Thursday night took us back over the Severn to Elmore Court for a summer wedding in the Gillyflower - a room we’re in often enough that the load-in runs on muscle memory. Some weddings have a thread running through the music, and this one didn’t hide it: Richard Ashcroft over the slideshow, Noel Gallagher for the first dance, Oasis in the set. A proper Britpop night.
Slideshow, first dance, then us
The evening ran in an order we’re seeing more of, and it worked well. A photo slideshow first, with the room in and the lights down, soundtracked by “Lucky Man” - then straight into the first dance without a break, to “Flying on the Ground” by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Both on record. Then us, three sets.
Couples sometimes feel awkward asking a live band to sit out the first dance. Don’t. If the recording is the version that means something to you, use the recording - and if you’re running a slideshow beforehand, keeping both on playback lets the whole sequence run as one continuous moment instead of stopping for a changeover halfway through. “Flying on the Ground” is also a big, slow-building record; forcing it into a band arrangement would have taken something off it. We’d far rather cue the room properly and come in fresh afterwards.
Don’t Look Back In Anger, straight
“Don’t Look Back In Anger” is already in our book, but not in a way you’d recognise from the record - we normally play our own arrangement. For this wedding we put the original back on: the piano intro as written, the tempo where Noel left it, no reinvention. There’s a reason that song has survived thirty years of wedding dancefloors. Everyone in the room from about eight years old upwards had an arm round somebody by the second chorus.
Worth saying to any couple booking a band: if there’s a song you love and you want it the way you know it, say so. Most bands, us included, have house arrangements of the big ones, and we’re happy to drop them for the night if the original is what matters to you.
Wonderwall, which we never play
“Wonderwall” isn’t in our set and never has been - it’s the song every acoustic guitar in every pub has already worn out. But it’s also a song a whole room can sing without being asked, which is exactly what you want somewhere in the back half of a wedding. We put it in for this couple and the Gillyflower did the rest. Nobody needed the words.
Three Gallagher-adjacent songs in one night is more than we’d normally programme, but a request list that specific tells you what the room wants. That’s the useful bit for anyone planning: give your band three or four songs that genuinely mean something to you rather than a fifty-song spreadsheet, and they’ll land them where they’ll do the most damage.
Pizza, and a very careful pizza van
Outside, a wood-fired pizza van was turning out some of the best food we’ve had at a wedding this year, while visibly and heroically not setting fire to the ground it was parked on. August in Gloucestershire has left everything scorched brown, and there was a lot of watchful hovering around that oven. Worth it.
Thursday weddings, still going strong
This was a Thursday, and it was a full room all night. Midweek weddings haven’t been the poor relation for a while now - better dates, better rates, and guests who are pleased to be having a Thursday like this one.
If you’re planning a wedding at Elmore, the Elmore Court venue page has the detail on the Gillyflower - the house Funktion One system, the lighting rig on the circular truss, and how the load-in works. The Gloucestershire page covers the wider picture.
Congratulations to the couple - a great room, a great crowd, and a proper singalong.
The Brotherhood are South Wales’ premier wedding and corporate band, playing weddings across Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds. Get in touch to check our availability for your date.
