:       That’s right, I know.

Keri Wootton:   As long as you act like that line wasn’t supposed to be there either, no one is going out. It’s just going to be something that makes it look like you are brilliant and it wasn’t on purpose.

Will Taylor:       Unless you make a big deal of it, then people know.

Keri Wootton:   Again, trust the professionals around you! I had a bride and groom; we made a decision within four hours of a ceremony to move the entire ceremony reception indoors because of rain. Big, nasty rain, so it didn’t end up actually pouring but it did sprinkle a little bit. This was quite a few months ago out in Burton, Texas at kind of a hotel/camping ground, Harvard Spring venue. We moved everything inside and actually it ended up with everyone being thrilled because it was in September and even though it didn’t end up raining, we were so glad to be inside. We turned it into this fun thing, I mean the inside face for the reception was awful and ugly. The ceremony inside was beautiful. Floor to ceiling glass, you could still see the lake, beautiful venue, rooms inside and air-conditioned, they were comfortable. We had an outward four hours to fix it. My team was there. All of their bridesmaids and grooms men got together. We all went over to the location and started moving things, hanging lanterns, and putting up extra décor. We made it really fun and beautiful; the bridesmaids and groomsmen and friends and family ended up helping us like ‘come together and tackle this’. They all ended up enjoying the reception more because they were part of it.

Will Taylor:       That’s great.

Keri Wootton:   Because they helped solve this thing it actually turned out more beautifully than it would have been outside. Just like after the wedding just with them partying with their friends and after the reception was over, in the place where we were supposed to do the outside reception when the moon came out; it was beautiful night and the bride was able to just trust and said, “All right Keri, if you need to make this decision, we are going to make this decision and we trust you”.

Will Taylor:       And that’s memorable…

Keri Wootton:   No one stressed and we just got it done and it ended up being lovely.

Will Taylor:       Karen, can you chime in on the wedding that we did last February?

Karen:              No, it was in March.

Will Taylor:       It was in March?

Karen:              Yes.

Will Taylor:       So it was actually Karen’s, where I was the lead musician on it – Karen Mal, through Nancy Fly and Nancy Fly put us to play in Indian wedding which is sneaky, at their Falden…how do you spell it?

Keri Wootton:   Falkenstein Castle.

Will Taylor:       Falkenstein Castle.

Karen:              The Indian wedding who wanted Celtic music.

Keri Wootton:   Yes. It was a ‘her’ big theme for the whole four days of events, which is typical with Indian weddings; there’s four days of events. Every event had a fusion of Indian and another culture, and a big part of that was music. So Thursday night for the mehndi, it was a Indian/Western theme and so I had an iPod full of her favorite country music and we had cowboy hats everywhere. Then, Friday morning was another ceremony and we got went full blown Indian; that part was one of the most religious part of the four days. That evening we had an Indian/Arabian fusion, so we had a middle-eastern band come and play. Then, Saturday morning was the actual wedding ceremony.

Will Taylor:       Well I have got to say, we were driving in central Texas and I look on the horizon and I see a castle growing larger in the middle of Texas. This falls under the theme of this podcast, which is more than a couple of themes that have been running which is ‘Trust your providers; trust your vendors’, especially trust your wedding planner because she/he is overseeing the whole entire production.

Keri Wootton:   And sometimes for a year.

Will Taylor:       For a year in this case. Also unseen or unplanned things can happen, this is an example of that in that wedding in the weather.

Keri Wootton:   It was very cold and rainy.

Will Taylor:       So basically we had come upon this castle.

Keri Wootton:   So the bride had seen the castle when it was built five or ten years ago whenever it was, and said, “I don’t have a fiancé yet but this is where I am going to get married”, and she met her fiancé and so now this is why we are having this ceremony there, and originally the bride wanted the ceremony indoors.

Will Taylor:       This is her dream. So she is holding tight to her dream and we got to make this happen.

Keri Wootton:   We make it happen but inside they thought it was going to be too small to fit all of the people that they had so then the coordinators decide we need to do it outside. So we had been planning for outside but the mother is thinking that her dream is to have it outside, and all along the bride’s dream was really to have it inside. So it’s the mother who is very obsessively tied to this dream of her daughter’s and making sure she gives her daughter this dream. It was raining and you have women coming in saris; we cannot be outside. We have to move this inside. I told her, “I will make it beautiful, I promise. Please trust me. Let me move it inside.”

Karen:              Well it was raining and we showed up on the scene two hours ahead of time to setup the sound equipment.

Will Taylor:       We went inside and we setup our full PA system inside which takes about 30 minutes to load up on this platform and get ready to go, and then…

Keri Wootton:   The mother says ‘I don’t care what you have to do; this wedding is happening outside’. So we move it back outside.

Will Taylor:       And that’s quite a humorous scene I have to say.

Keri Wootton:   Guests arriving early…yeah, it was definitely humorous.

Karen:              There was only one little doorway to get out of the church first of all and get all of the gear out. So people are moving around in these beautiful, beautiful clothes and we are trying to load this giant sound equipment through the aisle of this church. We were trying to navigate all these people and just get out the door to get back outside where it was still quite cold.

Will Taylor:       Luckily we had plenty of folks who were willing to help us but I remember when I walked out just seeing a young man chasing after items that were being blown around and trying to hold items down.

Will Taylor:       Yeah, we are going to make this happen. It will change. It’s going to change.

Keri Wootton:   Then the bride and her mother arrive and they step outside of their limousine and go, “We can’t have it out here. It’s awful.” That’s what I have been saying since 6:00 a.m. because it’s now 10:00 a.m. – an hour late already.

                        So finally we start the ceremony two hours later inside and it was actually, once it started, it was beautiful and everyone cried and she looked beautiful and the music was stunning.

Karen:              You forgot the part about how we moved the entire sound equipment back inside so we setup this PA system, just the two of us, three times. Surprisingly, the ceremony didn’t get started that late. It was an hour-and-a-half…

Keri Wootton:   Maybe two hours.

Karen:              And luckily, we didn’t have another wedding to hurry on to, so it was okay.

Will Taylor:       Then one thing that folks may not realize is that the fingers or digits don’t work below certain temperature. There is such thing as windchill factor and I remember Karen standing outside; “I can’t move my fingers. I don’t know how am I going to pull this off”, and I felt the same.

Keri Wootton:   And vocal cords, it’s got to affect vocal cords.

Will Taylor:       Does it?

Karen:              Yes, vocal cords, yes.

Will Taylor:       All right, I have video from that to prove it too. I actually videotaped all of that.

Keri Wootton:   Actually at the end of the evening, that night when we were back at the lake on the resort and having the reception her mom pulled me aside and said, “I know, I made today hell on earth for you and I thank you for what you did, and I know it came from the pit of your stomach and you worked really hard. I didn’t make it easy on you”. So, at the end they were grateful, understanding, and appreciative, and I knew that. It ended up being really beautiful but it didn’t have to be so hard to get there. If you had trusted me at 6 o’clock in the morning before any guests had arrived to let me make the decision, things would have gone more smoothly. We are not trying to take away the dream; we want to make the dream better.

Karen:              I was like on death row. I knew and was so desperate, we were moving this thing inside and outside. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to play outside and I was just calm. I was just on death row hoping for a stay of execution, at the last minute I just was hoping and trying not to have a heart attack at the thought of trying to play. It was about 45 degrees or something, and then everything worked out.

Will Taylor:       Maybe you guys out there can email me reasons, I would like to know: what are the reasons for having your wedding outside in either extreme cold or extreme heat? That way, we can share that with our listeners, now that we have 1400 subscribers to this podcast. By the way, isn’t that awesome?

                        I love the outdoors and there is something about having a moving and spiritual connection with nature and your family, and Texas is beautiful. What I would say, if you want to have a great experience in central Texas, plan your wedding in October or in November. What would be the best months besides that?

Keri Wootton:   Well I think there’s also some good dates in April and March, but with those comes rain. As long as you have a good venue I would say if you are really wanting the outdoor/indoor thing, find a venue that’s got both and where both options make you happy. Find a venue that is indoors but has windows so you still have the outside coming in.

Karen:              Does anybody do a ceremony indoors and then just take everybody outside for some part of it?

Keri Wootton:   Not the ceremony, but people do have reception or cocktail hour outside so you still get that outdoor. With your ceremony, don’t risk it. To me, the ceremony is the most important part of the day.

Will Taylor:       It’s the centerpiece. The wedding we performed for last night, that’s a great example of location in the Mercury Hall. It’s beautiful and indoors so you can go inside if you need, but they also have the outside with such beautiful trees.

Keri Wootton:   Tent insurance is also a great thing.

Will Taylor:       Tent insurance?

Keri Wootton:   Yeah, tent insurance, where you can reserve a tent and you have up till 72 hours to let it go and then you only lose a piece of what you would pay for that. Peace of mind and also wedding insurance. I highly recommend wedding insurance. What if your groom died and you decided to call the wedding off? They will cover all of the deposits you paid for all of your vendors and wedding insurance policy costs nothing.

Will Taylor:       What is the price based on?

Keri Wootton:   I think it may be based on your budget. Yeah, it’s based on your budget. The policies range from $200.00 to $1000.00, I mean it’s nothing compared to when you are spending $20, $30, $40, $50 or $60… whatever thousand dollars.

Will Taylor:       A one-time payment.

Keri Wootton:   Yeah, it’s like a home-owner’s insurance policy but it’s for weddings.

Will Taylor:       Wow! My experience, I haven’t had a lot of weddings cancelled. I think in 20 years I have had four maybe that were cancelled maybe. It doesn’t happen often.

Keri Wootton:   No, it doesn’t happen often. I have only had about three.

Keri Wootton:   It doesn’t happen very, very often but it happens, I mean it’s happened to me. I mean fortunately I had a pretty big team so they can usually step in. I also have a really, really good support system of other coordinators in Austin and I only had to reach out to them once.

Will Taylor:       Keri Wotton of Leavethedetails2me.com is your website, and your phone number is?

Keri Wootton:   (512) 228-1728.

Will Taylor:       She can handle everything for your wedding in the Austin and central Texas area. I am sure that she’d be willing to do it anywhere in the world as well. So check her website out! Thanks a lot, Keri, for discussing our wedding-war stories.

Keri Wootton:   Absolutely any time.

Will Taylor:       Any better way to put that?

Keri Wootton:   No, and there are war stories but there are also war memories. I mean none of us would be in this business if we weren’t passionate about it and we do really love sharing those special days with our couples.

Will Taylor:       Absolutely. The music is part of emotional fabric of the whole event and I get people coming to me all the time saying, “Hey, you did my wedding” at a show, and I may not remember, it’s 15 years ago. I don’t always place them immediately but I had it happen all the time – ‘you played our wedding’.

Keri Wootton:   Tell me the venue and then I’ll remember it, right? I just recently did the wedding of a girl whose Bar Mitzvah I did, which was pretty cool to then get a call for her wedding. It was great but it also made me think, “Oh gosh, I have been doing this and after a long time now!”

Karen:              Everyone comes in to a place with one common, beautiful attitude which is the undying, eternal hope of the possibility of true love. Everybody believes that, for that moment together and it’s such a wonderful thing to share in that hope and no matter what happens in life, no matter what goes wrong, those moments keep happening. People still are getting married to each other and it’s so beautiful to be a witness to that and to help elevate it and to help shine more light on it, to help shine beautiful music that will just highlight the experience that they are already having.

Will Taylor:       Yeah, and there are some musicians who will say, “Oh you do weddings? Oh I don’t feel that way at all. I absolutely don’t.” It’s an honor and it’s a pleasure especially to play a lot of these weddings to meet the brides and their really specific, personal requests. We enjoy playing songs that they want, rather than just the same classical wedding fair and Pachelbel’s canon and Wedding March. It’s getting to be really popular to have pop music done with the strings and just without vocals. We are doing things like Stevie Wonder. We have even done ‘So Fresh and So Clean’, which is like a rap tune for strings, and they loved it.

Karen:              We once had a wedding that was entirely music from movie soundtracks.

Will Taylor:       Oh yeah, movie soundtrack themes from ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, that’s right. Often, we are surprised what folks pick when we look at the lyrics, but that’s fine. If it means something to you, then we want to make that happen and I think it’s very interesting that even an instrumental version without lyrics seems to work. Thanks, Keri!

Keri Wootton:   You are welcome.

*****

Our music on the podcast can be purchased on iTunes under the album ‘A Bridzilla’s guide to classical wedding music’ or you can get it contained within the free app at the Apple App Store called My Wedding Music. For any of your questions we’d love to help you out. Just email us Will@WillTaylor.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

0 Comments

Outdoor Weddings, listening to vendors and Murphy's Law

7/22/2011

0 Comments

Subscribe to the Podcast - Download the Podcast

Here is a transcript of our discussion with Keri Wootton
Part one of Two

Welcome to the MusicForaWedding podcast with Will Taylor, where we help you realize your wedding music dreams. Please check out our new app – My Wedding Music- on the Apple App Store. It’s a free app that has over 40 songs for you to listen to and to help you organize the music for your wedding. That is the -My Wedding Music- app on the Apple App Store.

Before we get started with our special guest, Keri Wootton, today who is a wonderful, experienced wedding coordinator in the Austin area, we’d like to encourage you to send in your letters and let us know your questions and maybe we’ll read them out over our podcast. Please send your letters to Will@WillTaylor.com.

*****

Will Taylor: All right, I am here with Ms. Keri Wootton, wedding planning extraordinaire, wonderful person that she is, right here in the room with me and we are going over funny stories from our wedding history. Basically what I am trying to encourage people out there to do is to trust in your vendors and trust in their experience. They have probably done a few more weddings and organized all of the minutiae a few more times than the client has. Do yourself a favor and listen to us. So here are a few examples of things that have happened:

“Why? Why? Tell me this, I have to know, do people plan outdoor weddings in Texas? It’s not fair to the guests, okay? In 101 degree weather…”, and I see this happen all the time. I am setting outside; I deal with it all. I will go with my tux and set up in the shade but then I see these elderly folks coming in off the bus and they are in their 60s or 80s and maybe they have a little couple of fans to pass out, but still, how do they convince their planner that they are going to do? “Oh, it’s only going to be 20 minutes outside. The ceremony is only going to happen 20 minute…”

Keri Wootten:    I have one couple who is getting married July 23rd at Star Hill Ranch on Amy Arbor. The arbor itself is covered for them but their guests are all sitting out in sun. I said, “We can do this”, and this is a couple that’s on a budget I said, “We are going to do this but we are going to have the EMS on sight”.

Will Taylor: Well that’s good, yeah.

Keri Wootten: What we actually did was we went out to Star Hill Ranch on a Thursday evening at the same time in which their wedding was going to be, to see what the wind was like, see what the breeze was like and we waited from 6:30 to 7:30. Guest invitation said 6:30; we waited until 7:30. At 7:30 it was actually quite lovely and it was okay and where this arbor was, they actually made a believer out of me.

So we did and I have actually been talking to Adam from Star Hill every day, “How was your wedding last weekend? How were the guests? It was hot…” and we are also going to have a lemonade bar at the ceremony site.

Will Taylor:    Awesome, okay.

Keri Wootton:    So lemonade and cold drinks – they are going to cocktail hour since the invitation is at 6:30 and it will really start at 7:00. We are going to have them in this shaded area to have lemonade, relax inside with air-conditioning and then we are going to take them out right before the ceremony.

Will Taylor:    Okay.

Keri Wottoon: If you are going to insist on an outside ceremony you have got to talk to your professionals and if you are going to have a musician or a cameraman, you have got to make sure you provide them the shade, not just for their bodies but for their instruments,. I had a chat with Will Taylor and he told me, “Gosh, my instrument’s $80,000.00”, who knew that an instrument can cost that much?

Will Taylor:    Absolutely.

Keri Wootton:    A frequently asked question: “Why is a DJ $900.00 for that or $1000.00 or a musician this much for the day?” What you have to realize what it takes for them to give you the quality of service you want. It costs money for them, whether it’s the software that is in their computers to give you a professional contract. It is the staff it takes to run their office to give you a professional experience. It’s the equipment that they are going to have to make sure that everything works. It’s the backup equipment that they are going to have – all of those things take money and so we all as vendors, have to price ourselves accordingly so that we can give you a level of service that you want and expect.

Will Taylor:    Absolutely. I always like to say is if you are going to have an outdoor wedding you are basically increasing the unknowns that are going to happen and you need to accept that they are there.

Keri Wootton:    And you need to have a backup plan.

Will Taylor:    Yeah, have a backup plan like you said, support not only your musicians but your guests; you want them to be comfortable, like this idea of the lemonade – that’s fantastic, because it could be like you said, you went out there but that might be 104 but then you’ve got the air-conditioning inside, that’s great. So if you insist on that, that’s wonderful. Have some understanding for things like Murphy’s Law. Murphy’s Law of wind is one of them. Murphy’s Law of rain, of extreme heat, of sweat!

    The other thing with musicians is that we actually are just sort of moving, swing players move a lot. The sweat comes off of our faces and down on our instruments. It’s not a beautiful picture. I have actually done these weddings outside.

Keri Wootton:    Yeah, and then the photographers mapping pictures of all of us.

Will Taylor:    Right, we don’t look great in these, right, our tux is sweating all over our instruments.

Keri Wootton:    And inevitably your musicians, when they are positioned next to your altar are going to be in all of your wedding photos.

Will Taylor:    Exactly.

Keri Wootton:    And you want the musicians to look stellar.

Will Taylor:    And hair – hair goes all over the place with the wind, music…

Keri Wootton:    Sheets of music.

Will Taylor:    Sheets of music is very hard to organize.

Keri Wootton:    Close pins in my emergency kit, just for that reason.

Will Taylor:    Awesome, that’s good, yeah. We just found some great new clips that are like plastic see-thru that do a really good job of keeping the music down now so we have with Pro-gigs [6:49]. They look much better than the close pins. They are a little more stylish. They are really good. What they call them, they are called ‘Musicmaide clips’ and they are very important [6:58], believe it or not.

    So I had a wedding yesterday…

Keri Wootton:    Always have a backup plan. That’s the backup plan. If you don’t have a coordinator make sure you discuss it with your caterer, your musicians, your videographer, your photographer and your site location. Trust the people that are giving you advice around you. We have done hundreds of these and we are not trying to crush your wedding dream; we want you to have a beautiful wedding. We don’t want you to have something that people are going to go ‘Gosh, that wedding was really funny’ or, ‘Gosh, that was very hot’.

Will Taylor:    And then have a sense of humor because something might happen. If you are going to have an outdoor wedding it is very possible. Again, something might happen – just laugh it off. If the sheet music goes flying or you know…it’s one day.

Keri Wootton:    It’s a happy occasion and you are getting married and the two of you look so beautiful that no one is going to think it less of you if the sheet music flies off. That is not a reflection of your plan.

Will Taylor:    Yes, and your guests are going to actually, maybe a little bit of that would make your wedding more memorable, I mean when your guests slip back to it, they are like ‘Oh I remember the bride’s hair was flying off and this one…’

Keri Wootton:    Yeah, I have had a wedding that was indoors at Star Hill Ranch. It’s in a little chapel and we had an aisle runner rolled out. We opened the backdoors of the chapel for the couple because that’s how you deal all of the men, right?

Will Taylor:    Yeah, right.

Keri Wootton:    But you know, you shut the doors and make the big dimensions of the couple, big huge gusto went right through those doors; the aisle runner goes… going up. I had have all of the guests step on the edge of the aisle runner with their feet and they are holding along and then it was fantastic and funny and it was wonderful and it wasn’t a big deal. This is an introduction to what is about to be your life as married couple.

    When you are married, I have now been married 12 years. I have a beautiful child, that these things are going to happen in your marriage. This is it. You’ve got to have sense of humor and all with a vengeance.

Will Taylor:    That’s really like, the first thing I would say is, have a sense of humor and then you will have a good time and you will look back. I mean it’s just one day. It’s the marriage, right? What do they say about that? It’s one day. It’s the rest of your life.

Keri Wootton:    It’s the rest of your life, and you know what, I have been doing events for 18 years and I have never done an event where we didn’t have something. So it’s almost like it’s bad luck if something doesn’t occur.

Will Taylor:    See, exactly. All music on the podcast can be purchased on iTunes under the album ‘A Bridezilla’s guide to classical wedding music’, or you can get it contained within the free app at the Apple App Store called ‘My Wedding Music’.

    For any of your questions we’d love to help you out. Just email us Will@WillTaylor.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

0 Comments

All about Strings Attached and Music for a Wedding

Trust your vendors and outdoor weddings part 2

Outdoor Weddings, listening to vendors and Murphy's Law

Music for a Wedding Podcast with Will Taylor

Archives

Categories