July 2019 · Wedding
Ten favorite wedding songs.
Whew. This is tough. First let me preface my thoughts and list with this: I believe in the transformative magic of music. I truly do. Music has the capability of transporting you through otherwise outwardly experiences.
Each of the songs below has exemplified this to the highest degree. These songs have meant a lot to millions of people and have been widely played throughout time at various types of events. With that mentioned, I still could name about 200 more with the same properties — which made this very challenging. To deliver just ten? I must have replaced each one at least twenty times. But you asked, and here I am delivering my list to you — incomplete, in no particular order, and with respect to the other countless incredible songs out there with matching transformative powers.
- Can't Help Falling In LoveElvis Presley
- Endless LoveDiana Ross & Lionel Richie
- The Way You Look TonightFrank Sinatra
- SomethingThe Beatles
- Like A StarCorinne Bailey Rae
- Don't Get Me WrongThe Pretenders
- Always And ForeverHeatwave
- Knocks Me Off My FeetStevie Wonder
- What A Wonderful WorldSam Cooke
- Only YouThe Platters
On The First Dance
The first dance is a duet, not a solo.
People think the first dance is about the couple. It's not — not entirely. It's about the room watching the couple. The song you pick has two jobs: it has to mean something to the two of you, and it has to hold a room full of people who don't know why it means something.
My advice? Pick the song that takes you somewhere. Guests feel that. A song chosen for the room falls flat; a song chosen for the heart fills it. I've watched grandmothers cry to songs they'd never heard before, simply because the couple meant every word.
And a practical note: dance to it once before the wedding. In your kitchen, in socks. You'll find out fast whether it's three minutes or four, and whether you want me to fade it early.
On The Microphone
Why I'd rather be your MC than your jukebox.
Anybody can press play. The difference between a DJ and an entertainer is the microphone — and knowing when not to use it.
A good MC reads the temperature of a room. Are people still eating? Keep it warm and low. Has the energy been building for twenty minutes and nobody's pulled the trigger? That's my cue. The announcement, the timing, the handoff to the dance floor — that's choreography you don't see until it's missing.
I've been to events where the DJ never said a word and the night just sort of… happened, formless. Don't let your night be formless. The music is the paint. The MC is the frame.
On The Do-Not-Play List
The do-not-play list is sacred.
Every couple gets a do-not-play list. I treat it like scripture.
Here's why it matters more than the must-play list: the songs you love, I'll find a way to work in. But the song that reminds you of an ex, or the track that'll send your uncle into a story nobody wants — that one wrong song can flatten a room you spent an hour building. One landmine undoes a lot of good work.
So give me the list. Be honest, even about the embarrassing ones. I'm not here to judge your musical history. I'm here to protect your night from it.
On Reading A Room
How to read a room before you play a note.
The read starts before the first song. I watch the room fill. Who's hugging whom. Where the older folks settle, where the cousins cluster. Which table is already laughing too loud — that's your engine, that table will start the dance floor.
By the time I play the first song, I've already got a map. The map changes all night, and the job is to keep redrawing it. A floor that's thinning isn't a failure — it's information. It means the last three songs told me something, and the next one has to answer.
Reading a room is just paying closer attention than everyone else in it.
On Pacing
The art of the build.
You don't open with the biggest song of the night. That's like firing the finale at 8 p.m.
A great set has an arc. Early, you're giving people permission — familiar, easy, nothing that demands too much. The middle is where you earn trust, mixing in a little risk. And the peak — the peak only lands because of everything underneath it. The crowd doesn't know they're being built. They just feel the night getting better and wonder why.
Restraint early is what makes the explosion possible later. Patience is a DJ's most underrated skill.
On Lighting
Lighting is the second song.
People think lighting is decoration. It's not — it's rhythm you can see.
Warm and still during dinner. A slow wash of color as the night turns. And when the floor opens, the light moves with the music — not a strobe-fest, but a pulse that tells your body the energy just changed. Done right, you never notice the lighting. You just notice the room got more alive.
The wrong lighting is loud and obvious. The right lighting is felt, not seen. Same philosophy as the music: serve the moment, don't upstage it.
On The Crowd
Multi-generational floors: the real test.
A wedding floor is the hardest crowd in music. You've got a fourteen-year-old cousin and an eighty-year-old grandfather and you have to keep them both moving without losing either.
The secret isn't playing a little of everything in a row — that just rotates who's bored. The secret is finding the songs that cross over. The track the grandfather loved in '68 that got sampled into a hit the teenager knows. The bridges between eras. When you hit one of those, you'll see three generations on the floor at once, and that's the whole job right there.
On The Ending
The last song matters more than the first.
Everyone obsesses over the opener. The closer is what they'll remember.
The last song of the night is a goodbye. It should feel like one — a little nostalgic, a little triumphant, the kind of song where everyone throws an arm around the person next to them. You're not trying to start a new party at the end. You're trying to seal the one you had.
Pick it on purpose. Don't let the last song be whatever happened to be next in the queue. The night deserves an ending as intentional as its beginning.
On Trust
Trust your DJ (a little).
Here's something I tell every couple: give me your heart, your must-plays, and your do-not-plays — and then give me a little room.
The magic moments at a wedding are almost never the ones on the spreadsheet. They're the audible the DJ called because the room asked for it. If you script every second, you cut off the part of the night that surprises even you. A great DJ isn't a vending machine for your playlist — he's a read, a feel, a thousand tiny decisions you'll never see.
Plan the bones. Leave the magic to the moment. That's where the nights you'll never forget come from.