If you’re looking for suggestions for fun, upbeat background songs for a wedding video, then you’ve come to right place! It’s a special day that deserves a special soundtrack to really get those heart-strings going, so it’s important to get the tone right. Use the tips below to refine down your choices and choose the best background music for your wedding video.

1. Start with the visuals

Before evening considering the music, look at what kind of imagery you have in your video. Are you looking for something soft and romantic to go with some slow-moving shots or maybe some beautiful time lapse footage? Or if your video has lots of movement and activity it’s like that some upbeat music would work.

By looking at your video objectively for a moment in terms of movement, mood, colour and lighting, you can refine the style of music that will fit perfectly with your wedding video and wed them together (crap pun, I know).

2. What’s your story?

Sometimes, all it takes is one track to tell a story. For example, take the magical Fairytale which was written specifically with weddings and valentines day in mind:

Buy this track

Background music like this tells a story. It builds up, slows down and layers of instruments provoke strong emotions. You can use a track like this as a powerful guide during the editing process.

In fact, many video editors I’ve worked with often use reference tracks of famous music to begin the process of getting the tone, pace and mood right. However, the big problem with editing to famous tracks is that they cost thousands of dollars to license.

In my opinion, editors do themselves and their clients a disservice by doing this because, in the end, after editing to these tracks they have to find something else that fits perfectly to fit within budget (or commission a custom score).

The solution? Use a track you and your client want in the final product that you can afford – there are downloadable previews on Instrumental Background Music so you can try before you buy.

3. Synchronise your shots for impact

Some music lends itself perfectly to being synchronised with a progression of shots. Editing your visuals so they coincide with music can be really powerful and engage the emotional side of your brain.

In fact, it’s been shown that people listen to music to regulate ‘arousal’ and their mood, to achieve a sense of self-awareness and to express ‘social relatedness’, so anything that can deepen that experience like synchronising your edits to music is great in establishing that emotional connection.

4. Do you have a voice over or is there lots of dialogue in your video?

An important thing to look at is if there is lots of dialogue in your video. Often, the reason why a lot of production music has a consistent feel throughout the track is because the music needs to sit underneath things like a voice over or people talking.

If your track is fighting for attention during moments where there is dialogue, not only will you be distracted from the content of your video, but you can destroy sentimental moments such as heartfelt speeches given by the groom, bride or best man / woman.

The same goes for music that has vocals. While it may seem appropriate to have love song lyrics throughout your video, it can quickly take away from the focus on the couple, especially if the words are not relevant to the visuals or compete with dialogue. Instrumentals are usually a safer bet for this reason.

5. Save bad audio recordings with music

Everyone knows how hard it is to record in low light settings, but the same is true of recording audio in an environment you don’t control.

All it takes is for the mic to be too far away from your subjects, too close (thereby distorting the audio), for it to be noisy (quite common during a wedding!) or even for people to just knock the microphone or seemingly attack it with fierce plosives (those are shots of air you hear when people use words beginning with ‘p’, ‘t’ and ‘b’ etc.).

Sometimes, you will need to revert to a montage with titles or the like when the natural audio you have is so bad, but music can really be your saviour in those moments.

Try laying a track like Hometown underneath your montage and watch it transform in a nice organic, uplifting and natural way. You didn’t want 30 minutes of speech by the bride’s drunk dad in there anyway, did you? 🙂

What worked in your wedding videos?

Leave some tips in the comments section below if you have any more tips, I’m always interested in learning more!

Cheers,

Cato

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