need some help/opinions on cocktail hour and dinner music

I havent picked my music yet, but what if you alternate? use one genre for the cocktail hour and the other for the reception... variety is always nice!!

Are you having a DJ? If so they'll know how to mix things together well. I personally like Frank Sinatra for cocktail hour.

Rat Pack, Indie Pop, Alternative during cocktail hour; Jazz and Classical Pop Vocalist during dinner.

Lauren, cocktail hour is easy, easy. We start with a mixture of Sinatra, Buble and Nat King Cole. We'll do a half-hour of this, then start slowing working our way into pop, motown and a few newer country pieces (Darius Rucker, Taylor Swift, Jac Brown). A lot of the rat pack stuff are low quality recordings, so I hesitate to use those. Jazz and Classical also don't really work well, IMHO. Hope this helps.

Thanks everyone!!

Yes, I do have a DJ. I keep stressing and then reminding myself I am paying a professional who does this for a living. Thanks all for your suggestions I think I'll run my current ideas by my DJ and see what he says.

Do you thinking having the more indie stuff plus some well known alternative/rock during cocktail hour (ex: jack johnson, dave matthews, lumineers, ben howard, the head and the heart, bob dylan, etc..), then having the sinatra style music during dinner would be a bad idea? I was sort of thinking indie and alt would go well with drinking and mingling.

Our cocktail is (hopefully) going to be outside and people will be playing yard game- we love alternative and punk music, so we are planning an "alternative" cocktail hour (going to be closer to 2 hrs)- then once we are inside for dinner we are going to switch over to more modern "light music" like jack Johnson.

For dinner I think we are using the Vitamin String Quartet, look them up, they are awesome! they take modern songs and do it their own way. This way genre's and styles can mix and still sound right.