Trio sets

I was just telling someone on Twitter today that my first fiancee broke off our engagement on the minuscule pretext that I ate apples too loudly. I think the real reason was that her brothers had arrived from South Africa to warn her off matching herself up with a no-hoper from NZ, and any excuse was good enough. Ce la vie.

Why do I mention this, because you can get trio sets from Reeds.com. Okay, you say, what are 'trio sets'? Are they string trio players doing a 'set' of popular classics? Not quite, I reply. In fact, all I know is that trio sets have something to do with engagement rings,

A bit more investigation shows that the trio consists of an engagement ring for the fiancee, and a wedding ring each for the bride and groom. Obvious, really. Naturally they come in diamonds. What else?

Now here's a marketing idea. And it would be an encouragement for the young couple to stay together too. Each major wedding anniversary - the silver, gold, ruby, etc - would be commemorated by yet another ring for the bride that fitted the original trio set. If the groom was keen, he could have one too. They probably wouldn't run out of fingers...

Her day?

I came across a post on another blog recently which was aimed at wedding photographers (particularly amateur ones) and made a big deal about the way in which the wedding day is HER day – that is, the bride’s – and everything should be done to make it immortalised by keeping a record of every detail, from wedding flowers to cake, from what the bridesmaids wore to every miniscule button and bow on the bride’s dress. In fact, if nothing else got photographed, make sure it was the dress!
And don’t forget the church (interior and out), and the ushers’ shoes and the bows on the ends of the pews, and the spot on the clergyman’s nose, and the organist’s fingernails, and…
Well, you name it. But do you notice who’s missing out of this line up? Yup, the groom. Somehow or other we’ve got into the mentality that the wedding day is for the bride and the bride alone. It’s something our ancestors would have laughed uproariously at. In fact, it’s likely that they would have focused more attention on the groom, who, after all, was taking on a woman as his bride.
Perhaps Bridezilla and the like are to blame. Or maybe they merely reflect the absurdity of the current approach. Whatever the case, it’s time we got back to seeing the bride and groom as equally important on this day – after all, both of them are committing themselves to each other – and to forget this modern nonsense about ‘her’ day.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Egnaczyk

Wedding bands (not bans)

When I think of wedding bands, I don’t immediately think of the rings that go round your finger - although obviously that’s an integral part of a wedding - but of the groups that play at weddings. Having been involved in a number of weddings in my long and illustrious career, I know the stresses and joys of playing at weddings.
Of course most wedding bands are groups that actually play at the reception. My experience (thank goodness, say I) has been limited to playing during the wedding service. I’ve played at weddings by myself, with other musicians - both experienced and inexperienced - and with singers. For some reason it’s always a bit of a nightmare: the musicians don’t often get to rehearse when all the other people are rehearsing, and in a number of cases, various musicians who’ve never played together before are called together for the day and expected to sit down and make the best of it.
I don’t know which is worse, playing for a wedding by yourself, where the whole onus of the couple’s future happiness seems to be falling on any dud notes you play, or playing with an ad hoc group who do their best to come in together, to play the same sort of rhythms and in general keep their ears at full pitch in order to achieve something reasonable.
Of course I know that the couple’s happiness doesn’t depend on what the musicians do. If most couples I’ve known are anything to go by, they barely notice the music. The groom is standing nervously for hours (so it seems to him) before the bride arrives, and when she does arrive the last thing his focus is on is the music. The bride has far more important things to worry about, like whether the flower girl will actually make it down the aisle without (a) dropping the flowers, (b) bursting into tears and wailing for her mummy, or (c) deciding that she’s the sole focus of attention and making sure everyone in the church notices her.
So on most occasions the musicians could play what they like and only a few attentive members of the wedding party would pick it up. And as long as the musicians get their little envelope with the amount of cash inside, everyone’s happy.