Band vs. DJ vs. iPod – a wedding music dilemma

Last week’s blog on wedding music got me thinking, which rarely happens, so here are my thoughts…

I’ve always dreamed of going balls to the wall and hiring not just a local band or a cover band for my wedding, but a quasi-popular touring band. You know, like in the movies when Rodney Dangerfield hired Oingo Boingo to play his college dorm party in Back to School. Or The Mighty Mighty Bosstones playing the school dance in Clueless.

Yeah, I know that’s reaching a bit, but I would surmise that, if you wanted to splurge (say, for $8-10K or so)  you could get some indie band you really like that hasn’t hit it big yet, isn’t above playing a very hip wedding and happens to be on tour during your wedding. Or you could even hire a fairly well-reknown DJ (not the local guy whose old standard are the funky chicken dance and the hokey pokey), as all they need for your wedding is a box of records and two turntables (sans microphone).

But still, when it comes to the music at your wedding, you really don’t want to compromise, because that’s probably the one thing that will make or break your reception. Look at it this way, unless you’re shooting for a classy, sophisticated, uber-civilized reception (in which case, you should probably ignore everything I say … in fact, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog) where people raise their pinkies to drink their apertifs, the music will make the difference between everyone leaving by 9 as opposed to having the cleaning crew pushing people out with brooms around 2 am … in which case, the party restarts at a nearby bar with a great jukebox.

However, we are in a bit of a pickle when it comes to the music at our wedding. We’re having a destination wedding in Puerto Vallarta at this beautiful beach location that was the old estate of the filmmaker John Huston (you know the movie the Night of the Iguana … Richard Burton, Ava Gardner … well, that place), and although it’s an awesome location, I have no idea as to the quality of the musical choices they offer. The people at the resort are great, but I’m just not that trusting a person when a stranger tells me that their DJs are great. I mean, what if I go with their advice only to find out that the people at the resort think Celine Dion is a goddess and swoon to the musical stylings of Michael Bolton. I think the pain of a jellyfish sting would be comparable to the DJ that plays cheese like this.

So instead of rolling the dice and losing big, we’ve decided to go the way of the iPod. It’s not nearly as spontaneous as the band or DJ route, but you know what you’re getting, and you can prepare multiple playlists for whatever mood people are in. Plus you can ask some of your guests to come up with their own playlists and do a little playlist mashup. I think that would be very cool. Lucky for us, our wedding venue is set up for the iPod thing, so we’re going to do some major crate diving this weekend and start putting together some playlists. Wish us luck…