If your ideal wedding playlist includes Fleet Foxes, Paramore, Rihanna, Limp Bizkit and Enter Shikari, you might reasonably wonder how on earth all of that is supposed to coexist at the same wedding.
The answer is: not necessarily at the same time.
Kearns and Ellie’s wedding reception at The Bonded Warehouse in Stourbridge was a particularly good example of something I talk about a lot with couples: an alternative wedding doesn’t have to choose between “our music” and “music everyone else will dance to”.
Instead, the musical character of the wedding can change as the day changes.
This one started with soft indie and alternative music over drinks and dinner. After the first dance, it opened into accessible pop and proper wedding-party material. From there it moved through dance, indie and crossover records, increasingly into pop-punk and emo, before finally reaching nu-metal and heavier alternative music late in the night.
And yes, eventually there was a mosh pit.
And yes, the groom ended up with a split lip.
He had no regrets.
That, however, is getting ahead of ourselves.
An alternative wedding doesn’t have to sound “alternative” at full volume all day
There’s sometimes an assumption that booking an alternative wedding DJ means five hours of wall-to-wall emo, rock and metal.
It can mean that, if that’s genuinely what the couple want.
But usually the more interesting question is: what does the couple’s musical identity sound like at different points in the day?
Kearns and Ellie had me playing from the afternoon, through drinks, dinner, speeches and into the evening party.
Their daytime instruction was essentially soft indie and alternative music – unless people happened to want to dance.
That gave the reception its own musical personality without asking guests to eat dinner to Slipknot.
The early set included artists such as Ben Howard, First Aid Kit, Fleet Foxes, The Paper Kites, Jack Johnson, Vampire Weekend, Bombay Bicycle Club, Phoenix, Empire of the Sun, MGMT, The Cure, Fleetwood Mac and Two Door Cinema Club.
As dinner continued, I could gradually introduce more of their alternative side: Smashing Pumpkins’ 1979, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Scar Tissue, Incubus’ Drive, Bloc Party’s I Still Remember and even Paramore’s Caught in the Middle.
That matters.
It meant the wedding already sounded like Kearns and Ellie before the dancefloor had even opened.
The alternative identity wasn’t something I suddenly bolted onto an otherwise generic wedding disco at 10pm.
The consultation is where you decide what “alternative” actually means
This is why I’m slightly obsessive about talking through music properly before a wedding.
Kearns and Ellie gave me one of the best descriptions of a wedding brief I’ve heard:
a mash-up between an early-2010s house party – with the parents, aunties and uncles present – and Kerrang! circa 2008.
That is much more useful to me than simply writing “rock, pop-punk and indie” on a form.
It tells me something about the feeling they want.
It also tells me there are several audiences in the same room.
Their friends were much more naturally in the Kerrang!, emo, indie and pop-punk world. The couple themselves were happy going heavier still. But there were family members who were more likely to respond to Rihanna, Katy Perry and familiar pop records.
That isn’t a problem to solve by choosing one side.
Mainstream music isn’t a betrayal of an alternative wedding
This is an important point, because alternative couples sometimes worry that if their DJ plays ABBA or Rihanna, their wedding has somehow failed an authenticity test.
It hasn’t.
Kearns and Ellie weren’t anti-pop. They were anti-music they didn’t like.
That distinction matters.
They had clear no-go territory, but they were perfectly happy with things like ABBA, Cher, Shania Twain, 2000s R&B, modern pop and big singalongs that they actually enjoyed.
So when the first dance finished – Eva Cassidy’s Songbird – I didn’t immediately go:
“Lovely. Right then. SYSTEM OF A DOWN.”
The first proper party stretch was deliberately broad.
RAYE led into Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse, Billy Joel, Shania Twain, Chuck Berry, The Kinks, Michael Jackson, ABBA, Eurythmics, Cher and Chappell Roan.
Then came Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna and Calvin Harris.
This is where broader crowd-pleasers earn their place.
They bring different groups of guests together. They establish a shared dancefloor. They give the parents and relatives their moments. They give me information about what the room is responding to.
And, crucially, they make the more specialist material later feel like the next stage of the same party, rather than a hostile takeover.
Ellie summed this up beautifully in her review afterwards:
“From cheesy pop to nu-metal, there was something for all the guests. Our elder emo hearts were full.”
That sentence is essentially the whole philosophy.
The trick is finding the crossover records
The move from “broad wedding party” into “their music” wasn’t a switch I flicked.
It was a bridge.
After On the Floor came Rihanna’s We Found Love, Calvin Harris and Florence Welch’s Sweet Nothing, then the A-Trak remix of Heads Will Roll.
From there I could go into Skepta’s Sunglasses at Night, Dizzee Rascal’s Bonkers, Robin S and Guru Josh Project.
Then Gossip.
Then Arctic Monkeys.
Then Franz Ferdinand.
By that point, going into Avril Lavigne didn’t feel remotely strange.
That kind of crossover programming is one of the most useful tools at an alternative wedding.
A song doesn’t have to belong neatly to “pop”, “dance”, “indie” or “rock”. In fact, the records that sit between worlds are often the ones that allow you to change direction without making everybody wonder whether someone has accidentally changed the Spotify account.
Getting heavier is about timing, not bravery
Once the room was ready for more guitar music, the character changed quickly.
Teenage Dirtbag led through accessible 2000s nostalgia into Good Charlotte.
Then Fall Out Boy.
Then My Chemical Romance.
Then Jimmy Eat World.
Then Blink-182.
Then Paramore.
Then Panic! At The Disco.
Then Alien Ant Farm.
Notice the progression.
I didn’t go from Dancing Queen straight into Limp Bizkit.
By the time Rollin’ arrived shortly after 10pm, the dancefloor had already travelled through around 40 minutes of increasingly alternative guitar music.
The heavier track didn’t come out of nowhere.
It felt earned.
There was another practical factor that evening too: it was hot.
At one point a lot of people were outside trying to cool down.
That is exactly the sort of situation where blindly following a planned genre progression would be stupid.
There’s no prize for playing one of the couple’s biggest songs to twelve empty chairs while everyone else is standing outside drinking water.
Sometimes you hold a track.
Sometimes you broaden temporarily.
Sometimes you wait for the room to come back.
A wedding dancefloor is a living thing, which is why I build around a couple’s priorities rather than arrive with a fixed sequence of songs.
And then Limp Bizkit caused an injury
Eventually, at 10:08pm, I played Limp Bizkit – Rollin’.
A fairly enthusiastic mosh pit followed.
Kearns managed to split his lip in it.
When I checked he was okay, he was essentially delighted by the fact that he had managed to split his lip in a mosh pit at his own wedding.
No regrets.
Which is possibly the most appropriate groom injury I’ve encountered at an alternative wedding.
I’ve written a whole article about why people mosh, including the slightly wonderful fact that scientists have actually studied the collective movement of mosh pits. Cornell researchers modelled moshers’ movement and found patterns resembling collective particle behaviour.
But what I like about this particular pit is what it demonstrates musically.
If I had played Rollin’ during dinner, it would obviously have been ridiculous.
If I had played it immediately after the first dance, it might have divided the room.
After a long progression through pop, dance, indie, pop-punk and emo?
Completely different proposition.
Same track.
Different moment.
Going heavy doesn’t mean you have to stay heavy
This is another mistake I think people make when imagining a rock and metal wedding.
Once you’ve reached nu-metal, apparently there’s no way back. You’ve crossed the event horizon. It’s Korn until the venue switches the power off.
Not remotely.
After Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, this wedding deliberately widened out again.
Stacy’s Mom led into Come On Eileen, Madonna’s Like a Prayer, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Love Shack, Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, and Black Eyed Peas’ My Humps.
Several of those came from what the guests themselves were asking for by that point.
That information matters too.
The couple’s musical identity should shape the wedding, but guests are not decorative furniture. If a room full of people is clearly telling you what it wants, a good DJ should at least be listening.
The important thing is that the broader records didn’t wipe out the couple’s music.
With roughly 15 minutes left, I could push back into Hollywood Undead, Bring Me The Horizon and Enter Shikari.
Then, rather than ending on the heaviest thing I could find just to prove a point, I brought everyone back together with Icona Pop before Kearns and Ellie’s chosen final song:
Florence + The Machine – Dog Days Are Over.
Why heavier music often works better later at a wedding
There’s a wider principle here that applies well beyond this one night.
The population of a wedding reception changes.
Early in the evening, almost everybody is there: grandparents, parents, work friends, family friends, children, cousins, committed dancers, reluctant dancers and people who have been telling you since the invitation arrived that they “don’t really dance”.
Later, the balance often changes.
Some older relatives leave. Children disappear. People who only intended to stay for a drink head home. The people still driving the dancefloor are often increasingly the couple and their closest friends.
That can fundamentally change what the room will take.
It doesn’t mean every alternative wedding should automatically become heavier at 10pm.
It means later in the night may give you permission that earlier in the night didn’t.
If the people still dancing are screaming every word of Blink-182 and Paramore, that is useful information.
Maybe it’s time for Linkin Park.
Maybe it’s time for Limp Bizkit.
Maybe it’s time for Enter Shikari.
Or maybe it isn’t.
The room still gets a vote.
What Kearns and Ellie’s wedding taught particularly well
Their review afterwards said:
“The dance floor was full all night long!”
and:
“We wish we could go back in time and relive singing and dancing to the pop punk and nu-metal bangers.”
What I like about that feedback is that they didn’t praise the wedding for being relentlessly alternative.
They praised the blend.
The daytime music mattered to them too. Ellie specifically mentioned the “soft indie and alt tunes” during the reception and said they “set the tone beautifully”.
Then later their “elder emo hearts were full”.
That is exactly the journey I wanted the music to make.
You shouldn’t have to choose between a wedding that feels like you and a wedding your guests enjoy.
The aim is to understand which bits of you belong where.
Planning your own alternative wedding music timeline
If you’re trying to work out how rock, emo, pop-punk, metal or nu-metal could fit into your own wedding, I’d think about five things:
- Define your musical identity, not a five-hour setlist. Tell your DJ the artists, eras and scenes that feel like you.
- Be honest about your guests. If your friends will lose their minds to My Chemical Romance but your family love Rihanna and ABBA, both facts are useful.
- Decide how protective you want the DJ to be of your tastes. Should I broaden whenever the floor dips, or are you happy for parts of the night to be more specifically “for you”?
- Think in terms of progression. Soft alternative during the reception, accessible party music early, then indie, pop-punk, emo and heavier material later can feel far more natural than trying to represent every genre equally all night.
- Give the DJ permission to react. Weather, food, people going outside, unexpected requests and the actual human beings on the dancefloor will always know things that the planning spreadsheet didn’t.
That is the difference between programming an alternative wedding and simply making an alternative playlist.
So, can you have nu-metal at your wedding?
Absolutely.
You can have Limp Bizkit.
You can have Linkin Park.
You can have Bring Me The Horizon.
You can have Enter Shikari.
You can have a mosh pit if your guests are that way inclined.
But the best rock and metal weddings aren’t necessarily the ones that play the most rock and metal.
They’re the ones where those records arrive at exactly the point when they feel inevitable.
Kearns and Ellie’s wedding started with Ben Howard, Fleet Foxes and Bombay Bicycle Club.
It ended via Hollywood Undead, Bring Me The Horizon and Enter Shikari.
In between, there was everything from Billie Jean to Blink-182.
And somehow, by the time Limp Bizkit caused actual minor bodily damage, it all made perfect sense.
If you’re planning an alternative, emo, pop-punk, rock or metal wedding in the West Midlands – or further afield – and you’re wondering how to make your music work for a room full of very different people, that is exactly the conversation I like having.