This was the description that came with the Two Bright Lights submission: A fantastic wedding in the heart of downtown Seattle at the Pike Place Market. The couple’s main priority was being in the city, and they achieved their goal with being in one of the city’s most beautiful venues overlooking Puget Sound. The bride wore a Maggie Sotterro gown and all attendants carried/wore flowers fresh from the Pike Place Market. They had a fun photobooth and a rockin’ DJ. They first danced to a Rise Against song, which was perfectly suited to their music-loving personalities.

Um how can I say no?! I crossed my fingers that these two wanted to gush all about their wedding…and it worked! Peep this y’all!

We knew right when we got engaged that we wanted music to reflect what we liked and who we were as people, but we also wanted stuff that was accessible for everyone from our teenage cousins to our elderly guests. We were so thrilled that we found City DJ, a local DJ who completely understood what we were going for. Adrian, our DJ, played some of our favorite songs as done by Vitamin String Quartet before the ceremony, then an acoustic version of “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel as I walked down the aisle with my dad. I just love the 7/8 time of that song, and it just fit the light, happy mood we were trying to achieve the whole night. Tyler and I then walked back down the aisle after we were married to “Got to Get You Into My Life” by the Beatles, which was perfect because we kissed, and everyone clapped, and then the horns at the beginning of that song as we exited the room!  It was awesome!

During the cocktail hour we played a lot of easier sounding pop and rock, but songs that weren’t really danceable and wouldn’t fit later. (I wish I could remember specifics, but this is the point of the evening where I was kind of in a cloud!)

First dance: Swing Life Away – Rise Against
This has been “our song” ever since college, and it fit the mood so perfectly. We loved every minute of it.
Father/Daughter: My Wish – Rascal Flats
My dad is a huge country fan, and even though I’m so not, it made him so happy which made me happy.  It was his little piece of the wedding and he put so much thought into picking that song because of the lyrics, I just couldn’t say no.
Cake Cutting: Love You Madly & Short Skirt Long Jacket – Cake
Bouquet Toss: Single Ladies – Beyonce
Garter Throw: Beautiful – Snoop Dogg and Pharell

For the rest of the night, our DJ played a lot of 80s (“Come On Eileen”), 90s old school (“Bust a Move”), and old stuff (some Motown, some classic rock).  It fit together really well, since everyone seemed to be enjoying it.  We even threw in some current pop (“Your Love is My Drug”) as a spur of the moment thing, since we thought we wanted to stay away from that originally. My brother and have both loved Neil Diamond since we were little, so I asked the DJ to play “Sweet Caroline” at one point and we both sang it to the crowd together, which was one of the biggest highlights of the wedding for me! At the end of the night, there was only one song left to play, and it was “Don’t Stop Believing”, of course.

All in all, I loved the music at our wedding mainly because it was cool, but still accessible for enough of our guests to enjoy. We stayed away from some of the super cheesy stuff (no “Celebration”, no “We Are Family”), but embraced other cheesy things that we had a connection to, like Neil Diamond and the Beatles. I was so happy with the way everything came together, and we got a lot of compliments on the variety and quality of the music. We left a lot up to our DJ, because we trusted him, and we knew that he was very capable of reading our crowd and using the guidelines we had given him to put together a killer evening. I don’t think it would have turned out so well had that trust not been there!

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Photos By: La Luz Photography