Wedding Recap: Part 10 – Potato Moon

Without question, Potato Moon rocked the house at our wedding reception! I never thought I would have the budget to have a live band at our wedding, but fortunate for us, when they are family they come very reasonably priced. Like, on the house, kind of pricing. If not for that, we would have never been able to have live music of this caliber getting everyone movin’ on the dance floor.

For those of you, who may not be Potato Moon followers, let me tell you a little bit about the band. Potato Moon (sometimes known as the Lonely Jones) is made up of the Stancil family, Ben, the “Master” of the band is the oldest son, sisters Jane and Laura and father Phil on bass along with adopted Stancils Mikey on guitar and Jimmy on drums. Evan’s Aunt Grace, the Mom, manages the band and the youngest cousin, little Phil, will join in on occasion. Not only are they talented musicians, but they are also a very very good time.

We asked them to play their original music and they threw in some great covers as well. Jane serenaded with a soulful performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, that has been known to bring sentimental Evan to tears. They did a rockin’ interpretation of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison. And they kept the party going with their own original songs like Hey Yeah and House on the River.

A quick side story about House on the River…when Evan and I first started dating, he was living in a duplex with a good friend Fletcher in Richmond Virginia. One night I came over late. The guys had been sitting on the front porch drinking run drinks listening to Old House on the River on repeat for who knows how long.
One of the best parts about having your family perform at your wedding is that everyone can get in on it. My stepfather has been known to play the harmonica with various bands and goes by his stage name, Rico. Potato Moon was more than happy to have him play with them for a few songs and it was a riot. He did great on the harmonica, but also had a secret weapon planned that no one knew about…THE SPOONS. That’s right friends, Rico Jones pulled the spoons out of no where and they were a hit. The next day when we were scouring through left-overs, he announced, “These spoons have never been washed because they are a musical instrument, but I will make an exception to eat chocolate cake.”

Link to some more Potato Moon videos.

Wedding Recap: Part 9 – The Fun!

Without question the best part of our wedding was our entertainment. One of the main goals we had when planning was for everyone to have FUN at our reception. Creating fun is a lot harder than you think. You need a lot of things to fall in to place in order for guests from across the country, young and old, drinkers and sobers (although not that many of our guests were sobers) many who do not know each other, to all get together and have a really fun time. Here are the key components that created fun on our wedding day:
1) No sit down dinner – too formal for us, we wanted the whole evening to feel casual so that people were comfortable meeting new people rather than forced to converse with who happened to be sitting at their table. We strategically placed food tables throughout the space so that people would have to walk around to taste everything. We also had a mix of tall boy tables and seated tables so that everyone wouldn’t all be seated at once.
2) Extra Activity – let’s face it, not everyone is going to get crazy on the dance floor, so in order to give those guests something fun to do. We had a Photobooth where guests could get a little silly and we could get great shots of our friends and family.
3) Splurge on the booze – in actuality we got a really great price for our bar service and were just lucky that they were trying to get rid of the top shelf stuff. Our bartender kept the line moving even while mixing up anything our guests could think of. Even my mother was taking shots of who knows what.
4) Provide transportation – the big reason that we were able to go so heavy on the booze was because we had reserved a Trolley service to take guests to and from the hotels in the city. Less than half of our guests came by car which made it easy to safely transport the drunks back to Coney Island and then the hotel.
5) Awesome Entertainment – I married in to one talented family. Evan’s cousin’s band, the Lonely Jones, performed at our reception and they rocked the house! My step-father got in the action and played the harmonica and the spoons! While the band took a break, his other cousin, DJ Hubbs, kept the crowd dancing. More on the entertainment in my next post…

Wedding Soundtrack

As we get closer to the date, we need to make some decisions when it comes to the soundtrack of our wedding. We have our band and DJ locked and loaded (because they happen to be relatives) but we still have music decisions that need to be nailed down, 1) Music for the Ceremony, 2) Music during “Cocktail Hour”, 3) Requests for the Band and 4) Requests for the DJ.

Music during the ceremony is totally stumping me. Do we play the traditional bridal march or an alternative classical arrangement? Do we play a CD or live music? All of these questions are yet to be answered. . I would love for his cousin Jane to play the piano and the venue said that they have plenty of pianos around, so it would be no problem to bring one in. Still I have no idea what she should play. Fortunately, I have a solution…make Evan do it! He said he wanted to be in charge of the music, so he can have at it.



We decided months ago that we want to incorporate Motown Music as a tribute to Detroit. We spent hours downloading and listening to Motown tracks. We picked out our favorites and thought about different family members and which songs would spark them to get out of their seats. Everyone loves Motown Music, right? Then I got to thinking, “what if everyone doesn’t love Motown Music?” That could turn into a total bummer for the person who doesn’t particularly care for the sweet sounds of Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5, the Temptations or Stevie Wonder. (I know it is hard to imagine.) Then I read an update from my planner, who sends weekly tips to all her brides. She recommended playing our themed music for the cocktail hour. That way if there are people who don’t like it, they will get variety when the dance party gets started. I think that this is a great solution. Now we will just have to narrow down our favorites to get them on the playlist. Since our entire reception is really a cocktail style receptions we will probably play Motown Music during the first hour up until the cake cutting.

Requests for the band are tougher than you would think. We want them to play their original songs because that is why we love them, but we also want them to play songs that all guests will be familiar with. I would like them to play the “first dance” song. We haven’t decided 100% what that will be, but we are leaning towards, “Come Away with Me” by Norah Jones. There are some other options floating around, but I really like this one.



My must have wedding song is “Love Shack”. I know it sounds silly, but I love this song and always wanted it played on my wedding day. I don’t know if I should ask the band to play this song or put in a request with the DJ. Either way, I will be happy. The only thing that I want to give to our DJ is a list of DO NOT PLAY songs. No electric slide, no chicken dance, absolutely no no no line dancing songs. I know it is harsh, but I just can’t take it. I know that we will have people on the dance floor, because Evan and I love to dance. The bride and groom having fun dancing should be more than enough of a draw.

I'm with the Band

Source

Some bride’s are spoiled, but I am like 10 week old onion dip in the back of the refrigerator with a half eaten potato chip still in it. What I mean by this is, some days I look at our wedding planning spreadsheet and think to myself, “How did we get this lucky?” We not only will be surrounded by friends and family on our big day, many many elements of our day are being contributed by said friends and family. I know it sounds snobby, but we are associated with some amazingly talented people.

The music for our reception is just one of the amazing things that are being provided by family members. Evan has musicians on his side and even before we were engaged we used to talk about how we wanted his cousins’ band to play at our wedding. Even though they are not performing together on a regular basis these days, they agreed to stage a reunion show at our wedding!

We have asked the band, Potato Moon (formerly known as the Lonely Jones), to play an hour set after the “cocktail hour”. As fans of the band, we want them to play their original music and as wedding customers we think some cover songs thrown in would get everyone movin’ and shakin’. They have played weddings before, so we pretty much want to let them do what they do. At this point, we need to provide are some “must-have” songs to put on the set list. This is going to be more difficult than we originally thought because we love ALL their songs. Fortunately, Evan is on music detail, so he has to make the tough decisions.

Here are two videos, one live performance and one home-movie-style music video. You will know what I mean, when I say they are gooooood.

Any recommendations on must have wedding songs?

Hey Yeah, Live

Old Jones Road