Have some fun choosing your wedding songs! Are you looking for something off the beaten path of Canon in D and the Wedding March for your wedding ceremony music? If you’re a little bit nontraditional in your wedding plans, you’ve come to the right place for pop wedding song inspiration. Pop Songs to Inspire Your […]
wedding music ideas
String Quartet Wedding Songs for Your Oregon Wedding
Wedding Songs are Stunning With a String Quartet A string quartet is what many people imagine when they picture wedding songs performed live at a ceremony. Maybe it dates back to all of the movies where the string quartet is frantically playing the Wedding March while the bride and groom run into some sort of […]
Gorgeous Songs to Walk Down the Aisle To
What’s your wedding processional style? The songs to walk down the aisle to or “processional music,” as we call them in the wedding world, play a huge role in the overall vibe of your wedding ceremony! As with many other details of modern weddings, you are free to choose processional music that is meaningful to […]
Storytelling with Strings– Our Interview on Best Wedding Oregon

We are so excited this week to be chosen to represent Portland’s wedding musician community by Best Wedding Oregon for a spot about wedding ceremony music. You can check out the full article here. They had great questions for us about the role that live ceremony music plays in enhancing a wedding celebration. They also […]
Loving People Through Live Music

I started playing for weddings long before I established Effesenden Music. One of the first weddings I played was as a young high school student at the beautiful Willamette Valley vineyards near Salem, Oregon. It was very windy and the little metal folding music stand I was using blew over during the prelude– music went […]
Live Music for Outdoor Weddings: How to Plan for Oregon’s Unpredictable Weather
So far this year, our outdoor wedding musical adventures in beautiful Oregon have included a thunder and hail storm, soft sneaky rain that kept appearing and disappearing prior to the ceremony—just toying with us, 90 degree heat and 54 degree temps with periodic downpours intermixed. There were also a few of those amazing Oregon summer […]
Our Acoustic Duo at the Lovely McMenamins Edgefield!
We love performing for events at the McMenamins Edgefield! This popular Portland area venue combines the quintessential Portland quirkiness with our amazing Pacific NW natural beauty. On Friday, we stayed cool in the shade of the meadow next to Blackberry Hall as our Acoustic Duo performed for an utterly delightful wedding of some of the […]
Wedding Music Trends for 2017
Two weeks ago Effesenden Music’s acoustic duo performed for an awesome wedding at Bridal Veil Lakes. Though Mother Nature decided to bestow buckets of Oregon spring rain on that Sunday afternoon, a spirit of joy and authenticity prevailed as the happy couple, their bridal party, guests and our duo stayed dry under canopy tents that […]
Inspiration for Live Wedding Music from Lindsey Stirling, the Piano Guys and Effesenden Music’s Latest Songs!
Last night’s wedding featured one of my favorite ensembles to work with– our Acoustic Quartet. With Piano, Guitar, Violin, Bass and a couple of vocal things it really is an incredibly versatile ensemble. We performed live prelude music, ceremony music and cocktail hour music before handing over the “baton” to the DJ. Our clients requested a […]
Advice on Picking Your Wedding Music
There’s that scary saying “you don’t know what you don’t know!” With weddings and planning big events, there is a lot to know and a lot to learn. To be honest, ceremony music often finds itself on the list of last minute additions. So to help you think about what the wedding ceremony standard musical […]