There are weddings where the brief is essentially “white flowers, champagne, something by Ed Sheeran and please don’t frighten Granny.” And then there are weddings where the pre-ceremony music includes Hedwig’s Theme, Concerning Hobbits and Enya, the drinks reception wanders through Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Outlander, Twilight, Star Warsand Beetlejuice, and somewhere in the bridal procession two dogs are involved.

Melissa and Mathew’s wedding at The Inn on the Lake on 6 September was very definitely the second sort.

And thank goodness for that.

We travelled to Glenridding on the shores of Ullswater to provide live cello and piano music for their ceremony and drinks reception. With just 54 guests, it was a wonderfully intimate wedding, but there was absolutely nothing small about the amount of personality that Melissa and Mathew had put into it. From their extraordinary outfits to a carefully chosen soundtrack drawn from some of the greatest film and television scores of the past few decades, this was a wedding which knew precisely what it wanted to be.

It was individual, imaginative and enormous fun to play.

A Wedding at The Inn on the Lake

The Inn on the Lake sits in Glenridding beside Ullswater, which means it has already won quite substantially before anybody arrives with flowers, dresses or a string quartet. The Lake District does scenery on a scale which makes most other places look as though they simply haven’t been trying hard enough.

For weddings, that makes for a rather special setting. There is water, mountains, landscaped grounds and the feeling that you have properly escaped somewhere rather than simply driven twenty minutes from a ring road and turned left at a branch of Screwfix.

Melissa and Mathew had planned their ceremony for 1pm, with guests arriving from 12.30 and the drinks reception running afterwards until 3pm. Their colour scheme was silver with shades of blue and purple, fitting perfectly with the fantasy theme running through the day.

The wedding party wore conventional formal dress, but Melissa and Mathew themselves had chosen non-traditional outfits.

And they looked fantastic.

One of the pleasures of seeing so many weddings is that every so often a couple decides not to concern themselves too much with what a wedding is supposedly meant to look like and instead creates something that actually represents them. Melissa and Mathew did exactly that. Their outfits were striking, distinctive and entirely appropriate for the fantasy atmosphere they had created around the day.

It felt personal rather than themed for the sake of being themed, which is an important distinction.

Nobody wants to feel they have accidentally wandered into the gift shop at Warner Bros Studios.

Setting the Scene with Film Music

We started with music as guests arrived.

Quite often this part of a wedding features gentle contemporary songs or classical favourites. Melissa and Mathew had other ideas.

We opened their musical world with John Williams’ Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. There are few pieces which establish an atmosphere quite so quickly. You barely need the first few notes before everybody knows where they are.

From Hogwarts we went to Middle-earth with Howard Shore’s Concerning Hobbits, followed by May It Be, written by Enya and Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

This is particularly lovely music for cello and piano. Film scores often work beautifully with our combination because so much of the emotional weight is already carried by melody and harmony. Strip away the enormous orchestra, percussion department and approximately seventeen French horns and you are left with music that can sound surprisingly intimate.

That was followed by Turning Page by Sleeping At Last, associated with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, before another Enya choice, Caribbean Blue.

So within the first half hour we had visited Hogwarts, Middle-earth and the Twilight universe.

Not bad going before lunch.

A Bridal Party Featuring Two Dogs

The procession itself was also rather more interesting than most.

There were two flower girls, followed by four bridesmaids, then a ring bearer accompanied by two dogs, before Melissa made her entrance with her mother.

Wedding musicians learn fairly quickly that children and animals introduce a certain amount of flexibility into the concept of timing. Adults tend to understand that they are supposed to walk steadily from one end of an aisle to the other. A small child may decide instead to stop completely, wave at Uncle Roger and then return in the direction from which they came.

A dog has even fewer concerns about the running order.

Fortunately, this is exactly why live music works so well for a wedding entrance. We are not pressing play on a fixed track and desperately hoping everybody reaches the front before Spotify moves on to the next song. We can extend, repeat, slow things slightly or move forward as required, following the procession as it actually happens.

For Melissa’s entrance, she had chosen Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love.

It remains one of the most beautiful wedding entrance songs we play. There is something timeless about it, and on cello and piano the melody has room to breathe. Against a wedding filled with fantasy music and cinematic references, it also provided a lovely moment of simplicity for Melissa’s arrival.

Signing Music with Another Twist

During the signing of the register, the choices went straight back to the world Melissa and Mathew had created.

First was Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron & Wine, another song strongly associated with Twilight. Then came Enya’s Aníron, from The Lord of the Rings, before Accidentally in Love by Counting Crows.

Melissa and Mathew had specifically asked for a slower treatment of Accidentally in Love, similar in spirit to the Kid Rain version.

This is precisely the sort of thing we enjoy doing.

A song does not have to remain imprisoned in its original arrangement simply because that is how it appeared on the record. With just cello and piano, we can change its character completely. Something bright and punchy can become gentle and romantic without losing the melody which makes it instantly recognisable.

The register signed and the formalities complete, however, gentleness was finished.

For their exit, Melissa and Mathew chose I Can’t Help Myself by the Four Tops.

An excellent decision.

There are moments for quiet reflection, and then there are moments when you have just got married and need to leave the room accompanied by Motown.

From Harry Potter to Outlander

The drinks reception then gave us an opportunity to dig properly into Melissa and Mathew’s rather magnificent playlist.

Their highest priority was Neville’s Waltz by John Williams from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, followed by Bear McCreary’s Dance of the Druids from Outlander and Howard Shore’s Evenstar.

We then returned to Hogwarts for Double Trouble, before moving into Wildest Dreams in the Duomo arrangement associated with Bridgerton.

And this was only the beginning.

There was The Skye Boat Song from Outlander, Lothlórien from The Fellowship of the Ring, Patrick Swayze’s She’s Like the Wind, Let Me Sign by Robert Pattinson, the Bridgerton treatment of Madonna’s Material Girl and Bella’s Lullabyfrom Twilight.

This was not so much a wedding playlist as a tour through several fictional universes.

And it was brilliant.

A Drinks Reception Playlist Unlike Most Others

The second half of the list became even more varied.

James Newton Howard’s Fairy Dance from Peter Pan appeared alongside Debussy’s Clair de Lune. We had Howard Shore’s Old Friends from The Hobbit, John Williams’ Cantina Band from Star Wars, Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation and Danny Elfman’s wonderfully eccentric main title from Beetlejuice.

There was also John Williams’ Reunion of Friends from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years and finally Misty Mountains from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

For two musicians who spend a large percentage of the year playing wedding favourites, this was enormous fun.

We love Canon in D. We genuinely do. But there is something wonderfully refreshing about looking down at the music during a drinks reception and discovering that the next piece is from Beetlejuice.

That doesn’t happen every Saturday.

Why Film Music Works So Well at Weddings

There is actually a serious point underneath all this.

Film and television music can be extraordinarily effective at weddings because people often have a much deeper emotional connection with it than they realise. A melody may remind them of a particular story, character or moment from a film they have loved for years.

And much of this music is genuinely superb.

John Williams, Howard Shore, Bear McCreary, Danny Elfman and James Newton Howard are not simply people who put noises behind actors. Their scores contain beautifully constructed melodies and harmonies which often translate exceptionally well to live instruments.

On cello and piano, pieces such as Evenstar, Concerning Hobbits, Bella’s Lullaby and The Skye Boat Song can sound particularly effective because the instrumentation brings the melody right to the front.

The result is atmospheric without being intrusive, which is precisely what music during a drinks reception should be.

A Wedding Which Felt Completely Personal

What we particularly enjoyed about Melissa and Mathew’s wedding was that the music, colours, clothing and overall style all belonged together.

It wasn’t simply a normal wedding with Harry Potter added on top.

Their fantasy theme ran naturally through the day, but it never became theatrical or forced. The elegant surroundings of The Inn on the Lake, the silver, blues and purples, their fabulous non-traditional outfits and the cinematic soundtrack all complemented one another.

That is usually when themed weddings work best.

The theme provides inspiration rather than becoming an instruction manual.

Melissa and Mathew still had all the things that matter most: friends and family around them, a lovely ceremony, drinks afterwards and plenty of time simply to enjoy being newly married. They had just chosen to accompany it with Middle-earth rather than Ed Sheeran.

Quite right too.

Thank You, Melissa and Mathew

A huge thank you to Melissa and Mathew for inviting JAM Duo to be part of their wedding at The Inn on the Lake.

We loved playing for you both, and your music choices were some of the most interesting and enjoyable we have been given this year. Any wedding which allows us to travel musically from Elvis Presley to Howard Shore, John Williams, Enya, Debussy, Madonna, Danny Elfman and the Four Tops in the space of a couple of hours is doing something very right.

And we must mention those outfits again. You both looked absolutely fantastic. Individual, stylish and completely in keeping with the wedding you had created.

It was a genuine pleasure to provide the cello and piano music for your ceremony and drinks reception, and we hope the soundtrack helped make a wonderfully distinctive wedding day on Ullswater even more memorable.

Congratulations, Melissa and Mathew — and thank you for allowing us to spend an afternoon wandering around Hogwarts, Middle-earth, the Scottish Highlands and a galaxy far, far away without ever having to leave the Lake District.

remove any talk of the dogs, i think they werent in fact there in the end

Absolutely — I’d remove every reference to the dogs rather than risk including something that didn’t actually happen.

The opening should now read:

There are weddings where the brief is essentially “white flowers, champagne, something by Ed Sheeran and please don’t frighten Granny.” And then there are weddings where the pre-ceremony music includes Hedwig’s Theme, Concerning Hobbits and Enya, the drinks reception wanders through Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Outlander, Twilight, Star Wars and Beetlejuice, and the bride and groom arrive in spectacular non-traditional outfits.

Melissa and Mathew’s wedding at The Inn on the Lake on 6 September was very definitely the second sort.

And thank goodness for that.

Then replace the entire “A Bridal Party Featuring Two Dogs” section with:

The Wedding Procession

The bridal procession began with two flower girls, followed by four bridesmaids and the ring bearer, before Melissa made her entrance accompanied by her mother.

For Melissa’s entrance, she had chosen Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love. It remains one of the most beautiful wedding entrance songs we play. There is something timeless about it, and on cello and piano the melody has plenty of space to breathe.

Because everything we play is completely live, we can shape an entrance around the people actually walking rather than expecting everybody to keep pace with a fixed recording. Flower girls in particular quite reasonably regard suggested walking speeds as merely advisory, so being able to extend or gently repeat part of the music makes the whole entrance feel considerably more natural.

Against a wedding filled with fantasy music and cinematic references, Can’t Help Falling in Love also provided a wonderfully simple and romantic moment for Melissa’s arrival.

Everything else in the article can remain exactly as it is. That actually improves it slightly too — the focus stays on Melissa and Mathew, their outfits, the fantasy theme and that superbly bonkers soundtrack, rather than on something which may not have happened.

can you re write it in full please

Fantasy Wedding Music at The Inn on the Lake – Melissa & Mathew

There are weddings where the brief is essentially “white flowers, champagne, something by Ed Sheeran and please don’t frighten Granny.” And then there are weddings where the pre-ceremony music includes Hedwig’s Theme, Concerning Hobbits and Enya, the drinks reception wanders through Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Outlander, Twilight, Star Warsand Beetlejuice, and the bride and groom arrive in spectacular non-traditional outfits.

Melissa and Mathew’s wedding at The Inn on the Lake on 6 September was very definitely the second sort.

And thank goodness for that.

We travelled to Glenridding on the shores of Ullswater to provide live cello and piano music for their ceremony and drinks reception. With just 54 guests, it was a wonderfully intimate wedding, but there was absolutely nothing small about the amount of personality Melissa and Mathew had put into it. From their extraordinary outfits to a carefully chosen soundtrack drawn from some of the greatest film and television scores of the past few decades, this was a wedding which knew precisely what it wanted to be.

It was individual, imaginative and enormous fun to play.

A Wedding at The Inn on the Lake

The Inn on the Lake sits in Glenridding beside Ullswater, which means it has already won quite substantially before anybody arrives with flowers, dresses or musicians. The Lake District does scenery on a scale which makes most other places look as though they simply haven’t been trying hard enough.

For weddings, that makes for a rather special setting. There is water, mountains, landscaped grounds and the feeling that you have properly escaped somewhere rather than simply driven twenty minutes from a ring road and turned left at a branch of Screwfix.

Melissa and Mathew had planned their ceremony for 1pm, with guests arriving from 12.30 and the drinks reception running afterwards until 3pm. Their colour scheme was silver with shades of blue and purple, fitting perfectly with the fantasy theme running through the day.

The wedding party wore conventional formal dress, but Melissa and Mathew themselves had chosen non-traditional outfits.

And they looked fantastic.

One of the pleasures of seeing so many weddings is that every so often a couple decides not to concern themselves too much with what a wedding is supposedly meant to look like and instead creates something that actually represents them. Melissa and Mathew did exactly that. Their outfits were striking, distinctive and entirely appropriate for the fantasy atmosphere they had created around the day.

It felt personal rather than themed for the sake of being themed, which is an important distinction.

Nobody wants to feel they have accidentally wandered into the gift shop at Warner Bros Studios.

Setting the Scene with Film Music

We began with music as guests arrived.

Quite often this part of a wedding features gentle contemporary songs or classical favourites. Melissa and Mathew had other ideas.

We opened their musical world with John Williams’ Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. There are few pieces which establish an atmosphere quite so quickly. You barely need the first few notes before everybody knows where they are.

From Hogwarts we went to Middle-earth with Howard Shore’s Concerning Hobbits, followed by May It Be, written by Enya and Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

This is particularly lovely music for cello and piano. Film scores often work beautifully with our combination because so much of the emotional weight is already carried by melody and harmony. Strip away the enormous orchestra, percussion department and approximately seventeen French horns and you are left with music that can sound surprisingly intimate.

That was followed by Turning Page by Sleeping At Last, associated with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, before another Enya choice, Caribbean Blue.

So within the first half hour we had visited Hogwarts, Middle-earth and the Twilight universe.

Not bad going before lunch.

Melissa’s Entrance

The bridal procession began with two flower girls, followed by four bridesmaids and the ring bearer, before Melissa made her entrance accompanied by her mother.

For Melissa’s entrance, she had chosen Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love.

It remains one of the most beautiful wedding entrance songs we play. There is something timeless about it, and on cello and piano the melody has plenty of space to breathe.

Because everything we play is completely live, we can shape an entrance around the people actually walking rather than expecting everybody to keep pace with a fixed recording. Flower girls in particular quite reasonably regard suggested walking speeds as merely advisory, so being able to extend or gently repeat part of the music makes the whole entrance feel considerably more natural.

Against a wedding filled with fantasy music and cinematic references, Can’t Help Falling in Love also provided a wonderfully simple and romantic moment for Melissa’s arrival.

Signing Music with Another Twist

During the signing of the register, the choices went straight back to the world Melissa and Mathew had created.

First was Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron & Wine, another song strongly associated with Twilight. Then came Enya’s Aníron, from The Lord of the Rings, before Accidentally in Love by Counting Crows.

Melissa and Mathew had specifically asked for a slower treatment of Accidentally in Love, similar in spirit to the Kid Rain version.

This is precisely the sort of thing we enjoy doing.

A song does not have to remain imprisoned in its original arrangement simply because that is how it appeared on the record. With just cello and piano, we can change its character completely. Something bright and punchy can become gentle and romantic without losing the melody which makes it instantly recognisable.

The register signed and the formalities complete, however, gentleness was finished.

For their exit, Melissa and Mathew chose I Can’t Help Myself by the Four Tops.

An excellent decision.

There are moments for quiet reflection, and then there are moments when you have just got married and need to leave the room accompanied by Motown.

From Harry Potter to Outlander

The drinks reception then gave us an opportunity to dig properly into Melissa and Mathew’s rather magnificent playlist.

Their highest priority was Neville’s Waltz by John Williams from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, followed by Bear McCreary’s Dance of the Druids from Outlander and Howard Shore’s Evenstar.

We then returned to Hogwarts for Double Trouble, before moving into Wildest Dreams in the Duomo arrangement associated with Bridgerton.

And this was only the beginning.

There was The Skye Boat Song from Outlander, Lothlórien from The Fellowship of the Ring, Patrick Swayze’s She’s Like the Wind, Let Me Sign by Robert Pattinson, the Bridgerton treatment of Madonna’s Material Girl and Bella’s Lullabyfrom Twilight.

This was not so much a wedding playlist as a tour through several fictional universes.

And it was brilliant.

A Drinks Reception Playlist Unlike Most Others

The second half of the list became even more varied.

James Newton Howard’s Fairy Dance from Peter Pan appeared alongside Debussy’s Clair de Lune. We had Howard Shore’s Old Friends from The Hobbit, John Williams’ Cantina Band from Star Wars, Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation and Danny Elfman’s wonderfully eccentric main title from Beetlejuice.

There was also John Williams’ Reunion of Friends from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years and finally Misty Mountains from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

For two musicians who spend a large percentage of the year playing wedding favourites, this was enormous fun.

We love Canon in D. We genuinely do. But there is something wonderfully refreshing about looking down at the music during a drinks reception and discovering that the next piece is from Beetlejuice.

That doesn’t happen every Saturday.

Why Film Music Works So Well at Weddings

There is actually a serious point underneath all this.

Film and television music can be extraordinarily effective at weddings because people often have a much deeper emotional connection with it than they realise. A melody may remind them of a particular story, character or moment from a film they have loved for years.

And much of this music is genuinely superb.

John Williams, Howard Shore, Bear McCreary, Danny Elfman and James Newton Howard are not simply people who put noises behind actors. Their scores contain beautifully constructed melodies and harmonies which often translate exceptionally well to live instruments.

On cello and piano, pieces such as Evenstar, Concerning Hobbits, Bella’s Lullaby and The Skye Boat Song can sound particularly effective because the instrumentation brings the melody right to the front.

The result is atmospheric without being intrusive, which is precisely what music during a drinks reception should be.

A Wedding Which Felt Completely Personal

What we particularly enjoyed about Melissa and Mathew’s wedding was that the music, colours, clothing and overall style all belonged together.

It wasn’t simply a normal wedding with Harry Potter added on top.

Their fantasy theme ran naturally through the day, but it never became theatrical or forced. The elegant surroundings of The Inn on the Lake, the silver, blues and purples, their fabulous non-traditional outfits and the cinematic soundtrack all complemented one another.

That is usually when themed weddings work best.

The theme provides inspiration rather than becoming an instruction manual.

Melissa and Mathew still had all the things that matter most: friends and family around them, a lovely ceremony, drinks afterwards and plenty of time simply to enjoy being newly married. They had just chosen to accompany it with Middle-earth rather than Ed Sheeran.

Quite right too.

Thank You, Melissa and Mathew

A huge thank you to Melissa and Mathew for inviting JAM Duo to be part of their wedding at The Inn on the Lake.

We loved playing for you both, and your music choices were some of the most interesting and enjoyable we have been given this year. Any wedding which allows us to travel musically from Elvis Presley to Howard Shore, John Williams, Enya, Debussy, Madonna, Danny Elfman and the Four Tops in the space of a couple of hours is doing something very right.

And we must mention those outfits again. You both looked absolutely fantastic. Individual, stylish and completely in keeping with the wedding you had created.

It was a genuine pleasure to provide the cello and piano music for your ceremony and drinks reception, and we hope the soundtrack helped make a wonderfully distinctive wedding day on Ullswater even more memorable.

Congratulations, Melissa and Mathew — and thank you for allowing us to spend an afternoon wandering around Hogwarts, Middle-earth, the Scottish Highlands and a galaxy far, far away without ever having to leave the Lake District.