Erin and Alan got themselves married at Our Lady of The Assumption and St Gregory in Warwick Street, from which it was but a short walk to their reception at the Groucho Club in Dean Street.  We hadn’t worked at the Groucho before, but we do like the place.  The premises work well for a wedding reception, and the wall art’s a bit different too, including as it does this truly wonderful portrait of Betty Windsor …

Mention must also be made of Blue Attic a band which impressed me not only by managing very well without the usual interminable “here we are being rock stars” wedding band soundcheck, but also by fitting themselves and their gear into a very small space indeed.  And they made a really good job of The Killers’ “Human”, a song which not many wedding bands could get away with …

The slideshow of all the pictures will be online on the clients page of our main site tomorrow (Friday), but to see it you’ll need the login details, and you get them from Erin and Alan – not from us!

Have a good weekend folks!

That’s definitely not the finest picture ever taken of a jazz trio and yes it is a silly name (albeit a memorable one), but there we have The Dixie Ticklers in action at Jo and Tom’s reception last month.

Now, we get a go on several jazz bands of various persuasions every year, and it has to be said that most of them are pretty dire. In fact if you were to bang me on the head in the night and say “jazz at weddings”, I would doubtless come out with “bum notes”, “beer” and “short sets with long gaps between numbers” before waking up.

Not so with these guys. When we turned up, I didn’t take a huge amount of notice of them simply because we were pushed for time and had a lot to get through before sitdown, but it soon became apparent that not only could all three of these frankly unlikely-looking jazzmen play their instruments better than most, but they kept playing for a lot longer too. Even more remarkably though, they actually seemed to be enjoying making the music!

All of which is a long-winded way of saying if you need some jazz at your wedding, Dom James is your man. He’s the dude on clarinet in that picture, his mobile’s 07851 601 605, his website’s here and I’m sure he said he can turn out as a bigger band with vocals too.

Neither of us is particularly big on either ballet or baroque music, but we are indebted to our friend David Murray in Maine for bringing this beautiful performance to our attention.

Just as any string quartet at a wedding can be guaranteed to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D within 15 minutes of picking up their instruments, any party band with at least one guitar, bass, drums and vocals will inevitably do Brown Eyed Girl and Mustang Sally. The band at Katharine and Edward’s wedding did things a little differently though, in that they didn’t do them until the second set! Gosh. Some of the guests must have found that really confusing.

The equivalent for trad jazzers is of course The Saints and for cool jazzers it’s Girl From Ipanema with varying amounts of bum notes, but did you know that for a military band it’s a march called Blazeaway?

And did you also know that the entire cello part for Pachelbel’s Canon in D consists of the same 8 notes played in the same order 52 times?

Now I know I don’t reckon to post any music or weird stuff during peak wedding season, but I only just discovered this band and I really rate them. If you’re into experimental rock bands and clever songwriting, and you’re impressed by good musicians (or even if you just like Sigur Rós?), there’s a lot of their stuff on YouTube and it’s well worth checking out – particularly the studio version of “When Water Comes To Life” and the live “Everybody Here Is A Cloud” from March this year.

Lisa – thank you very much indeed. Have a great day!

That’s Patrick and Eugene doing “The Birds And The Bees”, and this is “Bonden og Elverpigen” from a strange band called Sorten Muld, which according to our Danish dentist translates as Black Earth. He says it’s about a farmer and the elf maidens who lure innocent young men into the forest …

That’s a band called Tonic doing “Lemon Parade”, and this is “Red Wing” from Hem

We’re well into Trespassers William here and that’s them doing “Different Stars” from the album of the same name. I actually think “Lie In The Sound” is a better introduction to the band and it’s on YouTube, but the video’s so banal I really don’t want to post it.

This one’s just bizarre: the band’s called Dark Side Of The Moonshine and I have no idea at all what’s with the Wizard Of Oz costumes …