I hear it in roughly every second conversation, and I understand why: you are in the middle of booking a venue, a caterer, a photographer and a dress, and the music feels like the one thing you can safely hand over. It almost never is.
The couples who tell me it doesn't matter are the very same couples who walk over halfway through the reception and ask, "do you have something happier?" or "something people know?" I don't say that as a criticism — it simply proves that it does matter to them. They just had no way of putting it into words in advance. But discovering it mid-event, with a violin in my hands and a hundred guests around, is the worst possible moment to find out.
A secular couple's wedding in Tel Aviv. I played all sorts of things through the reception and it was lovely, pleasant, perfectly fine. Then I started Ed Sheeran's Perfect. Within seconds I felt the room change — people began humming, turning around, looking for where the music was coming from. Older guests and younger guests were moving to the same thing at the same time. Nothing about my playing was better than it had been a minute earlier. I was simply playing something everyone knew.
Beautiful music and music that works are not the same thing. Beautiful is what I love to play; works is what a guest recognises within two seconds. A good event needs both, in the right proportion — and that proportion is impossible to guess without knowing who is in the room.
Not a playlist. Four anchors: one song that means something to you, one song every guest will know, something calm for the arrival, and something that lifts as the ceremony approaches. Everything else I read from the room in real time. Four decisions, ten minutes.
What is the age range in the room? Is there a song your family always sings together? Is there something tied to a grandmother, a grandfather, a shared memory? They sound like small questions, and they are exactly the ones that produce the moment you will remember. One ten-minute phone call is worth more than any form.