When our families are broken, when our homes are full of strife

The above text has just been added to the list of inappropriate/tasteless things I’ve sung at weddings (most singers I know have such a list). It was the first line of a verse of a hymn we sang during the signing of the register at the most recent wedding I sang for. Fortunately the words were not printed in the order of service, and I suppressed my musicianship and mumbled most of them, so the congregation would perceive only the tune (we sang it to Hyfrydol).

Our reward was refreshments at the end of the service. And they were served immediately – the champagne was being poured at the back of the church during the final blessing. But a rather telling attitude to the choir was shown by the two photographers who were in attendance throughout. They must have taken hundreds of photos between them, covering every aspect of the ceremony, except the choir, who appeared to be just part of the furniture as far as they were concerned. I had been told ‘you know the bride – so-and-so’s daughter’ but it turned out she’d ceased going to the church regularly by the time I joined and then moved away from the area. We had probably been in the building at the same time only on a handful of previous occasions some fifteen years before.

Recent experiences have made me think about whether I should be more selective about accepting invitations to sing at weddings. I don’t get very many and tend to accept all the ones I’m able to do. But a worst-case scenario would run as follows (this is not an account of any single actual occasion): I spend an hour travelling (in order to arrive an hour and a half before the starting time) and then the ceremony (involving two people I’ve never met, and who wouldn’t be able to name a single member of the choir that is singing for them) starts half an hour or so late. I sing a few rather banal hymns in unison, craning my head to share with another singer because there are only a handful of orders of service for the choir, and a very simple anthem, sit through the rest of the service, and am ‘paid’ with a chocolate or two before returning home. Is this a sensible use of my time and abilities, or am I being taken advantage of?

In other words, should I insist on being paid a fee when I sing at weddings, unless I know the couple well enough to make my services a present to them? (Or – lest I seem too mercenary – unless the church or choir is given a donation equivalent to the fees for the wedding singers?) There are a few other factors to take into consideration:

• the venue – I don’t mind throwing in a wedding as part of a Cathedral weekend, if I’m going to be there anyway
• the social side – will there be people there I know but don’t see regularly?
• the networking potential – is the conductor someone I’d like to sing more for in future?
• the standard of performance – will I be singing in a really good group? (In practice this tends not to happen often at the weddings I’m invited to sing at)
• the repertoire – will there be some really interesting music to sing? (Again, this rarely happens. The most ambitious piece I’ve done at a wedding was Spem in Alium – but all that choir were also guests.)
• the congregation-building potential – might the music at the ceremony attract people to come to other services at the church? My church in particular draws few of its congregation from nearby streets, and it is always good to welcome new people into the building. But if the bride and groom have never lived nearby, their guests are unlikely to do so, or to want to attend that church.

I’ll try to be more discriminating in future but I suspect that I will have my arm twisted and the end result will be the same.