To the IPOD-DJ Brides-is there a method to your madness? Playlist help requested

Anybody>????? :-(

I'm doing the same thing so I'm curious too. I have started building a playlist on my own, but it's also hard to get 3 hours of music to party too.

Have you tried the "request music" feature they allow you to add to your wedding website?

Also, I was at a wedding Oct 8. Bride and Groom are 27-28ish in age, as were their friends in attendance. They played 4-5 slow songs over the course of 3.5 hours.

It would depend on how old/young your crowd is and country/pop/rock/hip-hop/rap?

Unfortunately I'm in kind of the same boat as you are... We are leaning towards an ipod playlist, and unless we end up under budget and can add in a DJ last minute.

My FH has been listening to Pandora.com and jotting down songs that he/we like. Once we get that list ready we'll hit Amazon.com/itunes and start downloading. Also hit up our friends and family for cd's that we can burn, thus not paying for the songs.

Really, I can hardly think of actually arranging the playlist, song by song, and determining what goes next to eachother best. I'll probably do that with the first hour or so, and then just let it shuffle!

I had a hard time coming up with a song for every moment on our day. It took me a full two months of Google searches and asking important guests the music or songs they would like to hear. I had a playlist for everything:

Prelude

My BM's song and my song to walk to

Recessional/Postlude

Before dinner

During dinner

Our first dance and father daughter dance

Dancing

I chose an upbeat song for right after our dances to "wake" up our guests and get them into dancing modes. After that, I had it on shuffle (random songs) within the dancing playlist. Make sure whoever is working the music will be giving it his or her full attention. I didn't appoint the right person, and it left a few quiet moments in between things. Even though the dancing playlist was random, every 3 or 4 fast fun songs, there would be a slower relaxed song to give people breaks. Google was my lifesaver though. I thumbed through every wedding playlist out there and chose what I thought would be fun and appropriate. (:

Our crowd for the most part will be over 35, but we all still go out and listen to music, attend concerts, like to dance, etc. I have a "list" that I'm putting together as I hear songs, and we own a ton of music, so we'll only have to buy a few songs we are missing. My STDs go out next week, and that's when my website will go public for friends and family and yes, I have enabled the request feature--that should be fun. There will be a lot of couples there, and hopefully FH's aunts and uncles. We plan to have a quite a few Michael Buble standards thrown in for folks of all ages. I was thinking maybe a ratio of 6 fast dance tunes to 1 slow one? Maybe that's too much. But if each song is an average of 4 minutes long, we would need about 15 songs per hour, right? The music for the church and cocktail hour is already in the bag. No problems there. All big band swing type music for the cocktail hour to give it a 1940's Hollywood feel. But after dinner--Party on dudes.

Have music during the dinner that's slow/that people can eat to, of course. Then afterwards if you're cutting a cake you might want to have a song for that so you don't have to cut the music off or something for that. I would say 7/78 faster songs then a slow song.

Jessica--thanks to Pandora --(and watching too much Glee) --I have practically no wedding budget cuz I am always downloading album after album--gotta love me. But hey, hours of enjoyment for under 5 bucks? What else can give you that much toe tapping value for under 5 bucks???

While we had a friend who is a pro DJ, we are very particular about music, and didn't care for the bulk of the things in his collection, so we felt the need to come up with our own playlist. Basically, we searched the internet and found a typical wedding play list and chose things we liked. I don't have the site book marked, sorry. We then scoured our extensive CD collection and jotted down songs.

We divided things into categories: cocktail hour music, dinner music and party music. From there we divided into dancable classic rock, motown and club music.

We did two slow songs to 5 fast songs. It seemed to work out great for our crowd ranging in ages from 16 - 73, with many of us in the 40-50 age range. If you would like, I can email you my play list. Just shoot me a pm.

Good luck.

Carole--thank you!! Sounds Mahvelous!!

One more thing, have at least 45 extra minutes of music in case anything runs longer than expected. I had over 4 hours of dancing music and we only needed about 2.5. Also, a song or two might not hit the way you planned, so leave room to skip through a few songs just in case no one is feeling a certain few. Have whoever is DJing pay attention to your guests reactions.

I didn't follow my own rules and there was no music playing when we made our entrance into the reception, but it didn't ruin anything. I saved $1500 and that was the only real "mess up." We're already laughing about it. Lol

We have no entrance song. There will just be music already playing. I am guessing most of us will all show up at the same time. We are taking pics at the church after the ceremony and are serving a snack for the guests who want to linger before heading to reception venue to start guzzling tequila. :-)

Carole-would love to send you a pm but you're blocked. Send me one first and I'll reply.

Thanks to all by the way.

I have about 45 minutes of music for the church--my processional song makes me bawl everytime I hear it, so I made myself promise to listen to it over and over until it doesn't make me cry anymore.

Then for the reception, I have planned to do mostly Michael Buble tunes-the ones that are good for listening, but not so much for dancing for the first leg. After cocktails and sending roughly 100 people through the buffet, I am guessing about 2 hours. Turn down the volume for toasts, then my AV geek friend slips into the staff only room to switch it up to the dance playlist...which is for the moment a random list of favorites and dance tunes. We fell in love the first time in 1983, so of course the 80's will be predominant in our toonage lineup.

Hubby and I are big metal fans (slipknot, korn, disturbed, etc). Our guests will be ages 13 - 65. I personally love classic rock (eagles, styx, kansas, etc). Alot of our guest like country and r&b. Everyone likes something different.

I'm acutally paying a friend of mine who does professional dancing and has a degree in music to put together a list. FH and I are jotting down types and bands we like and she said she will put a list together. I figure about 4 hours altogether but we will see.

Don't just have music that you and your FH like, make sure you have music that everyone will like. I'm also doing an iPod reception and I have been putting music together since my FH and I were dating. The CD's I made him have become the basis of our wedding play list along with lots of songs from spending time with friends and family. I talked to my parents about songs we used to dance to when we were little.

Be careful of putting it on shuffle you might get lots of slow songs grouped together or lots of fast songs without a slow break or several songs by the same artist. (I drive a lot and have been listening to my play list to trying to get it just right! These are some things I have come across).

Good luck ladies! Don't forget to have fun and find songs that will get everyone on the dance floor! =)

I've been making mental notes of what puts our friends on the dance floor when we go out. I think that will be a big help. And I am not planning to put things on shuffle. I want to carry a certain feel throughout and not have an unexpected lull or too many great crowd pleasers all at once. Our dance floor--which has to be rented and brought in isn't very large. The reception is in two adjoining rooms -bar, fireplace and dance floor in one room, tables for dining, candy buffet and cake in the other. Both have a great panoramic view of the golf course and city skyline (ha ha ha) through a bank of windows, and the dining room also over looks the swimming pool. It should be a great place for our party.

We throw a lot of parties, so we already had playlists of stuff to fill the dance floor.

The big thing is to make sure you have your playlist in order (not shuffle) and DON'T LET ANYONE TOUCH IT! I'm serious. We kept our iPod behind the bar, and told the bartender that only one guest was allowed to touch it. This was a friend who'd volunteered to switch the playlist over from dinner to dancing and to play our first dance song. If you're not super strict about this, you'll get guests grabbing the iPod and scrolling ahead to whatever song they want to hear, and you'll run out of music well before the end of the reception.

Shannon, we are using a playlist on my laptop computer. The stereo system is in a locked staff only room behind the bar, that no one will have access to except my AV geek friend who installed the system at the club. And me and the groom of course. I wish I could post a review now, because this venue just gets more perfect for our vision every time I have a meeting with the manager.!! Ashley you rock!!! LOL--anyhoo, thanks for the heads up Shannon. --and to all the input from you other gals. :-) Now--can anyone tell me how to score a photgrapher for less than $3K--GRR!! That's another story for another thread.

We are using one of our laptops and putting music on it. It's about time we start getting the actual music we want. We aren't having actual dancing (unless people really want to dance) We first chose the songs that are important to us. Then we searched youtube looking for songs that we just enjoy and added those to the list. We are playing A LOT of Vitamin String Quartet so that we can play the music we like without it being odd. We really just want some background music while we spend the day with our families.