The Wedding Weekend That Moved to Music

Photography by Kerry Jeanne, featured on Destination I do

Of all the couples I have worked with, Alicia and Brad had one of the clearest ideas of how they wanted their wedding to feel. Passionate about art, literature and music, they leaned completely into the winter season, creating a celebration that felt like stepping into a cinematic dream. Across two days, every element, from the flowers and food to the music and the way guests moved through the spaces, was deeply intentional.

The Welcome Dinner

The weekend began with an intimate dinner inspired by Dutch still-life paintings: abundant, atmospheric, decadent. The idea carried through the evening, from the welcome drinks to the tablescape, with fruit, flowers, candlelight and rich seasonal tones creating something that felt entirely at home in the depths of winter. Live music accompanied the evening, and for their first room reveal, I arranged for the musicians to play one of Alicia and Brad’s favourite songs as they walked in. Whether they consciously registered the detail or not almost didn’t matter; it was there to make the moment feel like theirs.

The Wedding Day

The wedding day began quietly, with the weather providing exactly the backdrop Alicia had hoped for. Their ceremony, accompanied by violin and harp, took place in an overgrown, candlelit chapel before guests followed the couple back to the main house for mulled cider and a decadent charcuterie table.

Alicia and Brad chose to cut their cake and have their first dance during cocktail hour in the front hall. Knowing guests might naturally interpret the first dance as a signal that dinner was next, we timed the catering team to enter immediately afterwards with trays of fresh drinks: a small detail that made it clear, without an announcement, that cocktails were continuing.

The transition to dinner was my favourite part. A gong gathered everyone's attention before the harp began playing from the balcony. The violin joined, and the violinist descended the staircase before leading everyone through the house and across the courtyard towards dinner.

The challenge was carrying one piece of music between two separate buildings without breaking the spell. We couldn't control exactly how quickly a group of guests would walk, so the entire transition was choreographed around the violinist's pace. As she reached the banqueting hall, the doors opened at a precisely timed moment and the recorded version of the song began inside, with her live violin continuing over it as everyone entered. What the guests experienced was ninety seconds of music carrying them seamlessly from cocktails to dinner. Behind it was a carefully timed sequence involving the musicians, sound engineer, catering team and my team.

After dinner, music became the thread again. The DJ and violinist performed together, combining recorded music with live violin, before leading everyone from dinner into dancing. Alicia and Brad had worked closely with the DJ on a playlist that felt entirely their own and, despite the intimate guest count, the dance floor stayed full into the early hours.