Did You Know | Music Selection

When a couple meets with us, there is always one inevitable question that gets asked, and it gets asked kinda like this:
“So how do we pick the music, or do you pick the music, or how does that work exactly?” As far as the “full” wedding day version of the DVD it’s simple! Since we are hired by our couples to capture their day the best we can, we use the music they had played at their wedding.
(example: if our couple played “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas for their unity candle song, thats the song we’re going to use.) Using the actual songs that our couples use during their events makes things way easier on us as we’re editing their full day version of the DVD! Awww yeah baby:)

Now when we’re working on a Wedding Teaser for one of our couples its a little harder sometimes! We could have the best shots and the coolest edits, but if we pick the wrong song then it could make our teasers look like poopie:) With that said, we’re always listening for possible teaser songs for our couple the day of their wedding! One of the best apps on our iphones is Shazam.

We’ve been lucky a few times where our couple will be in the pre-wedding portion of their wedding getting ready with their bridesmaids or groomsmen, and a song will come up on their ipod that just halts all progress of anyone getting ready! Everyone busts into dancing or singing along with the song. Now of course we want to be sure to capture all this footage on video. So we get home and go to that portion of the day, and play back the song, but have nooo idea what the song was. So we pull out Shazam and tag the song. Shazam then goes and works its magic. Once it does its thing, it gives us the song title and the artist. It also gives us an option to purchase the song right from our phone. Suuhweeetness!!

Another really cool instance is when we have a friend of the couple who writes a song just for the couple on their wedding day and sings it for them. This is almost a no brainer when choosing the song for the teaser. Friends writing songs for couples and actually sounding good may not happen that often for some of you, but for us it happens pretty often. Oh the perks of shooting weddings in Nashville:) Here is a fun example of one of the times that happened to us:) Clicky Click

So what happens when we don’t get one of these great circumstances? How do we pick the perfect song when our couples don’t tell us the song they want for their wedding teaser? We’ll be honest with you, this process sometimes can take soooooooo long:) We’re pulling away from using copy written music as much as we can. Thanks to the guys at Still Motion there is now a site that has really good uncheesy music you can check out by clicking here.

Another really good (and less expensive) site we use a lot to get some great music for our wedding teasers is Triple Scoop Music. They have a huge variety of music selections you can choose from.

Here is the thing that we have to watch out for though, sometimes we spend so much time searching for a song thats going to make our video look cool that we can easily forget that the wedding teasers aren’t for us. They’re for our brides & grooms. Sometimes what we as videographers think would be perfect for the video isn’t a song that will make the couple fall in love with their wedding teaser.

What happens if we don’t like polka music, but our couple has to have polka music? Being able to edit a video to music genre’s outside of your comfort zone is what makes a good wedding videographer.

We always encourage other videographers to not rely on the music in your Wedding highlights as a crutch! Just because you have a great soundtrack doesn’t mean you automatically have a great video clip! To wrap up this post we leave you with this fun video:) (It never gets old)