Wedding music planning
Give Rob twenty songs, not two hundred.
Couples are usually told to build a full playlist. Rob Kermidas asks for about twenty, and the reason is worth understanding before you spend a weekend on Spotify.
In Rob’s words: twenty songs allows me to learn about the music you like (and dislike) and I can shape the rest of the music with that as the foundation.
A fully scripted night removes the one thing a DJ is there to do. A playlist cannot tell that the room has gone quiet, that the table by the door is putting coats on, or that the song you picked for nine o’clock is wrong at nine o’clock. Twenty songs tell him where your taste sits. What happens after that is judgment, and judgment is the thing you are actually hiring.
What those twenty should be
- The songs attached to a moment: first dance, parent dances, last song.
- Three or four that mean something to you and would make you get up anywhere.
- A couple your parents’ generation will recognize immediately.
- A couple your friends will lose their minds to at eleven o’clock.
- Anything with a family story behind it, with the story attached so Rob can use it.
The other list matters more
The do-not-play list is shorter and does more work. Every family has a song that empties a room or reopens something, and a DJ who does not know about it will find it by accident. Send it, even if it is one line long, and say if it is a hard no or a prefer-not.
The moments that need a decision
Six places where the music is a choice, not a vibe.
Processional and recessional
Two songs, and the recessional is the one people underthink. You are walking back up the aisle married, and the music should sound like that. Pick something with a lift rather than a second slow piece.
First dance
Time it. Most first-dance songs run three to four minutes and that is a long stretch alone on a floor with everyone watching. There is no shame in a fade at two minutes, and Rob will cut it cleanly if you ask.
Parent dances
Father-daughter and mother-son, and the decision worth making early is whether you want them separate or combined. Combined is shorter and kinder to anyone who finds it emotional.
Cake, bouquet and garter
Short, cued, and mostly about giving your photographer a warning. These are the moments that go wrong when nobody announced them.
The floor opening
The single most important song of the night, and the one people spend the least time on. It has to pull three generations up at once. This is the one to leave to the person who has done it a few hundred times.
Last song
Decide whether you want a big singalong or something quiet for the people still standing. Both work, and they end the night very differently.
Requests on the night
Rob takes them where they fit. A request that suits the room at that moment goes in; a request that would clear the floor waits, or does not happen. If you would rather he took everything or nothing, say so when you book, because that is a decision about your wedding and not about him.
One last thing
Tell him what you want the night to feel like at its best, in a sentence. Not a genre, not a decade. Something like everyone on the floor at the same time, including my grandmother, or quiet enough that people can actually talk. That sentence shapes more of the evening than a two-hundred-song list ever will.
Talk music with Rob
Send the date first. The song list comes later, on the planning call, and it is a much better conversation than a form.