Ceremony Music for outside wedding HELP!!

I hired a violinist to play for the hour before the ceremony and for the bridal party to walk into...wasn't too expensive, $150. My cousin is getting married today and they are hooking the i pod up to a portable pa system and someone will press play and they will do it that way.

DJ's will set up both inside and outside (assuming you are using the same location for ceremony and reception). If you are looking for live music, the local Colleges are a great resource. Check with their music department. Most musicians will play for small fees just for the experience and perhaps a meal at your reception. Check it out!

My ceremony is going to be outdoors also. I am either going to get a DJ (if not too expensive) or hook the ipod to some speakers. Luckily my venue has electricty near by the ceremony site.

As others have noted, some DJs have equipment for this. We have an extra system that we use for outdoor ceremonies. It's more to buy, maintain, and haul, so we have to charge a bit more (about $150) for the extra service than we would for a ceremony/reception that could use one system. The other plus for us (and for our clients) is that by having the second system along, we automatically have a backup in case of equipment failure.

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding! There are many choices of combinations of live musicians for outside ceremonies. String groups (quartet, trio, duets), harpists, harp and guitar, harp and flute, guitar alone, ... I'm partial, but I always think live music adds something extra. Good luck!

I'd agree with Rondo. Live music is nice and if it's just one or two people, it won't cost you very much, especially if you're having live music at the reception and a subset of those players can play your ceremony.

Setting up a sound system outdoors might still be a good idea. It can be difficult to hear your officiant outside if he or she is not wearing a mic.

Jon

I agree with setting up a sound system, no matter what you decide to do for music. It's always a good idea to have the officiator connected to a wireless lapel microphone so that everybody can hear. Even in small rooms, we still connect the lapel mic to the officiator, and then adjust the sound volume. You want to make sure everybody can hear.

Once you have the sound system, it's pretty much whatever you want as far as music. If your DJ is bringing the sound system, you can have them run the music, or if you have live musicians, they can have a microphone in front of them for a better surround sound.

Also, you can always get long extension cords to plug the sound system into, or a generator. We have one that's very quiet, and doesn't distract from the wedding.

We are having an outdoor wedding as well, and we'll be downloading the music to a cd and playing it. We thought about the IPod thing, but we wanted a "keepsake" of our wedding music we could play on our honeymoon and any other time we wanted to listen to it.

I'm having an outdoor wedding & my cousin is going to play her keyboard, instead of a piano!!!

I am having an outside wedding and we are using our portable CD/stereo player to play the music outside.

Try looking at schools for harpist or violinist...they work perfect for outside weddings, you can get students do this most of the time for allot less than you think and they enjoy it.

Good luck and congrats!

We haven't decided what to do yet exactly. We're debating on an iPod connected to speakers or hiring a guitarist. We'll see. Good luck!