Church wedding songs and hymns (part 2)

This is the third in my series of posts about the inclusion of music in your irish wedding ceremonies.
The first post covering the importance of music in your church ceremony can be found in Church wedding songs and hymns (Intro). The second in the series entitled church wedding songs and hymns (part 1) gives information on the format of an Irish wedding ceremony and the places within the ceremony where you can include music.

This post covers music choices for the first part of the marriage ceremony, the introductory rites.
Usually the brides entrance is accompanied by music rather than singing, at this stage all eyes will be turned towards the bride and we don't want anyone distracted by a beautiful singing voice.

Photo courtesy of in Pastel







I have only included instrumental music in this post but I will do a seperate post on hymns and songs for the processional in the future.

You'll probably recognise many of these choices of music to accompany the brides entrance including:

1) Pachelbel's Canon in D Major (I'm putting this one first because it's one of my all time favourite pieces of music)



2)   Probably, one of the most recognised piece of processional music, Wagner's Bridal Chorus.



3) The wedding March by Mendelssohn is also instantly recogniseable. Incidentally, Mendelssohn wrote this for Shakespeare's play "Midsummer nights dream"


4)Bach's Jesu Joy of Mans desiring...you'll recognise this one too.


5) Ode to Joy composed by Beethoven..a beautiful piece of music


6) Handels La Rejoissance


7)Handels hornpipe


8)Gabriels Oboe (also called Nella Fantasia) from the film the Mission, composed by Morricone, played here on Oboe but can also be sung.


9)Trumpet tune and air by Henry Purcell