As our wedding day is rapidly approaching, my fiancé innocently threw me a curve ball the other week. He asked me what music I wanted to have played during our covenant ceremony. To be honest, I had not really thought about it up until that point. I was so caught up in the coordinating aspect of the day; booking vendors and making sure our wedding party and guests had all the information they needed, that the selection of the music that would be the soundtrack for the ceremony slipped my mind. After first seeking God; I then began to browse titles that make up some of the “Love Song” collections of the 90s and 00s.
See, the one thing I knew was that I did not want to use cookie cutter selections of traditional wedding songs like “Here Comes the Bride” Wagner’s Bridal Chorus or the very lovely “Canon” by Bach. I want to walk down the aisle and have songs played during the ceremony that tell of my fiancé and my love story.
So innocently enough I decided to focus on the two decades where I had thought I began to have an understanding of what romantic love was. In my research, I was sadly disappointed, but also enlightened. I learned that many of the songs I loved growing up were not actually love songs.
Many of them were about cheating on your current mate on the down low, booty calls, and hearts broken with promised answers of violence. The hooks and beats were no doubt tight but the topics all wrong and not ones I want to have played on my fiancé and my special day and definitely not during our wedding ceremony. I am so grateful I found albums like Bishop T.D. Jakes’s “Sacred Love Songs”, “Sacred Love Songs 2”, Ben Tankard’s “Song of Solomon” and other similar titles.
I am also grateful for the teachings of my pastors on Love and Relationships. They made me I realize that I do not have to settle for anything less than God’s best for me. His promises declared in His Word even when it comes to the selection of the music for my wedding. Most couples do not realize the music they play at their ceremony can truly set the tone for their marriage.
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© 2012 – 2013, Lela Jefferson Fagan. All rights reserved.
