Customer Reviews

The Bride's Guide to Wedding Music: A Complete Resource

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This book has all the traditional standards and newer standards for weddings, in 9 categories: Preludes, Processioinals, Recessionals, Traditional Sacred Songs, Popular Songs, Country Songs, Contemporary Christian Songs, Broadway Songs, and New Age Piano Music. Elaine Schmidt spends the first 6 pages explaining/giving tips on selecting your wedding music. The rest of the book has piano parts/lyrics/and guitar chords for over 60 pieces, including 'You Raise Me Up,' 'From This Moment On,' 'Ave Maria,' 'The Lord's Prayer,' and instrumental standards like 'Sheep May Safely Graze,' 'Canon in D,' and 'Trumpet Voluntary.'

Speaking from the perspective of a church musician with almost 1200 hundred weddings in a 30-year career, I can say that this is a comprehensive selection of classical, sacred, country, and pop music... more than one could ever hope to use.

The musical typography is good; the arrangements (all piano, with guitar chords for the songs from the non-classical and sacred genres) are of moderate difficulty, and there are indexes by category and alphabetically at the front of the book. There are several pages of commentary ("Planning the music for your wedding ceremony"), with suggestions for both traditional and non-traditional weddings, which provide advice on music selection, location, working with musicians, and definitions of "biz" words like prelude, procession, etc.

Some of the page breaks fall in places where a page-turner might come in handy, but at a reduced price of 13.57 on Amazon, this is an excellent investment for any musician's library.