Choosing wedding music can be a daunting challenge, but if you are planning a very traditional ceremony, you may also simply want to use traditional music. While there is no “official” or historic list, the four pieces below represent the music you are most likely to hear in movie, soap opera, and royal weddings. There have been years when these pieces represented 75% or more of the ceremonies we performed. While tastes are changing, this set remains a popular choice for traditional brides.
Seating of Honored Guests
Bach – Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
A famous chorale movement from the Cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (BWV 147) of J.S. Bach, featuring a melody by Johann Schop, this popular piece is more atmospheric than processional, making it a favorite for seating of mothers and other honored guests.
Processional of the Bridal Party
A piece which needs no introduction, and which begins with perhaps the recognizable 8 note sequence in all of classical music. While possibly composed for the wedding of J.C. Bach in 1694, the piece was not well known until its republication in 1919, and the first commercial recording was issued in 1940. In spite of its near ubiquity, it is really a ‘modern traditional’.
Bridal Processional
Wagner – Bridal Chorus from ‘Lohengrin’
Another of the most recognized melodies in Western music, in Wagner’s opera it is actually sung after the wedding, as a processional from the altar to the bridal chamber, with the wedding party singing:
Faithfully guided, draw near
to where the blessing of love shall preserve you!
Triumphant courage, the reward of love,
joins you in faith as the happiest of couples!
Champion of virtue, proceed!
Jewel of youth, proceed!
Flee now the splendour of the wedding feast,
may the delights of the heart be yours!This sweet-smelling room, decked for love,
now takes you in, away from the splendour.
Faithfully guided, draw now near
to where the blessing of love shall preserve you!
Triumphant courage, love so pure,
joins you in faith as the happiest of couples!
Recessional
Mendelssohn – Wedding March from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1842 as part of a suite of incidental music for a production of Shakespeare’s play, it quickly became a wedding favorite. Its appearance in the 1858 wedding of the daughter of Queen Victoria to Prince Frederick William of Prussia ensured an early entrance into the traditional wedding playlist.
