There are certain days when an outdoor wedding seems like an excellent idea.
The sun is shining, the gardens look magnificent, the flowers are behaving themselves and the British weather has, for reasons nobody entirely understands, decided not to unleash a thunderstorm at precisely the moment the bride reaches the end of the aisle.
Shannon and Charlie’s wedding at Moxhull Hall on 24 July 2026 was one of those days.
Set amongst beautiful gardens near Sutton Coldfield, Moxhull Hall provided a wonderful setting for a summer wedding, and on this particular afternoon everything could take place outside exactly as planned.
For JAM Duo, this meant providing live cello and piano music for Shannon and Charlie’s outdoor wedding ceremony before moving across to the lawns for their drinks reception.
It also meant bringing out our gloss black piano shell and new Yamaha electric cello.
Because obviously taking a piano into a garden is an entirely sensible thing to do.
And, fortunately, we do it rather a lot.
A Summer Wedding at Moxhull Hall
Moxhull Hall is one of those wedding venues where the gardens aren’t merely something you walk through between the car park and reception.
They are very much part of the occasion.
The outdoor ceremony space sits amongst mature trees and planting, with a wooden aisle leading through rows of white chairs towards a charming covered ceremony structure.
For Shannon and Charlie’s wedding this had been dressed beautifully with flowers in soft whites and peach tones, complementing their chosen wedding colours of sage green and peach.
With 58 guests, it was also exactly the right sort of size.
There’s an important distinction here.
An intimate wedding should feel intimate.
It should not feel as though somebody ordered 300 chairs and then forgot to invite 242 people.
At Moxhull Hall, the ceremony space works particularly well for this sort of wedding, creating a sense that everyone is genuinely gathered around the couple rather than observing proceedings from another postcode.
Charlie and the groomsmen wore beige suits, while the sage green of the bridesmaids worked beautifully against the surrounding gardens.
And, importantly for an outdoor ceremony in July, the sun was very much present.
Outdoor Wedding Ceremony Music at Moxhull Hall
We had set up at the rear of the ceremony area with our gloss black piano shell and electric cello.
The piano shell gives the appearance of a small grand piano while containing our Nord stage piano inside. It is particularly effective for outdoor weddings because it looks significantly more elegant in photographs than simply putting a keyboard on a stand.
There is, after all, a time and a place for exposed metal keyboard stands.
A beautifully dressed wedding ceremony surrounded by flowers generally isn’t it.
Alongside the piano, Anne-Marie was using our new Yamaha electric cello, giving us a beautifully clear cello sound which could be amplified evenly across the outdoor ceremony area.
This is one of the reasons we increasingly enjoy using electric cello and piano for outdoor weddings.
An acoustic cello is perfectly capable of producing a lovely sound outside, but gardens have a troublesome tendency not to possess walls or ceilings. Sound therefore wanders off into the shrubbery where it is enjoyed enormously by a hydrangea but not necessarily heard by the person sitting four rows back.
Amplification allows us to keep the music at a natural, elegant volume while making sure it carries properly.
Music Before the Wedding Ceremony
As Shannon and Charlie’s guests arrived and took their seats, we played a selection of music they had chosen especially for the occasion.
Their pre-ceremony choices included:
- Love Story – Taylor Swift
- Anyone – Justin Bieber
- You Are The Reason – Calum Scott
- A Thousand Years – Christina Perri
- Can’t Help Falling in Love – Elvis Presley
It was a lovely mixture of contemporary songs and modern wedding favourites, and exactly the sort of repertoire which works well for cello and piano.
This part of the wedding day is sometimes overlooked when couples are planning their ceremony music.
But guest arrival music does something rather important.
It changes the atmosphere.
Without music, people arrive, find a chair and begin discussing traffic, hotels and whichever relative has managed to take the wrong turning despite possessing a telephone containing three different satellite navigation apps.
Live music immediately tells everyone that the wedding has started.
The occasion has begun.
And at Moxhull Hall, with guests arriving through the gardens on a warm July afternoon, cello and piano fitted the setting perfectly.
Taylor Swift for the Bridal Entrance
Shannon had chosen Taylor Swift for both parts of the bridal entrance.
First came the bridesmaids to Enchanted.
There were three bridesmaids, with the first walking alongside her husband and two very young children.
And this is precisely why we always play bridal entrance music live.
Young children have never, in the entire history of weddings, studied a stopwatch before walking down an aisle.
Nor should they.
They might walk slowly. They might suddenly accelerate. They may pause. They may notice something interesting on the floor. They may decide that halfway down the aisle is an excellent place to reconsider the entire project.
With live musicians, none of this matters.
We simply follow what is happening.
The music can be extended, shortened or brought naturally to a conclusion once everyone is in position.
There is no awkward fade-out, no frantic search for the pause button and no requirement for a bridesmaid to achieve the aisle speed specified by Spotify.
Then came Shannon.
For her bridal entrance she had chosen Lover by Taylor Swift, a song which works particularly beautifully for cello and piano.
We adjusted the arrangement live so the music fitted Shannon’s walk down the aisle, bringing it naturally to its conclusion as she reached Charlie.
That flexibility is one of the great advantages of having live wedding musicians for your ceremony.
The music follows the wedding.
The wedding does not have to follow the recording.
Live Music During the Wedding Ceremony
Once Shannon had joined Charlie at the front of the ceremony area, the service could begin.
Surrounded by the gardens, flowers and their family and friends, this was exactly what an outdoor summer wedding should look like.
Even nature had apparently read the booking form.
A few butterflies were drifting around the magnificent gardens during the afternoon, presumably having discovered that Moxhull Hall provides considerably better surroundings than whatever patch of nettles they had been considering previously.
For the signing of the register, Shannon and Charlie had selected three very different songs:
- Your Song – Elton John
- Ordinary – Alex Warren
- I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing – Aerosmith
And this is something we particularly enjoy about modern wedding ceremonies.
There really aren’t any rules about what your wedding music has to be anymore.
Aerosmith can sit perfectly happily alongside Elton John. Taylor Swift can lead into Fleetwood Mac.
If a song means something to you, there is usually a way of making it work beautifully for cello and piano.
Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac for the Wedding Exit
With the formalities complete and Shannon and Charlie now officially married, there was just one piece remaining.
Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac.
An excellent choice for a wedding exit because it has precisely the right sort of energy.
The ceremony entrance is about anticipation.
The signing music fills a quieter moment.
But the exit music needs to say: Right. That’s done. We’re married. Where’s the Champagne?
Everywhere does this rather well.
As Shannon and Charlie made their way back up the aisle as newlyweds, we launched into Fleetwood Mac and the atmosphere immediately changed from ceremony to celebration.
And then came the next challenge.
Moving a cello and a piano across a garden.
Moving the Music to the Moxhull Hall Lawns
One of the advantages of the layout at Moxhull Hall is that the outdoor ceremony area and drinks reception spaces are close enough that moving between them is relatively straightforward.
This matters more than you might imagine.
We perform at weddings all over the country, and occasionally the phrase “the drinks reception is just nearby” turns out to mean crossing two courtyards, negotiating a gravel drive, passing through an orangery, climbing three steps, going through a kitchen and emerging somewhere near Hereford.
At Moxhull Hall, things were rather more civilised.
Once the ceremony had finished, guests began moving towards the lawns and terrace while we relocated the instruments for the drinks reception.
Soon the gloss black piano shell and electric cello were ready again, and we could continue with the next part of Shannon and Charlie’s wedding.
Live Music for a Drinks Reception at Moxhull Hall
Shannon and Charlie had given us a wonderfully simple instruction for their drinks reception:
Anything from the 1990s to the present day that people would know.
Perfect.
This is where we can have some fun.
The role of live music during a drinks reception is completely different from its role during the ceremony.
During the ceremony, every musical choice corresponds to a specific moment.
During the drinks reception, the music becomes part of the atmosphere.
Guests are talking, photographs are being taken, drinks are circulating and people who last saw each other at another wedding three years ago are trying to remember one another’s names without making it obvious.
The music needs to sit across all of this.
Not disappear completely into the background, but equally not turn the afternoon into a concert at which nobody has been provided with a ticket.
With cello and piano we can move easily between styles: Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Oasis, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Adele, The Killers, Beyoncé and countless other familiar songs can all find their way into the set.
And because we play everything live, we can judge the mood as we go.
Why Cello and Piano Work So Well for a Drinks Reception
Cello and piano are an unusually versatile combination.
We may be biased here.
But we’re also right.
The cello can provide warmth and melody without becoming intrusive, while the piano gives us the harmonic and rhythmic foundation needed to transform songs from across several decades into instrumental arrangements.
It means something originally recorded with guitars, drums and several million pounds’ worth of production equipment can suddenly work rather well with two musicians sitting in a garden in Sutton Coldfield.
Our aim during a drinks reception is always for guests to recognise the songs.
There is a particular reaction we see all the time: somebody is halfway through a conversation, suddenly realises what we are playing, turns towards us and says to the person next to them, “Is that…?”
Yes.
It is.
And that, for us, is part of the fun.
The Gloss Black Piano Shell for a Moxhull Hall Wedding
For Shannon and Charlie’s wedding we had also been asked to bring our gloss black piano shell.
Visually it worked wonderfully against the greenery of Moxhull Hall’s gardens.
Although the actual instrument inside is our Nord stage piano, the shell creates the appearance of a grand piano and gives our setup a much more elegant presence at a wedding.
This is particularly important when musicians are going to appear in the background of wedding photographs.
Nobody spends months choosing flowers, dresses, suits, table decorations and a magnificent country-house wedding venue only to think: Do you know what would really finish this? A black X-frame keyboard stand.
The piano shell makes the instrument part of the setting.
Combined with Anne-Marie’s electric cello, it also gives us a setup that looks elegant while being practical enough to move between different parts of a wedding day.
Wedding Musicians for Moxhull Hall and the West Midlands
Shannon and Charlie’s wedding was a wonderful example of how live music can flow through different parts of a wedding without taking over.
From guests arriving for the ceremony, through the bridal entrance and signing of the register, to the celebratory exit and relaxed drinks reception on the lawns, the music had a different purpose at every stage.
That is something we believe strongly at JAM Duo.
Wedding music should never feel like a separate performance which has been bolted onto the day.
It should belong to what is happening.
For an outdoor ceremony it can create atmosphere before the bride arrives, accompany the significant moments and then immediately lift the mood as the couple leave together.
At the drinks reception it becomes more relaxed: familiar music floating across the gardens while everyone talks, drinks and enjoys the afternoon.
And when the surroundings are as lovely as the gardens at Moxhull Hall, you really don’t need to complicate matters.
Sunshine.
A beautiful garden.
Friends and family.
A newly married couple.
Cello and piano.
And the occasional butterfly wandering past without having submitted a client form.
Sometimes that is really all you need.
Thank You Shannon and Charlie
We would like to finish by saying a huge thank you to Shannon and Charlie for choosing JAM Duo to provide the live music for their wedding at Moxhull Hall.
It was an absolute pleasure to be part of their day and to play for both their outdoor ceremony and drinks reception.
From Taylor Swift accompanying the bridal party and Shannon down the aisle to Fleetwood Mac announcing the start of married life, followed by an afternoon of familiar songs on the lawns, their choices fitted the occasion beautifully.
Moxhull Hall looked magnificent in the July sunshine, the gardens provided a fabulous backdrop and everything came together for a thoroughly lovely summer wedding.
Congratulations, Shannon and Charlie.
And thank you for giving us an excellent excuse to put a piano in another garden.
