Weddings! Part 6: A 'shameful' history

I’m a wedding know-it-all. Weddings are where my service playing philosophies came into focus over the years. But I’ll confess the sins of my youth here:

When I became able to play love songs on the piano well enough to play weddings, I did so. The preludes to weddings in North Carolina in those days included tunes like “Ice Castles,” the theme from “Ryan’s Hope,” the theme from “The Young & the Restless,” the theme from “Exodus,” “We’ve only just begun,” “A time for us,” “Evergreen.” “Close to you,” “If,” “Endless Love,” “Sunrise, sunset,” and so forth. I like to listen to 70s and 80s pop, and I still think back to those weddings when these tunes come on.

I once consulted a couple who wanted Wagner for the wedding party. Easy enough. But during the consultation, the MOTG had a bright idea: imagine after that thunderous Wagner the bride “glides” down the aisle to “Nadia’s Theme.” Oh, how beautiful that would be. It just gave her chills to think about it. Yeah, still gives me chills, too. But hey – at the time it was a novel idea, and I was a little perturbed that I didn’t come up with it myself.

After all these years since the first wedding I played in 1980, it all still makes me cringe even today. And it makes me cringe equally to think back to how I learned otherwise. Where I grew up, one becomes an expert by being shamed into it. I learned to shun those tunes at weddings because someone more liturgically savvy than I shamed me into it. It wasn’t until later that I encountered another liturgically savvy person who suggested that the love songs could still be used at, say, the rehearsal dinner or wedding reception. Good idea, not so shaming, and I have suggested that ever since without so much as a whimper of resistance.