Your First Dance: Wedding Favourites for Couples all over the world select songs that have great meaning in their lives for the first song to be played at their wedding reception. It’s the song that the bride and groom get to dance alone to. Although hundreds of thousands of people get married every year, the same 50 or so songs appear to be used time and time again.
It seems that every music website has conducted a poll to find the top ten wedding songs. Here are our picks.
1. You’re Still the One by Shania Twain.
Despite her front page news break-up from Mutt Lange Shania has remarried and found love again. You have to wonder if she chose one of her own songs for her first dance song. A wedding is a good time to remind each other that they’re still the one. If not now, then when?
2. Everything I Do (I Do It for You) by Bryan Adams
This song stayed on the radio playlists for what felt like forever in 1991. It was perhaps slightly overplayed, but the emotional words ring true for many brides and grooms. And here’s an interesting fact: this song is linked to our number one pick, since Mutt Lunge wrote this song with singer Bryan Adams.
3. Eternal Flame by The Bangles
This rousing slow burner by writer Susanna Hoffs (with plenty of help from hit writing experts Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg) is the perfect lyric set for the wedding couple to offer to each other as they pledge a life together.
4. Woman by John Lennon
The first ex-Beatle entry provides a one sided song from the man to the woman unless it’s a lesbian wedding when it’ll apply to both people. Nevertheless, it amply portrays any man’s feelings for his woman (or should that be lady?)
5. Have I Told You Lately by Van Morrison
This song has sound marriage advice. Both sides of the couple need to quickly learn that they need to tell the other person they love them on a regular basis, not just daily for the first few weeks, but throughout the marriage.
6. If I Fell by The Beatles
This is a strange selection for a first dance song because it deals with the time before a couple falls in love. Let’s hope that’s before the wedding and the ‘I do’ ceremony even if you listen to it in your Berkline chairs.
7. From This Moment On by Shania Twain
It’s another top ten wedding song entry for Shania, who delivers this song with maximum feeling. Like the previous song, it’s one she may avoid singing to husband number two since she wrote it with husband number one. Will she include it for her fans when she starts her Las Vegas residency in 2012?
8. I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston
This Bodyguard standard remains one of the most played songs at any dance, not just at weddings. If only the wish could stay true for longer than the singer’s own marriage lasted.
9. Something by The Beatles
George Harrison’s spectacular song wasn’t written for his wife, Patti Boyd. It was just a song he wrote that happened to come together rather well, which explains its popularity at many weddings.
10. You’re Beautiful by James Blunt
Most of the songs on this list are at least 20 years old whereas this number hasn’t even reached its first decade. Sung from the man to the woman, it’s a bit one-sided, but what bride wouldn’t count this as a favorite?
Beyond the Top Ten
Oddly, Christine McVie’s Songbird, the tune she had a hit with when she played keyboards with Fleetwood Mac, appears in almost every chart, but always just outside the top ten, so for this reason it makes number eleven on our list of wedding hits.
And while there’s no place for Fairytale of New York as a first dance song, it’s always listed in the most played wedding songs. We wonder if anyone listens to the lyrics before picking it – or is there a love song in there we’ve missed?
Finally, here are eight more songs often played at weddings that didn’t make it to the top ten.
• The Muppet Show theme
• ‘Murder on the dance floor’ by Sophie Ellis Bextor
• ‘Sex bomb’ by Tom Jones
• ‘Sexual Healing’ by Marvin Gaye
• ‘You never can tell’ Song from Pulp Fiction by Chuck Berry
• Theme tune to Coronation Street
• ‘Lady (hear me tonight)’ by Modjo
• ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ by Dusty Springfield