Seeing The Big Finn's
recent post about music that is banned (or not) brought back memories of our wedding.
A couple of months before the wedding, we met with the DJ and he gave us a list of his preferred selections--of which perhaps a total of three songs were even remotely acceptable. He also suggested that he kick off the festivities with "Footloose", because in his experience it always got the crowd going (maybe he usually played weddings in communities where music and dancing were banned due to overly restrictive religious mores...at least until a kid from the city came to town and
showed them how to rock! But I digress).
Anyway, we talked to friends whose wedding reception we had enjoyed, and they told us the key was to be very specific in terms of expectations of what the DJ not only should play, but also what he should not play under any circumstances. So we set about making two lists--one devoted to songs we thought really would get our friends out on the dance floor (heavy on the '80s...what can we say, those were our high school/college years), and another that would cause our friends to reel in horror. The latter list was relatively easy to compile, especially since we could use his list of recommendations as the starting point. We were quite certain that we had identified each and every artist, no matter how obscure, that could be potentially objectionable. (Perhaps the only initial point of contention was my insistence that there be no
chicken dance at the reception...evidently you risk having all of your Wisconsin rights and privileges revoked if you don't have a
chicken dance at your wedding. This evidently caused some consternation on the part of the DJ when friends started requesting it even though it was on the banned list.) (Oh, and the only problem with our list of songs that we wanted to hear was that he didn't have most of them, so we ended up having to loan him a bunch of CDs, including a bunch we had to go out and buy ourselves before the wedding. That didn't stop him, however, from approaching Gretchen after the last dance and demanding payment there and then--after all, doesn't every bride keep her checkbook in a pocket in her wedding dress? But I digress again.)
So everything was going great...the music was fun, the dance floor was packed, the beer was flowing, we were young and in love, the San Diego Padres took an early lead in the first game of
the World Series--all was right with the world. But then something unspeakably awful happened...he played the ultimate buzzkill: a Michael Bolton song. Next thing we knew, the dance floor cleared within about 10 seconds, we were arguing about which of us had forgotten to add Michael Bolton to the do-not-play list (I suspect it was a passive-aggressive move on the DJ's part to find a song he knew we would hate but wasn't on the banned list), and the Yankees came back to beat the Padres. On top of that, I came down with a bad cold on the first day of our honeymoon, the flight crew completely ignored us despite Gretchen's repeated declarations that we were on our honeymoon (everyone told us stories of upgrades, free champagne, etc, on their own honeymoons), the place we stayed ended up being a bit of a dump, and the Padres were swept by the Yankees. To this day, I blame it all on Michael Bolton. Needless to say, he is permanently banned from our iPods.
(Just for the record, the Michael Bolton curse thankfully did not carry over to our marriage, and ultimately even our honeymoon was great despite my being congested and feverish for half of it...but just to be safe, whatever we do for our 10-year anniversary next year, I feel safe in saying that a Michael Bolton concert will probably not be a part of it.)
