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wedding tuneage

i love music. music holds my attention like nothing else. i am constantly thinking about all things music and sound. my career and hobbies are largely music related. i judge a movie by its soundtrack (and i'll judge your wedding by its soundtrack too...sorry!) needless to say, the music at my wedding was important to me. the sound at my wedding was important to me. i wanted the music to fit us and fit the wedding atmosphere i had laid out in my mind. in the past, i've found feedback and sound issues at weddings to be very distracting. it's probably just me, but i feel that sound should looked at just as carefully as anything else in the wedding. with all that said, it's necessary to point out that i'm no musical prodigy/genius, nor am i an extremely renowned musician (quite the opposite actually). i'm just picky and probably have an opinion (and am working on expressing that opinions less frequently).

funny how things pan out. the music for our wedding came together VERY last minute: my bad.
sara reminded me on several occasions that music for the wedding was my responsibility and - apparently - i can be a bit of a procrastinator. luckily, with the help of some fantastic folks, we pulled it off.

my uncle ron is pro audio guy and i'm crazy in debt to him for all he did. he's also a bit of a rat bastard which isn't surprising as he's one of my dad's long time close friends. nevertheless, his experience and expertise in running live sound at large conventions and concerts and such, left me with little to worry about. all i needed to do was tell him what i wanted and i knew it would get done. we had no power out in the field and he took care of that by bringing his own generator. he and my cousin nick saved the day when the generator died EXACTLY when the wedding started. we drained the generator with the string lights hanging between the pallet panels. oops. we didn't anticipate they'd draw that much juice. that one got blamed on me, but ron and nick had us back up and running within 10 minutes. we paid ron zero dollars; money well spent. thanks uncle ron!

my dad wanted to have his buds play at the reception and i was cool with that. Dan Coy and Mac Mckibben are a duo that have been playing together in atlanta for some time. they showed up in their hawaiian shirts and really did a great job of setting the social mood. they are fantastic musicians and easy going dudes. some of you may have noticed a couple unusual jazz renditions they slipped by. i know for sure they played a nirvana song and the flintstones theme and would not be surprised if they had thrown in some 2pac and queen.

both the PA situation and reception band were set in stone at least 2 months before the wedding. however, i had not found musicians or picked music for the ceremony until much later. i had been looking for an accordionist for some time and hadn't had any success in booking one.

through a person, through another person, i finally stumbled upon the husband and wife duo of Mackenzie and Randy Chester. together they are 4 and 20 Blackbirds. they live in northeast georgia with their baby girl, rosie, and are a super fun couple. they write some really funky music and we dig it. i posted a music video they made towards the bottom of this post. it's a fun watch. they are gonna hit the studio for a few days soon so be on the lookout for that. they also bailed me out big time: they were excited to do the wedding and they were excited about my visions for the wedding.

sara and i love The Beatles. we opted to have Beatles songs played instead of the wedding march (whatever it's called). we really enjoyed the covers done for the "Across the Universe" soundtrack. i'm not usually a fan of covers, but i found these to be very tasteful and well done. to announce sara coming towards the ceremony site, an mp3 of "Girl" (listen to it loud) sung by jim sturgess was played loudly over the PA. this song is so beautiful and gives me chills every time i hear it. when the song finished, sara and her father could be seen on the horizon walking towards the chapel. this is where 4 and 20 Blackbirds played an accordion and guitar instrumental version of "Blackbird" (ironic?) in place of the wedding march. i couldn't hold it in. i was crying like a baby... and you probably were too. it was crazy beautiful to me, and my bride was downright stunning. hubba hubba. randy and mackenzie performed a beautiful stripped down version of "Be Thou My Vision" when sara and i shared communion. it was perfect. and to top it all off, sara and i were introduced as a couple to "Typical" by MuteMath. i love the energy at the beginning of that song. it pumps you up. i thought it was a bad-awesome introduction.


general guests at the wedding sat down to a fantastic mix (if i do say so myself) of oldie love songs: Ray Charles, Elvis, Aretha Franklin, and Ivory Joe Hunter to name a few. i intended for the wedding party to be seated to "All You Need is Love" by The Beatles, but that's when the generator died. sara choreographed our first dance to "You Never Can Tell" by Chuck Berry. that was a lot of fun. sara is a much better dancer than i. sara shared a dance with her father to "Cinderella" by Steven Curtis Chapman and i shared a dance with my mother to "Mama" by BJ Thomas. sara and i left the reception, rather appropriately, to "The Final Countdown" by Europe. sweet.


we may have lost power, we might have even had a tiny bit of feedback, and we may not have had the perfect wedding. but to me, at that time, it was the most perfect thing in my life.

thanks to everyone else who helped out with the music and sound stuff. and thanks to dad for letting us use his gear. you rock.

kyle hale - gangster

{i straight ganked this image from facebook}

we've mentioned him lots on this blog and in our various casual conversations but we still get asked frequently who was behind the lens for our engagement photos and wedding photos. this is the man: Kyle Hale.

Pete referred us to his old GCSU college buddy and we were blown away when we saw his photos. there's quite a few surprises hidden behind kyle's sexy little beard. not only is he bad awesome with his camera and computer tricks, he's got a degree in audio engineering, owns bunches of cool instruments, likes good music, likes good design, loves God, laughs a lot, works at the CNN center, rides a vespa, smells nice, and protects the innocent. i like him a lot.

for those wondering, kyle shoots with a Nikon D80, a Nikkor 24-120 f/3.5 VR lens, a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, and a lot of skill. we lost light quickly after the wedding and kyle did a great job snapping the photos before we completely lost light and editing photos to make it look like there was light. our engagement photos were as fun as they looked largely due to kyle's creativeness and knowledge of the city. there was a lot of improv and laughs with only a few life threatening situations. we'll probably work with this guy again in near future. you should too.

check him out at www.kylehale.net.

august 2nd

it was the perfect day.

it was the perfect evening.

we got married.

hilarious stories of imperfection to come, but for now:

view all the photos, of course by kyle hale, here. thanks kyle!

so we're back...

....and we've been back. but it's been crazy!

we got back from our honeymoon on August 26th and things have been nonstop since. sara started her full time job at Razorfish as a designer. that and being a full time hot wife has been keeping her busy. as i type this she's organizing the apartment and taking care of business. i have a sexy wife.

i've been doing all sorts of small stuff, but considerably less than sara. we returned to a nice clean apartment with fresh flowers and some good food compliments of momma hanks. buuut the next day we were treated with some nice flooding in our office and waited a week before someone came to clean it up. we learned a lot about the staff here with that situation.


there have been a number of issues with the apartment and it's been quite frustrating. sara has been here 2 months and we haven't been able unpack things yet because of floodage and maintenance issues. looks like we may have wait a bit longer to get our office together because it flooded again this evening. boo. this is our temp office.....the power cord keeps getting yanked out:

on some good notes: i've been playing more which has been great. i've really missed how much i used to play so that's been a plus. my brother and brenna got a new puppy named Emo. cool mutt. we got to meet him at a family get together right after we got back. we ate good, celebrated my dad's birthday (officially a senior citizen), and had a good time.



{momma hanks can't handle Uncle Jerry's Forest Haus pepper sauce!}


my next pallet project (i'm obsessed): bookshelves...


lot's more coming from our trip, buuut first watch out for a super cool post from sara tomorrow. a lot of you have been waiting for this one....