Jig Blog

15 tips for the worried bride (part 1)

So here are some thoughts on wedding worries. You'll have to balance the fact that I've been helping wedding clients with their entertainment for 12 years with the fact that I'm still only a bloke, and will never fully understand the deeply disturbing psychosis of the female mind :-)

1. Develop a sense of perspective.

This is easier said than done. But the truth is that you've probably been planning for this day for a very long time, perhaps even before you met your spouse-to-be. Some women start planning the details at the age of 3 or 4. That's a freight-train of expectation which is going to be hard to stop. Learn to put the brakes on your expectations, and find ways to cross-reference them with this thing the rest of us call reality.

2. Move your expectations to marriage, not the wedding day.

Marriage is for life, not just for weddings. The wedding magazines don't tell you that, because they don't make their money out of your marriage. One way to get a rein on your expectations is to shift them to marriage, rather than your wedding.  Marriage can be so much more rewarding, and give you so many more great experiences and memories than your wedding day ever can. Speak to the person who is marrying you both. If it's a minister, he might offer marriage classes. These are surprisingly valuable, and can help contextualise the cultural and spiritual importance of marriage itself, rather than just the wedding ceremony.

3. Forget yourself.

The bride is the only one who gets to dress in a big amazing white dress. Don't be fooled into thinking that makes you a princess by default, though. The wedding day is as much about the guests and family as it is about the bride and groom. Remember that guests have made an effort to get dressed up to come along, and that's something to be grateful for. The entertainment and food are secondary to recognising the fact that you guests are people too. They have emotional needs, and nothing will make a wedding gathering more enjoyable than guests who feel appreciated. But before you think I'm saying you should go about apologising to everyone, and worrying about them...

4. Remember yourself.

Maybe you've got an awful lot of friends and extended family, and enough money to feed and entertain them all. If that's the case, then be aware that you are not planning a small informal social gathering, and as a result you just cannot get around all your guests. The speeches are a perfect time to communicate to everyone how grateful you are for them making the effort, but let them know that if you can't see them much today, you're really looking forward to hearing from them as you start your married life. Make firm offers of dinners and get-togethers for after the wedding...And not just so you can talk about the wedding: so you can find out about what's happening in their lives.

People do want to see you enjoying yourself, not getting flustered. Let them be gracious to you as you are gracious to them.

5.Think about the symbolism.

A wedding day is heavy with symbolic meaning. It is not just a party, it's a celebration. Think about what you are celebrating; what you are marking. Your lifelong commitment to your spouse. It symbolises The importance of friends and family and community. Remember not to place more value on the symbol than the thing it symbolises.

So that's the first five ideas for starters.  I'd be grateful for any responses to this. Just click on the comments box below this post and add your thoughts!

Stay tuned for part 2...

Tips for Brides: Scottish Weddings Without the Worry

I recently asked Brides-to-be over on the Scottish Wedding Directory wedding forum about what they worried most about when planning their weddings. I'd like to repeat the question here.

I've dealt with brides and grooms-to-be for the last 12 years of running the ceilidh band, but I have to say I was pretty shocked and amazed by some of the answers. Shocked that there could be just so many things to worry about, and amazed that women can enjoy or look forward to their wedding day at all!

Worries include:

Wedding Dress: fit or split?

Weather: will it rain? Will it ruin the photos?

Guests: will they enjoy it? Will they be bored?

Family: will they show up? Will they show me up?

And then of course you've got the long list of wedding suppliers. Are they all reliable? Will they turn up on time? Will they deliver on their promises? Will they ruin everything?

As a Scottish wedding music supplier, I've worked with clients at both ends of the spectrum: those who are lovely, relaxed and enjoying every minute of it, and of course the occasional "bridezilla" (though to be fair, it's often just as much dad-zilla, groom-zilla, or sometimes even the vicar...man-of-God-zilla)

Next week I'll be posting on this subject, trying to understand *why* people get so frantic about their wedding day, hopefully outlining some of the practical solutions to the problem of wedding worry.

So to all the brides-to-be out there...what are you worried about?

A brief guide to electronic music

I've been spending a few hours enjoying this site: Ishkur's guide to Electronic Music. It's rude, ironic, opinionated and really quite funny. But it provides a fascinating insight into the development of electronic music, and traces stylistic strands and influences across such genres as house, hip hop, disco, jungle, dub and numerous ludicrous subcategories (booty bass and terrorcore to name but two).

Many of the inferences and deliniations will no doubt be highly contested by dance afficionados, but to do that is to miss the point. It documents the chemical reaction of culture, youth, media, politics and creativity over the dawn of the electronic age, and highlights key figures, moments and places in the history of electronic music. It also provides numerous audio samples to let you hear for yourself.

The funny thing is that I seemed to come to electronic music from completely the other end. I've grown up with the pop-ified version of electronic music: only the most accessible, catchy material that made it out of the clubs and onto radio (mine was a relatively innocent childhood!) But I didn't necessarily hear anything I definitely wanted to emulate. My musical training was classical and rock & pop. Guitars and keyboards and verse-chorus-bridge stuff.

I first developed an interest in making electronic music when I discover the sequencing software Logic Audio while studying music at uni. It just seemed to make sense, much more than written scores (I've always been poor at sightreading).

The interesting thing is that most of the electronic music I've made has not been consciously imitating certain artists or style. I had no idea that the drum loop I was using under that synth line meant I was making a breakbeat record. Or that adding reverb to that patch made this section sound like epic eurotrance. So it added a kind of naivety, but also a kind of freedom. You just make the music that sounds good to you, and don't worry about whether it's cool, or whether it's been done before. I wonder whether that stands in your favour if you want to get your music noticed? Does it help to "know" the genre you are working in? Or does it just make you seize up, discarding every idea that sounds a little like something else, because you're on a mission to make something original?

I have to say though, I think my favourite genre in this whole list is what he calls "VGM". Video Game Music. Created using the audio chips from Commodore 64s and ZX spectrums, this music was probably the music I listened to more than any other in my youth, and still creates a soft nostalgic feeling when I hear it. You can hear that influence quite strongly in much of my own electronic music. Go listen: it's on the bottom left of the Techno category.

And another great example of this kind of music I discovered today (on Spotify), listen to this.

Rave on, ravers, as my dad used to say.

England: Where I went (and how it smelled)

Just back from a lovely fortnight down in England. It's a nice place. Do you know it? Just a bit south of Glasgow. I like it down there, even though they don't really do mountains properly,and even if they're a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to knowing how to run a ceilidh.

I like to live a bit of a rock and roll lifestyle, I'll admit. I'm a crazy, thrill-seeking, caution-to-the-wind, adventure junkie kind of a chap. So it's unsurprising that the highlight of our holiday was a visit to this place. That's right. We went on a guided tour of a Perfume Factory in the Cotswolds.

It was actually pretty interesting.

No, really.

Centred around the skills of their master perfumer John Stephen, the business depends on his developing and combining scents to create a perfume which successfully tick the boxes of the remit of a corporate client order. It's hardly glamorous. But please enough people in those marketing test groups, and you could find your secret concoction flying out of the door by the thousands of gallons, appearing on a million different shelves around the world.

 And yet it's basically a business that revolves around one guy's nose. That aspect appealed to me as a music producer and songwriter. You can get all the delivery infrastructure you like,whether it's a factory or a multi-faceted delivery and promotion network. But in the end it all comes down to the core product, whether it's a song or a smell. A riff or a whiff, if you will.

 If you ever intend to visit the Cotswolds (and I recommend you do, just to spend a day in the amazingly quaint Bourton-On-The-Water, which looks as though it should be populated entirely by Hobbits) then do go on the 45 minute tour of this factory.

Scents and perfumes is a market dominated by marketing companies. The brands of perfume you buy are nothing more than that: brands. About 80-90% of the cost of the product is ploughed into marketing. The global cosmetics, toiletries and fragrance industry is worth £6.2 billion.

Not something to be sniffed at.

(re: the pictures...Perfume marketing has a glamorous sexy public image, but I like to think these images uncover the startling reality of the seamy underworld where perfume really comes from.)

Dancing shoes

If you're attending an event with our ceilidh band, make sure and bring your dancing shoes. We've seen even strip-the-willows done in the most flimsy of footwear, but we don't advise it. Keep those high heels for the catwalks, ladies. Though, on second thoughts...maybe just leave them off altogether...