First Dance Friday: The Vitamin String Quartet

Sometimes you want music at your wedding that just isn't appropriate. It's too metal, too sweary, too ravetastic, whatever - you just know your Aunty Pat is going to hate it.

Sometimes you will say "balls to it!" and have it anyway.

But maybe other times you won't.

When Sam and I were arguing about discussing what music to have during our ceremony as people came in, we nearly came to blows. He thinks the nice music I like (Yo La Tengo) is fey, I think the nice music he likes (Tom Waits) is bloody depressing. Having established that we can only agree on unsuitable punch-the-air party music, we were forced to come up with more civilised ear fodder.

In the magical land of Dream Wedding (where I forward-roll down the aisle on a giant rainbow) we would have had an enchanting string quartet playing a Vivaldi-esque interpretation of Decadence Dance by Extreme. In the real world, where money is scarce, we were helpless.

That is, until we stumbled across the Vitamin String Quartet:



Oh go on. I know you think it's tacky. Here's that memo you missed: I am tacky. Tacky is cool.

The Vitamin String Quartet are a group of LA-based musicians who arrange and perform rock n roll and pop hits in a classical style. If anybody remembers Hooked On Classics, I would ask you to kindly hold that thought.  Hooked On Classics never performed the hits of Iron Maiden, that's all I can say.

These guys have so many songs, there really is something for everyone, from Duran Duran to Dragonforce, Prince to the Pixies, it's all there. I think there's something pretty cool in choosing a song pretty much nobody but you and your husband will recognise, just sneaking it in there, like a rock wolf in classical clothing.

And for that reason, we didn't have AC/DC in the end. We chose this -



- another daft pop song we like to sing along to in the car, a favourite off one of my ten mix CDs.

And nobody at our ceremony (correct me if you were there)  noticed that it wasn't a beautiful piece of original classical music, perfectly suited to the occasion.