JAM Duo provided live cello and piano wedding music at The Orchard at Munsley in Herefordshire for Beth and Lee’s summer wedding. We played for their outdoor wedding ceremony before moving into the stretch tent to provide live music for the drinks reception, with the cello and piano carrying out across the gardens and orchard.
There are some wedding venues that feel as though they have been designed by a committee. Every chair is precisely aligned, every hedge has been threatened into submission and somewhere, inevitably, there is a sign explaining where the prosecco wall is.
The Orchard at Munsley is not really like that.
It is gloriously rural, relaxed and unmistakably itself. There are trees, open grass, an orchard, a small church nearby, a stretch tent, plenty of space and the sort of atmosphere that makes you feel a wedding has arrived in the countryside rather than been installed into it.
And on 25 July 2026, it was the setting for Beth and Lee’s wedding.
JAM Duo had been booked to provide live cello and piano music for two parts of the day: the outdoor wedding ceremony and the drinks reception afterwards. The ceremony was held outside, while for the drinks reception we moved into the stretch tent and played out towards the gardens and orchard.
It was a simple plan, which is usually a good sign.
The weather cooperated, the guests were dressed in bright colours, the flowers were full of sunflower yellow, the orchard was heavy with summer fruit and, for once, nobody needed to conduct an elaborate military operation involving umbrellas, waterproof piano covers and hurried discussions about Plan B.
Wedding Musicians at The Orchard at Munsley
The Orchard at Munsley is near Ledbury in Herefordshire and has exactly the sort of setting that works beautifully for couples looking for something informal without sacrificing atmosphere.
The wedding itself was relatively intimate, with around 40 guests, which suited the venue particularly well. There was no sense of people disappearing into enormous rooms or needing binoculars to locate the bride from the back row.
Instead, everything felt close, personal and connected.
Beth and Lee had chosen green and sunflower yellow as their wedding colours, and their guests had been encouraged to wear bright colours while avoiding black and white. The result worked particularly well in the summer surroundings.
Against the greens of the orchard and gardens, the splashes of yellow and brighter clothing made the whole day feel exactly as a July wedding should.
The ceremony began at 2pm, followed by confetti at around 2.30pm, with the drinks reception running from approximately 2.40pm until 4.30pm.
For us, this meant two distinct musical settings with a relatively quick move between them.
Fortunately, this is something JAM Duo does rather a lot.
Live Music for an Outdoor Wedding Ceremony
Outdoor wedding ceremonies are wonderful when the setting is right.
They are also capable of introducing certain complications.
Wind, heat, uneven ground, unexpected tractors, distant lawnmowers, enthusiastic birds and the occasional guest who decides to reposition a chair in front of a speaker can all become part of the equation.
But when everything comes together, outdoor ceremony music can feel particularly special.
At The Orchard at Munsley, the ceremony had that lovely combination of being open-air while still feeling intimate. We set up close enough to the ceremony area for the music to feel part of the proceedings rather than something happening in a distant field.
As always, all the music was played live on cello and piano.
No backing tracks, no pre-recorded accompaniment and no laptop quietly doing most of the work while two people stand nearby pretending to look musical.
Just the two of us playing.
Pre-Ceremony Music for Beth and Lee
Beth and Lee had chosen a particularly strong selection of music for the period before the ceremony.
This included I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi, Sonnet by The Verve, Everglow by Coldplay, Nuvole Bianche by Einaudi and Thinking of a Place by The War on Drugs.
It was a nicely varied selection.
Einaudi works extremely well before a wedding ceremony because the music has enough shape and atmosphere to feel significant without demanding that everybody immediately stop talking and stare solemnly at the nearest tree.
Coldplay, The Verve and The War on Drugs then added a more personal contemporary feel.
Pre-ceremony music is sometimes treated as background filler, but we have never really viewed it that way.
It is the point at which guests arrive, find their seats and gradually realise that the wedding is actually about to happen. The music helps establish the atmosphere before anyone has walked down the aisle.
That makes the choices important.
Walking Down the Aisle to Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós
For Beth’s entrance, the choice was Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós.
This is exactly the sort of piece that works particularly well when adapted for cello and piano.
The original has an enormous sense of movement and emotional lift, but stripped back to two live instruments it becomes rather more intimate. You retain the excitement without needing the entire Icelandic musical population positioned behind the flower arch.
It also gave the ceremony a distinctive identity.
There is nothing wrong with traditional wedding music. There is a reason pieces such as Canon in D have survived rather longer than most things on Spotify.
But couples increasingly choose music that actually means something to them, and that is where live arrangements become particularly valuable.
A piece does not need to have been written for a wedding in order to work beautifully at one.
Sometimes it simply needs the right arrangement, the right moment and the right setting.
Wedding Exit Music with Coldplay
After the ceremony, Beth and Lee chose Feels Like I’m Falling in Love by Coldplay for their exit.
Wedding exit music needs to do something quite different from bridal entrance music.
The entrance is about anticipation.
The exit is about release.
The formal part is over, the marriage has happened, everyone can stop worrying about whether they have remembered the rings and somebody is usually already thinking about where the drinks are.
A Coldplay song worked perfectly for that transition.
And from there, the day moved immediately into confetti and the drinks reception.
Moving from the Ceremony to the Stretch Tent
One of the practical advantages of using a professional wedding duo is that the music can move with the day.
For the drinks reception, we relocated from the ceremony area into the stretch tent.
The important point here was that although we were under cover, the music was intended to carry out into the gardens and orchard.
That gave us a useful balance.
We had shade and protection for the instruments and equipment, while guests could still hear the music outside as they moved around the venue.
This type of arrangement often works extremely well for summer weddings.
You do not necessarily need the musicians standing directly in the middle of the lawn, slowly roasting under the afternoon sun like a pair of unusually formal garden ornaments.
What matters is positioning.
With the right location and amplification, we can play from a sheltered point while allowing the music to spread naturally across the reception space.
Live Music for a Drinks Reception in the Orchard
Drinks receptions are one of our favourite parts of a wedding day to play.
The ceremony has a clear structure.
The drinks reception does not.
Guests move around, conversations start, photographs happen, drinks appear, canapés circulate and eventually someone becomes surprisingly competitive about a lawn game.
The music needs to respond to that.
It should be present enough to create atmosphere without dominating every conversation.
That is particularly important at an intimate wedding of around 40 guests.
The aim is not to make people shout at one another over amplified music.
The aim is to make the whole space feel alive.
At Beth and Lee’s wedding, the stretch tent opened out towards the gardens and orchard, which meant our music naturally became part of the wider outdoor setting.
And the repertoire they had chosen was excellent.
Coldplay, Lana Del Rey, Elbow and The Verve on Cello and Piano
Beth and Lee’s drinks reception music included I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie, A Million Dreams, Born to Die by Lana Del Rey, Yellow by Coldplay, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, Here Comes the Sun, Bedshaped by Keane, Paradise by Coldplay and One Day Like This by Elbow.
There was also Dance Me to the End of Love, The Scientist, Young and Beautiful, A Sky Full of Stars, Love of My Life, Stand By Me, Can’t Help Falling in Love, Tale as Old as Time, Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, What a Wonderful Worldand Bitter Sweet Symphony.
It is the sort of list that makes arranging wedding music interesting.
There are enormous stadium songs, intimate ballads, film music, alternative rock, classic standards and Lana Del Rey, who occupies a musical category largely of her own.
All of them can work on cello and piano if treated properly.
That is the crucial bit.
Playing a pop song on two acoustic-style instruments is not simply a matter of finding the chords and hoping for the best. You have to decide which musical elements matter, where the melody sits, how to create momentum and how to make the arrangement sound complete without pretending there are six other musicians hiding behind a tree.
Lana Del Rey, But Only When the Couple Were There
Beth had made one very specific request.
The Lana Del Rey songs should be played when she and Lee were actually present.
This is eminently sensible.
Couples often spend a surprising amount of their drinks reception being taken away for photographs, greeting relatives, talking to suppliers or being temporarily kidnapped by someone with a camera.
There is therefore little point playing somebody’s favourite song magnificently while they are 300 yards away standing in a field.
So we kept an eye on proceedings and made sure the Lana Del Rey selections appeared at the right time.
It is a small detail, but these small details matter.
Wedding music should not feel like a playlist being mechanically worked through from top to bottom.
It should respond to the day.
A Wedding Run by Georgina Rose Events
The wedding was being coordinated by our friend Georgie Mitchell of Georgina Rose Events.
That immediately made the day particularly enjoyable from our perspective because we knew the wedding was in very capable hands.
We had also played for Georgie’s own wedding, so it was lovely to find ourselves working together again, albeit this time with her firmly in professional wedding-planner mode.
There is also a slightly longer history between Georgie and Anne-Marie, as Anne-Marie had taught her music some years earlier.
We will leave that particular timeline alone, largely because discussing how many years have passed since someone was your pupil is an extremely efficient way of making everybody involved feel older.
What mattered on the day was that Georgie knew the venue, understood the timings and made the transitions between different parts of the wedding extremely straightforward.
For musicians, that makes a significant difference.
Why Wedding Coordination Matters for Live Musicians
Good wedding coordination is not simply about making sure the flowers arrive and somebody remembers where the cake is.
For live musicians, timing and communication are essential.
If the ceremony moves by ten minutes, we need to know.
If confetti is happening before guests move to drinks, we need to know.
If photographs mean the couple will be away for part of the drinks reception, that affects how we approach requested music.
This is one of the reasons we always work closely with wedding planners, coordinators and venue teams.
A successful wedding rarely happens because everybody independently does their own job while avoiding eye contact.
It happens because the suppliers communicate.
At Beth and Lee’s wedding, that worked exactly as it should.
Summer Wedding Music in Herefordshire
Herefordshire is wonderfully suited to outdoor weddings.
There are orchards, fields, historic buildings and a sense of space that can be surprisingly difficult to find in more conventional hotel wedding settings.
The Orchard at Munsley made particularly good use of that landscape.
The stretch tent, rustic seating, orchard and surrounding countryside created a relaxed atmosphere without needing excessive decoration.
The venue already had character.
That is generally preferable to trying to manufacture character with 14 illuminated letters and an aggressively decorated prosecco van.
For live wedding musicians, spaces like this also create opportunities to use music differently.
Rather than being confined to a corner of a function room, we can position the cello and piano so the sound becomes part of the whole environment.
Guests might be standing under the tent, walking through the gardens or enjoying drinks outside, but the music still connects those spaces.
Choosing Music for an Outdoor Wedding
Beth and Lee’s choices are also a good example of why couples should not feel restricted when planning wedding music.
Your ceremony does not have to contain only classical music.
Your drinks reception does not have to contain only jazz standards.
And your favourite song does not need to have the word “wedding” anywhere near it.
The key is choosing music that suits you.
Our role is then to make those choices work on cello and piano.
At this wedding, Sigur Rós, Coldplay, Einaudi, The Verve, Lana Del Rey, Leonard Cohen, Queen and Elbow all occupied the same musical afternoon perfectly happily.
Nobody objected.
Not even the apples.
Live Cello and Piano for Herefordshire Weddings
For couples looking for wedding musicians in Herefordshire, an outdoor ceremony followed by live music during the drinks reception can work particularly well.
The ceremony music provides the emotional framework for the formal part of the day, while the drinks reception allows a much broader repertoire.
It also means the atmosphere continues naturally after the ceremony rather than suddenly switching from live music to silence or a generic playlist.
At JAM Duo, we regularly move between different locations during a wedding day and can adapt our setup to suit outdoor ceremonies, terraces, gardens, marquees, barns, hotels and private venues.
Every note is performed live by the same two musicians: Anne-Marie on cello and Jules on piano.
A Gloriously Relaxed Wedding at The Orchard at Munsley
Beth and Lee’s wedding was not enormous, overcomplicated or filled with unnecessary ceremony.
It did not need to be.
There were around 40 guests, a beautiful rural setting, an outdoor ceremony, a stretch tent, an orchard, summer sunshine and a carefully chosen collection of music.
It was relaxed without feeling casual and personal without becoming overly elaborate.
And that is often the sweet spot.
We began with Einaudi, Coldplay and The Verve as guests arrived, played Hoppípolla as Beth entered, sent the newly married couple away to Coldplay and then moved into the tent for nearly two hours of live music drifting across the gardens.
There were sunflowers.
There were apples.
There was Lana Del Rey, but only when Beth and Lee were present.
And there was no rain.
For a British outdoor wedding, frankly, that is bordering on showing off.
Thank you to Beth and Lee for choosing JAM Duo to provide the music for their wedding at The Orchard at Munsley, and to Georgie Mitchell of Georgina Rose Events for making the day such a pleasure to be part of.
Planning a wedding at The Orchard at Munsley or elsewhere in Herefordshire? JAM Duo provides live cello and piano music for outdoor wedding ceremonies, drinks receptions and wedding breakfasts throughout Herefordshire and across the UK. Explore our repertoire or get in touch to discuss the music for your wedding day.
