What's on your soundtrack?

Here at the New Zealand Weddings office, we’ve been discussing how selecting the songs for your wedding reception can be almost as tricky as creating your seating plan.

Do you keep Gran and Gramps happily foxtrotting around the dance floor, or do you ensure your friends are carving up all night long by keeping the top-40 hits spinning?

The simple answer is to remember that you can’t please everyone, so it’s best to use music as another element to create the atmosphere you want to achieve.

If you’re envisaging a classy, sophisticated reception, choose classic songs with everlasting appeal – young and old alike will be captivated by the dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.

And you can easily modernise the genre by keeping this millennium’s artists such as Duffy and Michael Bublé (his hit song Sway is bound to get everyone in a spin) on high rotation.

Some couples would prefer their reception to be more about letting their hair down.

If this sounds like you, mix the latest pop hits (think Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling) with old-school beats that everyone knows, such as the Grease Megamix.

After all, a wedding reception is one of the few occasions where it’s perfectly acceptable to break it down to the Macarena or form a conga line. You’d be surprised which tracks tickle some people’s footwork fancies.

One of our staffers witnessed the miracle of her new father-in-law voluntarily stepping onto the floor for the first time when Guns N’ Roses’ Paradise City blared from the speakers.

And while The Nutbush is the epitome of cheesiness, it’s so simple that even people with two left feet can manage it.

After much debate among the team about the best tunes to play, we decided to ask someone who lives and breathes music and enlisted Goldenhorse singer Kirsten Morrell, who recently embarked on a new solo career, to share the 10 songs she most loves to hear at a wedding.

Here’s what she chose:

1. Come on Eileen – Dexy’s Midnight Runners
2. Murder on the Dancefloor – Sophie Ellis-Bextor
3. Blue Monday – New Order
4. The Lovecats – The Cure
5. Violently Happy – Bjork
6. Brimful of Asha – Cornershop
7. Starman – David Bowie
8. Billy Jack – Curtis Mayfield
9. I Want to Take You Higher – Sly & the Family Stone
10. Blame it on the Boogie – The Jackson 5

Keep an eye out for our music special in the summer 2010 issue of New Zealand Weddings.

What song do you love to hear at a wedding? Leave your comments below and you could inspire another bride’s ultimate playlist.