Artist	Song
Dave Matthews Band	Where Are You Going
from Busted Stuff (2002) 3:52
Leonard Cohen	Suzanne
from The Best Of Leonard Cohen (1975) 3:49
Yes	If Only You Knew
from The Ladder (1999) 5:43
Neil Young	Red Sun
from Silver & Gold (2000) 2:42
Sting	Fields Of Gold
from Songs From The Labyrinth: Dowland Anniversary Edition (2013) 3:27
King Crimson	Walking On Air
from THRAK (1995) 4:37
Kenneth Nelson & Rita Gardner	They Were You
from The Fantasticks - Original Cast Album (1963) 2:45
Steven Gellman	Autumn's Love Song
from Photobook (1997) 3:55
Susan Boyle & Donny Osmond	This Is The Moment
from Standing Ovation: The Greatest Songs From The Stage (2012) 3:29
Death Cab For Cutie	I Will Follow You Into The Dark
from Plans (2005) 3:10
Elvis Costello	She
from Notting Hill: Music From The Motion Picture (1999) 3:07
Jewel	Painters
from Pieces Of You (1995) 6:44
The Duhks	Who Will Take My Place
from Migrations (2006) 3:42
Francis Cabrel	Je T'Aimais, Je T'Aime, Je T'Aimerai
from Samedi Soir Sur La Terre (1994) 4:39

Comment:

Well, I avoided it in my last post here, two days ago, but, as it turns out, I got married last month! The idea of making a mix for the wedding (and distributing it as a wedding favor) was one I'd originally floated fairly late during our engagement, and — due to nerves, maybe, or whatever — immediately presented as a bad idea of mine. Connie, however, thought from the first that it was feasible: the mix would be comprised of selections from our reception playlist, as well as whatever music we'd have playing during the ceremony. And, of course, we ended up doing it; and, it seemed, really, to be received better by the guests than our fears pushed us to believe during this age of streaming. (And during the reception, in fact, I was delighted to find out that more than one of our guests still listened to the mixes I'd made them over a decade ago!)

Here's the mix. We both contributed songs, but it was Connie who did the final track selection and sequencing, although I did the volume and gap adjustments between the songs (the process I sometimes not-so-humbly refer to as "the actual mixing"). We also collaborated on the cover design, though the original photo was Connie's, from a tour of the Scottish Highlands during our honeymoon. Some comments on the songs themselves follow:

We got engaged in Montreal during the summer of 2016, and Montrealer Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" was a point of reference as we toured around the city. I sang what I remembered of the song partway up Mont Royal, the mountain in the city's center; she'd never heard any of the song before, and was quite impressed by it.

"Who Will Take My Place" is under no stretch of the imagination a love song, but it seemed to fit well enough into the track sequence, and it made for a couple of pretty notable moments in our relationship. In 2014, we'd trekked, perhaps unwisely, by rail from New York City to eastern Connecticut for a Renaissance something-or-other called Robin Hood's Faire, and were more impressed by this then unknown-to-us Dan Frechette song, sung a cappella by one K. Bevin Ayers in the role of Maid Marian, than by anything else at the event. Right at the end of our honeymoon, then, I'd like to think I paid that karma back by singing the same song, a cappella, when the hosts of our Dublin "Traditional Irish Music Pub Crawl" invited any audience member who wished to come up and sing a song of their choice!

"Autumn's Love Song" was our key song for this mix (our wedding date being September 23rd, often the fall equinox), as well as the source of its title, and we had it playing during the ceremony itself, during our unity rituals of signing our marriage license and placing letters into a time-capsule box. For a while before the wedding, I couldn't even listen to this song without getting misty and sentimental for what was to come.

The other songs here we used in the ceremony were "Fields Of Gold" for the processional and "This Is The Moment" for the recessional. "Fields Of Gold" isn't the famous version, but a much more languid performance recorded with classical lutenist Edin Karamazov. To top it off, too, during our honeymoon we passed right by Sting's Irish summer house!

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