Recently, a friend asked me to help her make a playlist for her wedding. I obliged, but don’t you bridezillas get any ideas I’M NOT HELPING ALL YOU BITCHES. So, since Monday afternoons might actually drag longer than Friday afternoons at cubelife, I started working on her playlist. And to be honest, it’s probably going to end up being very close to the playlist I would make for my own wedding. So I thought this could be a nice spin on Music Monday.

Here we go. Meaghan’s ideal(ish) wedding playlist, broken down by category:

Motown: JUST GIVE ME ALL THE MOTOWN.

Wedding classics: GIVE ME NONE OF THESE. I’m talking “Shout”, “RESPECT”, “I Hope You Dance”, that other terrible country song that every father and daughter think is “their song”. NO.

Group dance songs: HARD PASS. Okay, the only one I am willing to accept is the “Cupid Shuffle”, because you at least get to walk it out. For the inexperienced, here is a hilarious how-to video.

Slow jamz: I definitely support some slow songs at weddings, but have gone solo to enough to know how awkward it is to slowly backpedal off the dance floor and head to the bar. So slow songs will be limited to approximately 10%. And they will all be Boyz II Men.

Pop standards: MJ, Justified-era JT, Whitney, Mariah all the way.

New(ish?) pop: The likes of Robyn, Beyonce, Haim. Or whoever is New, Not Shitty pop at the time. I currently think Icona Pop’s “I Love It” is an excellent wedding song. At the wedding of one of my favorite and most kindred friends, after the wedding party was introduced, the DJ called everyone to the dance floor to get the party started right off the bat. I loved that. We danced like mad for a song, then sat back down to eat, but it certainly set the stage for the rest of the night.

Hip hop: Hip hop is kinda tough. Do you get all the edited versions of explicit songs? Just let it ride? In any case, there will be Jay-Z playing if I’m ever destined for marriage.

Indie: Like hip hop, indie stuff can be hard when it comes to weddings. These are the tracks that your family won’t know and your hip friends will love. I don’t think every song played at a wedding ought to be known by everyone. So go on and play that Fleet Foxes song that got you through a summer, or the weird French pop folk song that your college roommates always played at the end of a party.

Family/Nostalgic: I grew up on Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Neil Young, and Jackson Browne. If the older folks have to struggle though Jay-Z, Gen Y can handle some tried-and-true classics. Weddings are about families, two families coming together to make a new one, so why not honor your folks for 3 minutes.

And don’t even think about playing any country music.

This is still a work in progress, but if you want to check out the playlist, here it is: Since it is actually for a friend, none of those family songs are in, and I’ve yet to add many (any?) slow ones. So really, if you’re throwing a party this weekend, there you go.