It’s always a pleasure to re-visit the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, one of the prettiest wedding destination venues in Orange County and a perfect location for the Judy Chamberlain brand of Old Hollywood style vintage live music.
I was a guest for dinner the night before the Ritz-Carlton opened many years ago and have performed at this lovely resort on the California Coast often in the years since then.
My band and I performed at the Ritz-Carlton on New Year’s Eve 2000, which was when I first sang the special lyrics Paul Anka wrote for me to “My Way.” (More on that another time.) One of my favorite Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel weddings several years ago featured Baccarat crystal goblets and Buccellati silver at each place setting for for 300 guests!
A recent wedding celebration at this distinctive Orange County venue made good use of live music. Vintage, Old Hollywood swing and jazz, some Motown and a hefty side order of anything that was ever played in an Audrey Hepburn movie were the order of the day and evening.
I LOVED this wedding! Lots of humor and wit, a bride and groom with delightful taste in music and all-around superb communication despite time constraints….it was a great collaboration!
“No Macarena,” the bride had told me.
“Sinatra. And lots of swing music. And some Elvis, Beatles…and ‘Sweet Caroline’ as a surprise for my fiance, who is a Boston Red Sox fan.”
They would do their first dance after dinner. They wanted a gracious pace, but most of all they wanted their guests to have a lot of fun.
Both from traditional Asian families, they would be making two costume changes during dinner, and visiting with each table in the large ballroom. The music would be vintage, but also upbeat and entertaining.
With an Alice In Wonderland theme, a Mad Hatter Tea Party candy station and a lovely setting like the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, we could have gone in a lot of directions with the music.
Which is exactly what we did!
The bride thought the guests would be dancers - and they were!
Sometimes, a vital part of our job as musicians is to “provide cover.” If the costume changes take longer than expected — or the ceremony is an hour late in starting, for instance, which has happened – nobody knows the difference because we’re there playing this great live music…..
But this wedding was smooth and flawless, from beginning to end.
The ceremony was especially gorgeous, and made wonderful use of the couple’s mutual love of old movies.
Because I knew that the bride loved Audrey Hepburn, I had suggested that they might like the theme from a movie Hepburn made in the late 1960’s with Albert Finney, “Two For The Road.”
They liked it so well that they decided to use the words from the song for their wedding vows!
More Audrey Hepburn: the bride came down the aisle to “Funny Face.”
It was fabulous!
“I was watching the whole thing,” one of the florists told me.
“It was amazing,” she said “The bride and groom and the band seemed to be working as one.”
I liked that, because it so captured the essence of what we do.
Because everything we play is completely live, we can “time” a walk down the aisle for maximum drama.
For their first dance, the copule waltzed to another Audrey Hepburn movie tune, “Moon River.”
And then we played “Besame Mucho” — someone had requesed it — and a bunch of swing and rock and even some old “doo-wop” like “Since I Don’t Have You.”
There was a lot of dancing, and the costume changes were a big hit.
“Sweet Caroline” was an interactive hit, just as the bride had planned it - and a big surprise to the groom. also as planned.
We played it toward the end of the night.
And then we reprised “Two For The Road” for the last dance.
I can’t wait to see the pictures.
Some things are priceless.
Member Association of Bridal Consultants