40’s jazz and 50’s rock and roll wedding, Impact Hub, Oakland, CA. Photo: Lily and Lime
“Jamie was absolutely incredible. Not only is he just the nicest guy, but he is a true lover of music and has a magical quality to capture the magic of a moment in song. From our beginning consultations, we knew he would be the perfect fit for our 11 hour wedding and he rose to the challenge with decades worth of interesting, fun and dance-heavy songs. His ability to read the crowd was uncanny - easily transitioning between hip hop, funk, rock and even some Irish music, he made it all seamless. We cannot thank him enough, our friends and family are STILL raving about how good our music was. Thank you, Jamie. You are the best.” - Elyse Masias
A Classic Rock and Roll Wedding in a Hip Urban Space
Elyse and Shane are a great example of when your family histories merge for a truly magical event. Elyse comes from a long line of vocalists, she was trained as a jazz singer and her father achieved some acclaim as a doowop singer. Shane works in the music industry as a beverage caterer for all the largest music venues in town and his family is all Irish. And they are both very punk.
So we’ve got punks. We’ve got doowop. We’ve got a large room full of music industry people. And half the crowd just flew in from Ireland. Add that all up and what do you get? The history of rock and roll basically in one 12 hour mega-mix.
A Breakfast at Tiffany’s Twist
Elyse and Shane apparently met and spent their first date watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the idea was for the whole event to have kind of a “Moon River” theme. So what we did was sort of take the whole thing chronologically and work up from 40’s vocal jazz, to 50’s doowop, to early rock and roll and classic r&b, to surf, girl groups and 60’s soul.
An Amazing Soul Cover Band
The amazing Down and Dirty Rhythm Band kicked off the dance portion of the event with a live set loaded with wedding soul standards, so by the time they were done, we had pretty much rinsed the history of rock and roll up until about 1963.
A 70’s Disco Opening Set
At this point the family was really ready to rage, and the mom’s wanted ABBA, so we went balls to the wall on the 70’s and raged through another decades worth of hits in short order. I think we even rinsed through an hour or two of 80’s before the first part of the dancing was thoroughly worked out.
At this point the kids, surprisingly wanted 90’s hip hop, which I believe we also rinsed through testing the limits of what 20 year olds might recognize from before they were born. I think we did a little bit of new hip hop for the younger people once it was clear where those limits were.
An Epic Irish Sing-a-long
The truly magical part of this event though, was the afterparty which was all Irish. For whatever reason, the seriousness of how many Irish people were in the room, and how truly Irish they all were, was lost on all of us when we were planning the music. I seriously learned all of the 50’s for this thing! But what transpired next was really amazing.
Suddenly, all the Irishmen in the room had a request, or twelve, and they were all really great, and they were all certified Irish wedding sing-a-long hits. We managed to rip the songs off the internet live over the cell phone hot spot while the DJ’ing and dancing was taking place and get them into the computer just in time to play each song without missing a beat.
I can’t emphasize enough how amazing the Irish requests were. And even punk ones like The Pogues “Fairy Tale of New York.” had everybody going nuts. My best attempt at a contribution was U2 “40” for last song, which is the one that goes “How long… to sing this song” over and over again, which they graciously went for.
In conclusion, respect your families requests! They are often the highlight of the event.
Big Ups & Shout Outs
Special shout out to the sound guy at Impact Hub Oakland who was a champ!
Special shout out to the Best Beverage Catering company, vendors but also honored guests!
Special shout out to The Down and Dirty Rhythm Band! Friends of friends and easily the best wedding band I’ve seen yet.
I’ll be dancing a jig over here.
Ceremony Songs
Prelude:
Processional:
Recessional:
Grand Entrance:
Henry Mancini “Moon River Cha Cha”
First Dance:
Van Morrison “Into the Mystic”
Father Daughter Dance:
Mother Son Dance:
Cake Cutting:
Requests:
Frank Sinatra “Moon River”
Santo and Johnny “Sleep Walk”
The Flamingos “I Only Have Eyes for You”
Dion “The Wanderer”
Fats Domino “Ain’t That a Shame”
The Shangrilas “(Remember) Walking In the Sand”
The Overtones “Goodnight Sweetheart”
King Floyd “Groove Me”
Sam Cooke “Bring It On Home to Me”
Solomon Burke “Cry to Me”
The Platters “Great Pretender”
The Shangrilas “Leader of the Pack”
The Clovers “Love Potion No. 9”
The Ronettes “Be My Baby”
The Zombies “She’s Not There”
The Creation “Making Time”
King Harvest “Dancing In the Moonlight”
Del Shannon “Runaway”
Chuck Berry “You Never Can Tell”
Dion “Runaround Sue”
Elvis Presley “Jailhouse Rock”
The Shirelles “Dedicated to the One I Love”
Venue: Impact Hub Oakland / Photographer: Lily and Lime / DJ: Ceremony DJs / Videographer: Creative Cinema / Caterer: A Black Tie Affair / Bar: Best Beverage Catering / Band: The Down and Dirty Rhythmn Review / Rentals: Unica Party Rental
