A Favorable Gift: Wedding CDs

/// One of the hottest wedding favors is a customized CD filled with music meaningful to you and your fiancé. Wedding CD’s are increasingly popular gifts because they reflect your personal style, the emotion of your wedding and can be enjoyed by your guests for a lifetime.

Begin creating your wedding CD by determining your budget for favors. Once you have a budget, you can decide on your priorities, including if you will purchase a CD from the internet or from a record store, the number of songs and the look of your favor – a pre-packaged cover or designed by your custom invitation designer.

Decide how you will purchase the music. The internet provides a wealth of sites that have pre-packaged wedding CD’s with options for listening to the songs. Other sites offer CDs that you can customize with pay-per-song downloading options featuring classical, world, and contemporary artists. Local record stores have compilations made for specifically for weddings. Try soundtracks to classic romantic movies like Casablanca or a modern film such as Love Actually. Check with your live entertainment for the wedding – the band may have a CD of their best hits that you can buy. Your guests could actually take home a part of your wedding!

Choosing the songs is a great time to orchestrate a romantic evening with your fiancé. Decide on the overall idea of the CD and then group the songs according to mood, themes and then tempos. Themes could include songs for a Sunday morning brunch, afternoon driving tour, cocktail hour, or dinner party. Once you have the songs grouped by mood, then consider how they flow together. Grouped slow songs are a good way to ease the listener into a mood and fast songs are a great way to finish the mood on an uplifting note. Select ten to fifteen songs, which is usually the maximum storage capacity for most CD’s.

Once you have selected the songs, you will need to design your packaging. The unique CD cover used by bride Lisa Breckenridge and groom Andy Cohen featured their engagement photographs taken on the beach. The front cover showed an intimate portrait, which hinted at the personal nature of the songs to the couple. The back cover showed a fun picture of the two walking along the beach along a message thanking the guests for being part of their special day. The jacket design for their wedding CD reflected their fun and romantic spirit, so the guests received a favor that truly reflected Lisa and Andy.

Creating a wedding CD with your fiancé is creative and unique. Your guests, of all ages, will appreciate the time and effort you have invested in giving something that truly reflects you as a couple. You and your guests will listen to your wedding CD for years to come.