Choosing Wedding Music – Interview with Anna Vogelzang

I first encountered musician Anna Vogelzang through the wonders of the blogosphere.  Her wedding was featured on Green Wedding Shoes, one of my favorite wedding blogs.  In addition to being beautiful and colorful, it caught my eye because she got married in my future venu, the Olin Park Pavilion.

As I read the story of her wedding, I noticed that Anna is a musician in Madison.  Intrigued, I found her website and listened to her music.  I was absolutely blown away!  My favorite song is actually about getting married:

I contacted Anna about performing at our wedding.  The conversation that ensued answered a lot of my questions about choosing wedding music and even brought up a lot of things that I had never considered.  I am so happy that she is letting me share her advice with you!

Q: What do you think about having musicians perform during the dinner portion of the wedding?

Anna: Dinner music for original musicians is tough, because most folks aren’t listening (but eating!) and you’re trying to fill a lot of time. there are some people who do it professionally and so for them it’s not a big deal, but i tend to play listening rooms, so it’s harder for me to get excited for a show where everyone’s chatting with each other — unless it is a big payoff, which weddings usually are. it’s also usually so far in advance that i need the budget to trump any other gigs that might come up in the mean time.

Q: Do you have any recommendations for incorporating live music into the dinner portion of the ceremony?

Anna: Instrumental groups are usually way better suited to the background music thing.  For our wedding, we also had a playlist for the DJ to play during dinner thatwas separate from our dancing playlist, so that the jazz boys could break & eat but there was still music playing.

Q:  Live music is definitely (and understandably!) more expensive than doing a playlist.  Can you explain all of the work that goes into performing at a wedding?

Anna: My fee includes learning & arranging the songs, sending demos of arrangements to give you options & make sure you’re happy with them, attending the rehearsal, providing my own sound, and (the biggest thing), my time, since i’m never sure if i’m going to be in town or not — I need to commit to staying in Madison during that time.

Thanks again for all of your advice Anna!

For those of you in Madison, Anna is playing a show at the Frequency this Saturday, January 19th.
Click here for more details!