Ottawa – On Saturday, a good friend of mine was getting married and we were asked to dj the wedding. We had previously dj’ed a friends wedding a month and I had already dj’ed at least one or two weddings before so the process was becoming more and more familiar. So I decided to do a retroactive diary of the evening in case some random person wants to set a playlist for their wedding.

Here were some notes from this wedding

a) no children or no teenagers so the need to play Bieber or Taylor Swift or Hanna Montana was not existent
b) most of my friends at the party listen to indie or indie-ish wedding, although I had no idea what the brides friends listened to.
c) there was only one or two tracks that were considered must plays by the couple, both of which were are on my playlist already

Anyways, here we go

I am a firm believer that the first hour and a bit should be dedicated to getting all the old folks on the dance floor and giving them their time. So without doubt, a heavy dose of oldies and motown are required. This allows the older generation of parents and grand parents to dance and also gives the younger generation time to mingle, get drunk, rip off fences and throw them in a bonfire outdoors. So here’s what we played, a playlist consisting of super famous upbeat tracks. Everyone loves the Beatles, by the way.

ben e king – stand by me
temptations – my girl
diana ross – baby love
chubby checker – the twist
jackson 5 – abc
beatles – can’t buy me love
isley brothers – shout
roy orbison – oh pretty women
neil diamond – sweet caroline
lynyrd skynyrd – sweet home alabama
ccr – bad moon rising
marvin gaye – ain’t no mountain high enough
aretha – respect
beatles – twist and shout
elvis – hound dog

At some point of the night, you will want to move the generation level up a notch, but not necessarily move it straight to Taio Cruz or something. So we went with some famous 80s tracks. I decided to forgo the cheesy eighties songs this time (Boney M, Village People, etc). I also love Kokomo.

beach boys – kokomo
violent femmes – blister in the sun
clash – train in vain

Be careful when you decide to play Queen – Under Pressure, because all the young kids will think it’s Vanilla Ice and then you get that awkward moment when they have no idea what’s going on.

queen – under pressure

Micheal Jackson can be played anytime at a wedding and it’ll always fill or refill the dance floor. Use him wisely

michael jackson – billie jean
madonna – holiday

At some point, you should probably move to a more up to date playlist so that your friends can make it to the dance floor. By this time, they are fairly liquored up. We wanted to start off that portion of the night with a bang. Black Eyed Peas, for all their general crappiness, gave us I Gotta Feeling, which for all intents and purposes, is a song that will always get everyone going and also be played at weddings thirty years from now.

black eyed peas – i gotta feeling

and then you have to follow that up with a really good track, so you do it with a recent song-du-jour

cee lo – forget you

Sometimes it’s nice to play a pg version of a song. Then at some point one of the Dj’s will want to play a song he loves, because he’s the dj. Also, the song is pretty good.

cardigans – lovefool

Around this time, some people are really liquored up. Like someone who buys six shots of scotch. They will invariably want to give a rousing tribute to a fallen rock star.

mark ronson/amy winehouse – valerie

then you play a madonna song

madonna – like a virgin

At some point of the night, you’ll want to have a slow song for the couple.

cindy lauper – time after time

You usually need something really popular to fill up the dance floor after a slow song. You will also need to play Journey at some point because someone will always request it. So you might as well play at least one or two songs people might request/are awesome sing a longs so that you don’t get requests.

journey – dont stop believin
bryan adams – summer of 69

After a few singalongs, everyone is usually juiced, so it’s now to investigate what will work. I tried to go the 80s dancey route, so I started with the obvious.

new order – bizarre love triangle

While New Order worked really well at the previous wedding, wasn’t such a hit here. Time to switch it up

notorious big – hypnotize
beyonce – crazy in love

For the record, you can always play Florence and the Machine and girls will go bat crazy over it. Has worked everytime, I don’t know why.

florence – dog days are over

At this point of the night, most of the parents/grandparents are done and then you can just hit the crowd with some modern era hits. While it might be tempting to go with more super indie obscure songs, it’s probably safer to go with the standards. You can be hip while djing some divey bar in Parkdale.

kings of leon – sex on fire
metric – gimme sympathy
outkast – hey ya
the strokes – last night
the killers – somebody told me

Blink 182 seems to always be popular as well. Kudos to the DJ’s at the Propaganda night in London, England for reminding me how much this song kicks ass.

blink 182 – all the small things

Request time.
bon jovi – livin on a prayer

Back to regular scheduled programming. I had previously avoided Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance at the last wedding because of the title of the song, but let’s face it, no one cares at this point and it’s her best dance track.

rihanna – only girl in the world
lady gaga – bad romance
micheal jackson – thriller

At some point of the night, you’ll want to throw in some tracks you think will work, just for fun
robyn – dancing on my own
edward sharpe – home
temper trap – sweet disposition

Then near the end, you’ll just want to play songs you want to listen to. The official last song of the night was The Flaming Lips, which I wanted to play because well, it’s freakin awesome and makes me think of Primavera.

flaming lips – do you realize?

Take down equipment random song that I’ve now decided will end all my sets.
belle and sebastian – sleep the clock around

There you go, a retroactive diary for a wedding playlist. Do with it what you will