So I've actually played in a lot of weddings, and I think it's always gone reasonably well. Anyway, here's the stuff I've played, roughly in chronological order.

1. Random Chopin Polonaise - during the reception at my uncle and aunt's wedding. I think this is the first time I played for a wedding, back when I was in elementary school. I remember I really really didn't want to do it but my mom made me. What ended up happening was that it was a church gym reception and they stuck a piano in there, and I played it during the lunch, but since everyone was eating and talking and it was in a gym, it was too loud for anyone to hear me. When I finished my mom started clapping loudly, since she had made me do it, so everyone else started clapping, but I'm fairly certain only a fraction of them actually heard me playing so I think the room had no idea what the heck they were clapping for.

   I'm not sure it was a Polonaise, but it was something like that.

2. Me And My House - Piano, Tony and Sarah Lee's wedding. Tony was my old youth pastor and Sarah my old Bible study teacher. My memory is actually kind of failing me here, I might have done it when the youth choir director got married also, I think we played something, but I can't remember. Anyway, I accompanied the youth choir this time, in high school. It's a random choir song, I still remember it, but no clue who wrote it. I also remember the music had both English and Chinese verses. Random.

3. Household Of Faith - Piano, accompanying Minho and some girl, Whang, forgot her first name, Joonho and Susan Hyun's wedding. This is a Steve Green song, and he has incredible range, so we had to adjust the key downward to make it singable for our vocalists. I had this tape recorder with an adjustable playback speed, so I learned this song by playing the recording at a speed that slowed it down to the point such that it was at the key we were lowering it to. It was good because then I could learn the right key at a slow tempo where I could figure it out and play along.

   If you don't know, when I play at weddings I'm a semi-Nazi about playing it exactly like the recording and this was the first time that tendency came out, I think. Spent a lot of time getting this just right. But I think it was worth it.

4. Shine On Us, Just Let Me Say - Piano, accompanying big Dave Kim (the first song) and Donna Lee (the second), Kenny and Eugenie Kim's wedding. The first is a Philips, Craig and Dean song from the first Utmost For His Highest CD. In retrospect I should have found the sheet music somewhere and just played that; figuring out how to play this song so it sounded good without the background synths was a bear. I ended up doing a Thy Word type left hand thing against the melody.

   The other song is a Hillsongs song and I've written about it before, but I regret the way I did it a lot. I was just *too* Nazi about playing this just like the recording. The piano on the recording is good, but it's not great, and I should have adjusted it a bit, I'm still really sad about it. It was fine, but not as good as it should have been. Kris S0ng's piano accompaniment of Charles Im at this wedding was much better than anything I played.

5. Arise My Love - Piano, accompanying Joonho and Susan Hyun, Sangsoo and Norma Park's wedding. It's a Michael Card song based on Song of Solomon with all the naughty parts edited out. That's a pet peeve of mine, when Song of Solomon is whitewashed. I wish some Christian group would have the guts to do a song about love as explicit and erotic as Song of Solomon. The only song I can think of is Charlie Peacock's Kiss Me Like A Woman. Just the passion.

   Anyway, back in high school I had memorized the sheet music to a bunch of Michael Card songs, including this one, Dreaming Jacob's Dream, and Then They Will Know, so I played that instead of slavishly following the recording. I think actually I might have been asked to play this at Eddie T@k's wedding in high school but I was going to Portugal so Sueann played instead? I can't remember. And no one cares.

6. We Believe In God - Guitar, accompanying Desiree Ong, Keren and JP's wedding. Very odd. It was actually at the reception, and kind of off the cuff, I think Des just grabbed me and asked me to play. I never even exchanged words with the couple. In fact, I've never exchanged a word with JP period.

7. Come And Fill My Heart - Piano, accompanying Marcy Komae, Ed and Gloria Lee's wedding. Some Avalon song, I think the last track on their 2nd CD. It's an Avalon power ballad, which means cheese upon cheese, but there are some interesting parts to this song. Like the modulating bridge is actually a really interesting chord progression. And the song ends in they key of Db. I remember Henry hearing me practice this in the living room at 420 James and with his perfect pitch, being surprised at the key I was playing in. I dunno, that was a fun challenge.

   This is the first time I think I didn't make any mistakes when playing in a wedding. Until then, for some reason, no matter how much I prepared, at every wedding I made one flub. Drove me crazy. This time went well I think, especially with Marcy singing.

8. Psalm Of Thanks - Guitar, singing at Peter and Christine Jung's wedding. My sister wanted me to lead praise during the actual ceremony, after they had walked down the aisle. I'd seen worship done in a wedding before, but always before any of the real stuff happened, like people coming down the aisle. I dunno, it was stressful, doing it in the middle of the ceremony when everyone's attention is piqued, and with there being like 700 people there, most of them older Korean people who can't clap on 2 and 4 for the life of them.

9. You Are My God - Guitar, singing and accompanying Jieun, Irving and Ohms, Leo and Nicci Hsu's wedding. I'm pretty sure that's the group I assembled, but can't 100% remember. It's a praise song with slightly cheesy lyrics (it includes the lines: "As long as babies cry / as long as flowers die / my heart belongs to you") but it's really quite beautiful.

10. Arise My Love, You Are My God, Holy Holy Holy - Piano on the first and third, guitar on the second, Seong and Karen Park's wedding. My memory is actually kind of hazy here, but I think that's right. No clue who I accompanied, but yeah, I had done two of the songs at weddings before so it was OK. The last was accompanying congregational singing, and on the last verse I stuck in a major 6th chord on the "God in three persons" at the end, just for fun. Made Carey smile, but I'm not sure if anyone else noticed. This wedding was a bit stressful because the stuff I was doing was interspersed throughout the ceremony so I had to constantly be on my toes. I don't like being on stage during it so I had to go back and forth, and on the last one I literally had to run to the piano.

11. Here I Am To Worship, The Wonderful Cross, Jesus Be The Center - Guitar, Dave and Naomi McCants' wedding. I've written about this elsewhere. I have no idea why people would ask me to lead worship, I'm not a very good worship leader, I'm much better an accompanist, but it went well I think.

12. I Just Want To Be Where You Are - Piano, Charles and Jiyeon Yoo's wedding. An old, cheesy to some Don Moen-written Hosanna praise song. It's very old school. Ted hates this song, but it's Charles' favorite song. Anyway, I've written about this elsewhere also.

13. How Beautiful - Piano, accompanying Marcy Komae, Jay and Patty Lee's wedding. This is the third time I can remember playing with Marcy, the first was I played guitar for her on a Jaci Velasquez song (I Promise? Something like that.) at some random FiCS meeting at Pastor Harold's request. The second at Gloria's wedding, then this. Each time has gone well, I think, I dunno.

    It was good but I didn't have time to be my normal Nazi self on this, I just kind of copied the important parts and screwed around the chords on the rest. But the recording varies things around so much each time it would have taken me a full day working with the recording to get all the nuances exactly. Which would still be suboptimal, because you want to incorporate the synth parts also. So what I did was good I think. But I wish I had had more time to work on some touches that absolutely no one would have noticed but me.

14. Unfailing Love - Piano, accompanying Christin@ Ch0 and C@rl W@lters, Jane and Jonathan P@rk's wedding. I'm not really friends with the couple, but I got recruited into it last second. We didn't even get a chance to rehearse until the day of. Anyway, this song is kind of challenging to play with just solo piano. The recording, there's this electric piano providing a riff, but an acoustic guitar driving the rhythm. So to drive the rhythm without the guitar is a slight challenge. I'm not 100% pleased with how it turned out, but what can you do.

15. The Love Of God - Piano, Adrian and Jenny P3i's wedding. I was actually abnormally stressed out about playing this, so much so that I violated one of my cardinal rules in regards to weddings: never bother the bride or groom during the week before the wedding. But I had to understand the vision for this song, and it was difficult because Adrian was his notoriously secretive self. The problem is, I was playing this solo, so I was faced with a choice - just play the piano that's on the recording, in which case there'd be no melody at all, or play the melody, in which case the playing deviates from the recording enough that the feel of the song becomes fairly different. Plus I didn't know the song, and since no one was singing, I had no one to hide behind.

    Whatever, I did the best I could and it was good enough; fortunately, they were doing a "water ceremony" at the time so the focus wasn't on me, which is always a good thing. One thing about this song though - I don't get the lyrics. Honestly, I've read it over many times and I just don't get what it means.

16. Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso, Main Theme from Cinema Paradiso, Dawn from Sense and Sensibility, Prelude in C Major by J.S. Bach, Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing, Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee - Piano, Dave and Esther Ch@ng's wedding. This was definitely the most challenging playing I've had to do in a wedding, because they clearly wanted classical and classical sounding soundtrack stuff, and that's the stuff I'm most rusty with. Worship, I can do no problem, but this type of stuff, I'm just too rusty. So yeah, had to practice a lot and forced my way through the soundtrack stuff and chose the easiest classical piece that's still OK sounding that wasn't Canon in D.

    I made about 4 mistakes, only one of which was glaring (a distinctly wrong chord in Come Thou Fount). In general, I'd give myself an A for effort, C+ for achievement. Wish I had more time, because I definitely got better at the soundtrack stuff during the week before as I was practicing. The other hard thing was, I practiced on our Yamaha keyboard, which is weighted about as heavy as keyboards get (just slightly less than the Fatar that Henry has), but it's still much lighter than a real piano, much less the concert grand in the church. And my primary strength as far as piano playing goes I think is touch. Velocity I'm terrible, technique below average, expression just average. But I have good touch. So I'm practicing on a keyboard where, if you were to quantify the pressure applied to the keys, the dynamic range is about 3 to 8. The grand went from about 6 to 12. So yeah, it kind of took my primary strength away, but what can you do.

    I'm kind of sad actually that all that prep passed so quickly. I wish it could be utilized more. So yeah, let me know if you want me to play the theme from Sense and Sensibility at your event. I'm prepared.

17. Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone), Unfailing Love - Guitar, with Jieun, Jean and Dave P@rk's wedding. Marred by various technical difficulties, including the fact that I don't own a guitar with a pickup (I used Paul L3e's), the pre-amp had no XLR output and there was no direct box so we had to mic it, Jieun had a boom mic, and we never got to mix is satisfactorily. But it went fine, I think. I hate hate hate performing for big crowds, but I love leading big crowds, which is odd, but there's something powerful about hearing a big group singing all in unison, especially when the song is familiar, like Amazing Grace. Dave and Jean were happy with it, I think, which is all that matters.