Wedding Music (why "Here Comes the Bride" and Mendelssohn's Wedding March are inappropriate)

Here's a piece I wrote about 20 years ago about the use of Wagner's Bridal Chorus ("Here comes the Bride") and Mendelssohn's Wedding march (often used as a recessional--the beginning sounds vaguely like "Wait for the Sunshine, Nelly") in our Episcopal service of Holy Matrimony.  It might also apply to other liturgical churches.
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...In response to several questions about why the Bridal Chorus (Wagner) and Mendelssohn's Wedding March might be considered inappropriate, here's my understanding.

The appropriateness of vocal wedding music is judged by the words and by prayer book rubrics. With instrumental music, apart from aesthetic considerations, a piece may be inappropriate because of the images associated with it. Instrumental music is trickier; the guideline here is whether or not the music is "appropriate to the context in which it is used" (Canon II.6.1). The theme from the movie Jaws, for instance, would not be appropriate for the bride to march down the isle to. Neither would be the melody to the song, "I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you", nor "Diamonds are a girl's best friend", particularly if the groom is wealthy and elderly and the bride is not.  Both bring images to the minds of the hearers that are inappropriate for the occasion.

Now consider Wagner's Bridal Chorus. The bride has made sacred and solemn vows that she will never ask the groom his name, where he comes from, nor his line of work. A poisonous rival plants doubts in the bride's mind. The Bridal Chorus is sung in the opera as bride and groom march from the church to the bridal chamber for the expected consummation of the marriage. The bride breaks her solemn vows, insisting that her questions be answered. She also causes her new husband to kill her relative, who was hoping to prove her husband a dangerous sorcerer. The marriage is never consummated. The following day, at a trial conducted by the king, the groom discloses that he is a servant of the grail, and that a condition of his service is that he cannot disclose name, place, nor station, and that if his bride had remained faithful, after his year's service was completed he would have revealed all. Because of her betrayal, however, he is banished forever. The opera closes with the groom sailing away into the sunset, and the bride drops dead of shame and a broken heart. The words of the Bridal Chorus, were they ever sung, "Faithfully guided, draw near to where the blessing of love shall preserve you", might be appropriate for a wedding except for the context, where they are highly ironic.

In Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck, the mischievous fairy, plays havoc with love charms on four hapless couples, causing boy1 to fall in love with girl2 who falls in love with boy3 . . . etc, not to mention some nasty pranks on Titania, the queen of the fairies. At the end, Puck shifts his love charms around so that boy1 and girl1 love each other, boy2 and girl2 ditto, etc. They all go romping off to get married in a pagan temple, still under the influence of Puck's love charms.  They wind up married to the right person, but under the coercion of Puck's magic. That's still not a good scene for a Christian marriage, but a bit better than "here comes the bride" with its betrayal, murder, shame, banishment, and death.

About 35 years ago, there was a publication about weddings in the Episcopal Church (published by Morehouse, I believe) that quoted the Granddaughter of Richard Wagner as saying that the composer would have been horrified by the idea of that piece of his music being used at a wedding, and that Europeans in general considered the growing American practice of using it as "a Hollywood joke". I was greatly surprised by the number of replies that weren't aware that it is generally considered inappropriate.

On the other hand, it could be argued that today the opera is so unfamiliar to most that the images would be considered inappropriate only for a highly educated few. It was interesting to note that not one single reply gave this rationale.
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In that piece, I didn't write about vocal music within the wedding service. The prayer book rubrics limits the words of such to "psalms, hymns, or anthems". The meaning of psalms is obvious. Hymns are defined as "those authorized by this church", or in other words, hymns from one of our approved hymnals (there are quite a few of these). And Anthems: "The words of anthems are to be from Holy Scripture, or from this Book [the 1979 prayer book], or from texts congruent with them." You can find these rubrics on page 14 of the BCP.

So if the couple wants Cousin Suzie's daughter to sing "our song", the answer is almost certainly "no", unless "their song" can be found in our hymnal. It might be diplomatic to suggest that it COULD be sung at their wedding reception, however.