There is a fairly persistent assumption about city-centre weddings. Beautiful buildings, certainly. Plenty of atmosphere. Restaurants, hotels and bars conveniently nearby. But try turning up with a piano, cello, amplification and everything else required for live wedding music and surely it all becomes rather more complicated.
During four consecutive days at the beginning of October, we had a rather good opportunity to test that theory.
From Thursday to Sunday, JAM Duo played for four weddings in four different city-centre locations: Swansea Civic Centre, Salisbury Guildhall, Rochdale Town Hall and the Baby Clubhouse in central Liverpool. They could hardly have been more different from one another. We had an intimate civil ceremony for around 50 guests, an elegant Guildhall wedding, the spectacular surroundings of Rochdale Town Hall complete with our gloss-black piano shell, and finally a Liverpool wedding with two brides, two separate entrances and a drinks reception full of everything from The Beatles to Stormzy.
What they had in common was something considerably less glamorous but rather important when you are transporting a cello, digital piano, stands, amplification and assorted cables around the country: all four were surprisingly straightforward.
So, can you have live cello and piano at a city-centre wedding?
Absolutely. And, based on this particular four-day run, it may be rather easier than you imagine.
Ana and Brad – An Autumn Wedding at Swansea Civic Centre
Our first city wedding of the run took us to Swansea for Ana and Brad, who were married at the Civic Centre on Oystermouth Road overlooking Swansea Bay.
This was an intimate ceremony of around 50 guests, with autumn colours setting the tone and burnt orange for the bridesmaids. It was also a good example of why a smaller civil ceremony certainly doesn’t need to mean compromising on the music. Ana and Brad had put together a programme which ranged from Disney to Bruno Mars via Game of Thrones, which is precisely the sort of mixture we enjoy.
As guests arrived, we played a selection including Part of Your World, Beauty and the Beast, Can You Feel the Love Tonight, Kiss the Girl and What a Wonderful World. It created a relaxed atmosphere before the ceremony while also giving the music a slightly personal, cinematic character.
For Ana’s entrance, the choice was A Thousand Years. This remains one of the most requested pieces in our repertoire, and there is a reason for that. On cello and piano it works particularly well for an entrance because the music can be shaped around what is actually happening in the room. We are not tied to a recording which carries on regardless; we can extend a phrase, hold the music or move naturally towards the ending depending upon how long the bridal party takes to reach the front.
The signing music then changed the mood completely with the main theme from Game of Thrones. We have long maintained that wedding music does not have to consist solely of conventional love songs. If a piece means something to you, there is usually a way of making it work. On cello and piano, the Game of Thrones theme has plenty of drama without becoming overpowering, and it made a splendid contrast to the entrance.
Ana and Brad left to Marry You by Bruno Mars, bringing the ceremony to a suitably upbeat conclusion.
From our point of view, Swansea was also the first reminder of this particular week that city-centre logistics needn’t be difficult. There was parking alongside the Civic Centre, straightforward access into the building and a ramp down to the entrance. Once inside, we were able to position ourselves appropriately for the ceremony and concentrate on the bit that actually mattered: playing the music.
Philippa and William – Live Wedding Music at Salisbury Guildhall
The following day took us to Salisbury Guildhall for Philippa and William’s wedding.
If Swansea had been intimate and slightly cinematic, Salisbury had a very different feel. Around 60 guests gathered in the Banqueting Hall for a 1pm ceremony, followed by drinks and canapés elsewhere within the Guildhall. There was also a magician during the reception, which rather neatly illustrates something we often tell couples: live music does not need to dominate a drinks reception. It can sit alongside conversations, photographs, drinks and other entertainment, creating the atmosphere without demanding everybody’s attention.
Philippa had thought particularly carefully about the timing of her entrance. Her chosen piece was Like I’m Gonna Lose You, in the Jasmine Thompson version, and she wanted to enter at a particular point corresponding with the start of the chorus.
This is where live musicians have a considerable advantage over simply pressing play on Spotify.
Wedding entrances almost never happen precisely as they do during a rehearsal. A bridesmaid pauses. A door takes longer to open. Someone adjusts a dress. A flower girl suddenly decides that walking down an aisle wasn’t quite the deal she thought she’d signed up for. With live cello and piano we can adapt in real time, shaping an arrangement so that the important musical moment arrives when the bride does rather than 17 seconds beforehand while everyone is still standing in the doorway.
Philippa had two bridesmaids entering before her, and we were able to use the structure of the music to prepare for her own entrance at the point she wanted.
For the signing, their choices were I’m Kissing You by Des’ree, Peter Gabriel’s The Book of Love and I Get to Love You by Ruelle. Three very different songs, but all particularly effective when stripped back to cello and piano.
Then came another precisely timed request. Philippa and William wanted to leave to Firestone by Kygo, beginning from around the 1:04 point of our arrangement. Again, there is no reason a live performance has to begin obediently at bar one just because that happens to be where the original recording starts. For wedding entrances and exits, the best section of a song is often somewhere in the middle. We can simply arrange it that way.
Afterwards we moved into the reception area for drinks and canapés. Their choices ranged wonderfully widely: Blink-182’s All the Small Things, Cornfield Chase from Interstellar, Aerosmith, the Goo Goo Dolls, Billie Eilish, Toto, Queen, The Killers, Paramore, Enya and The Beatles.
Philippa and William had also told us they were planning to sneak away for a drink and some photographs together after the ceremony and asked us not to play their particular favourites until they returned. A small detail, perhaps, but quite an important one. If you have chosen songs because you actually want to hear them, there is little point in us playing them beautifully while you are half a mile away in a pub.
Salisbury was perhaps the wedding of the four where we had expected city-centre access to require the most thought. There is no onsite parking immediately at the Guildhall, but in practice it was very simple. We could pull up outside to unload our equipment before moving the car to the nearby Brown Street car park. At the end, we simply reversed the process.
No expedition involving sack trucks through pedestrian precincts. No carrying a piano across Salisbury. No drama whatsoever.
Charlotte and Lewis – Rochdale Town Hall with Our Piano Shell
Saturday brought an altogether grander backdrop at Rochdale Town Hall for Charlotte and Lewis.
The restored Town Hall is exactly the sort of building where presentation matters. There are venues where a digital stage piano sitting neatly on its stand is perfectly appropriate, and others where our gloss-black piano shell adds something worthwhile visually. Rochdale was firmly in the latter category.
The shell turns our Nord stage piano into something much closer in appearance to a small grand piano, while retaining all the advantages of the instrument we use professionally: consistent sound, complete control of volume and, crucially, the ability to transport it around the country.
Charlotte and Lewis had around 43 guests, so although the surroundings were imposing, the wedding itself remained very personal. Guests began arriving from 3.30pm for the 4pm ceremony, with everything taking place in the same room before moving naturally into canapés afterwards.
Their pre-ceremony music included Brown Eyed Girl, I Say a Little Prayer and Wonderwall. The bridal party consisted of six bridesmaids entering in pairs, with Somewhere Over the Rainbow chosen for their entrance. Charlotte then arrived with her father, paused part way down the magnificent staircase for her stepfather to join them, and the three continued together.
Her own entrance was to Sweet Child O’ Mine.
It is difficult to imagine a much better example of why couples should not feel bound by some mythical rulebook of ‘appropriate wedding music’. Guns N’ Roses might not immediately spring to mind when picturing a formal Town Hall ceremony, but arranged for cello and piano it becomes something entirely different. The melody is instantly recognisable, the cello can take on the famous guitar line and the piano provides all the harmonic weight underneath it.
For the signing we moved through Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered, Tennessee Whiskey and Luther Vandross’s Never Too Much, before Charlotte and Lewis made what may have been the most gloriously unapologetic exit of our four-day run: Fireball by Pitbull.
Quite right too.
Once the ceremony was over, we continued into the drinks reception. Their choices included Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, A Million Dreams, Can’t Help Falling in Love, Your Song, Nothing Else Matters, A Sky Full of Stars, Canon in D, Yellow, Iris and Amazed. In other words, roughly the musical journey from Pachelbel to Metallica that we tend to regard as a perfectly normal afternoon.
Despite being right in the middle of Rochdale, access was again remarkably painless. There was onsite parking and, more importantly when carrying the piano shell, we could drive right up to the building to unload.
That matters. Our piano shell looks elegant once assembled beside Anne-Marie’s cello. In its component parts halfway between a car and a venue entrance, elegance is perhaps not the first word that springs to mind.
Fortunately, at Rochdale the distance between the two was pleasingly short.
Lucy and Courtney – Two Bridal Entrances in Central Liverpool
Sunday took us to Liverpool and perhaps the most contemporary wedding of the four.
Lucy and Courtney were married at the Baby Clubhouse in Wolstenholme Square, with around 70 guests and both the ceremony and drinks reception taking place indoors. Their colour scheme was navy and white, but it was the structure of the ceremony which made this one particularly interesting musically.
There were two brides and therefore two separate entrances.
Courtney entered first with her father to Every Breath You Take by The Police. Lucy then had three adult bridesmaids preceding her before making her own entrance to In My Life by The Beatles.
Two separate entrances need to feel distinct without making the ceremony seem as though it has stopped and restarted. Live music makes that comparatively easy because we can bring the first piece to a natural conclusion, allow the room to settle and then create an entirely fresh musical moment for the second entrance.
Before the ceremony, their choices included Always Be My Baby by Mariah Carey, Here Comes the Sun, Etta James’s At Last and Talking Heads’ This Must Be the Place, alongside In My Life. Again, it was a playlist which felt very much like theirs rather than something selected from a generic list headed ‘wedding songs’.
During the signing we played Alicia Keys’ If I Ain’t Got You, You’ve Got the Love and Elbow’s One Day Like This. Lucy and Courtney then left together to Signed, Sealed, Delivered by Stevie Wonder.
The drinks reception afterwards gave us another superbly eclectic list. Elvis, McFly, Beyoncé, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Billie Eilish, Stormzy, Snow Patrol, the Bee Gees, Adele, Pulp, Van Morrison and Natalie Cole all featured.
There is something particularly enjoyable about taking songs such as Blinded by Your Grace, Birds of a Feather or Something Changed and translating them into cello and piano. The purpose is not to imitate the original recording. Two instruments obviously cannot reproduce an entire studio production, nor should they try. Instead we take the melody, harmony and character of the song and make it work as genuinely live music.
And once again, despite being right in Liverpool city centre, logistics were easy. We could pull up immediately outside the venue to unload and there was public parking next door. For us, that meant the difference between an awkward city-centre load-in and an entirely routine one.
The entirely routine version is greatly preferable.
Is a City Centre Wedding Difficult for Live Musicians?
These four weddings were rather useful because they answered that question four times in succession.
Not necessarily.
In fact, what matters far more than whether a wedding is in a city centre or the middle of the countryside is the actual access arrangements at the venue.
A remote country house may have acres of parking but require equipment to be carried across gravel, through several doors and around the back of the building. A Town Hall in the middle of a city may let us pull directly up to the entrance, unload everything in a few minutes and park 100 yards away.
Swansea gave us straightforward parking and access alongside the Civic Centre. At Salisbury we unloaded directly outside the Guildhall before using a nearby public car park. Rochdale had onsite parking and allowed us to bring the car right to the entrance. Liverpool again gave us loading directly outside with public parking next door.
All four turned out to be considerably easier than the phrase ‘city-centre wedding’ might suggest.
When couples book JAM Duo, we deal with these practicalities ourselves. We don’t expect the bride or groom to spend the morning of their wedding directing us towards a loading bay or worrying about where the piano is going. We establish where we need to be, allow sufficient time and arrive with the equipment required for that particular wedding.
Sometimes that means our standard cello and piano setup. Sometimes, as at Rochdale Town Hall, we add our gloss-black piano shell because the setting warrants it. For particularly small ceremonies there may also be occasions where an acoustic cello is suitable, although our electric cello remains our preferred setup for most weddings because it gives us complete control and ensures the instrument can be heard properly throughout the room.
What matters is that the setup fits the wedding rather than the wedding having to fit the setup.
Four Weddings, Four Completely Different Soundtracks
Perhaps the most striking thing about these four weddings was not where they took place but how little their music resembled one another.
Within four days we played Disney, Game of Thrones, Bruno Mars, Des’ree, Hans Zimmer, Blink-182, Guns N’ Roses, Pitbull, Stevie Wonder, Stormzy, The Beatles, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac and Pachelbel.
And somehow none of it felt out of place.
That is one of the things we particularly enjoy about playing weddings as a cello and piano duo. There is no need to choose between having elegant live music and having music which actually reflects your taste. You can have both.
A Town Hall does not require classical music. A formal ceremony does not prohibit Guns N’ Roses. Game of Thrones can sit quite happily beside A Thousand Years. And apparently Pitbull works perfectly well in Rochdale Town Hall.
We can now say this with some authority.
So if you are planning a wedding at a registry office, Guildhall, Town Hall, hotel or another city-centre venue, don’t assume that live musicians will create a logistical headache. In many cases the exact opposite is true.
Ask the venue where suppliers can unload, where the nearest parking is and whether there are any restrictions on access. After that, leave the rest to us.
We’ll bring the cello and piano.
And, where appropriate, quite a lot of Pitbull.
