All of our music for the prelude and processional of the ceremony was written and recorded by Mike in his makeshift home studio. It is now available in MP3 format for you to download and enjoy, but we ask that you please observe the copyright restrictions listed below. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to email us about them at "wedding-music @ this site".

In true "techie" fashion, we used our PowerMac to play all of the ceremony and reception music through a rented PA system. The Mac's stylish case fit in perfectly with the wedding decor, as you can see at the bottom of this photo.

These five pieces are all piano or keyboard based, and span over 5 years of creative effort. Some of them were started over 5 years ago, while others were newly created in the last few weeks before our wedding. All of them came down to the wire and were finished just days before June 1st.

As the big day approached, I began sifting through my large catalogue of unfinished piano pieces, picking those that I felt were the best candidates to finish and use in the ceremony. I also spent nearly every evening at the keyboard, just playing and working out ideas for brand new songs. A lot of those pieces or ideas didn't become fully finished songs in time for the wedding, but five of them made the cut.

I didn't come up with most of the titles until after the wedding day. Thinking back on that day and the events leading up to it gave me the unique perspective I needed to match each piece of music with words describing its relationship to the whole event.

• Reflections
  Time:	5:31
  Size:	5.34 MB

  One of the two brand new pieces written for our wedding, this song began to take shape one Saturday evening a few weeks before the big day. Once I had the basic ideas and structure worked out, I recorded the background arpeggio part for piano, which I had originally intended to be the entire song. Thankfully Bev was very honest and let me know that it was definitely missing something. I mirrored the piano part with a softer electric piano voice and added a lead part. After a little bit of further tweaking it was complete.

• Preparations
  Time:	3:59
  Size:	5.33 MB

  This was the first piece I started working on when I got my Mac for music recording back in late 1996. I had quickly completed it to the point at 2:36 in the song and left it there for years without developing it further. I really liked this piece, so I had to have it in the wedding music. It wasn't until the last days of May 2002 that this piece finally got the ending it had been waiting for.

• Missing You
  Time:	3:45
  Size:	3.43 MB

  This was the only song that was already complete before I began putting together the wedding music program. I wrote it off and on in the year 2000 while I was on travel for work and away from Bev. The song goes through a few stages that mirror how I often felt when away from her for long periods of time: missing and longing for her, happy and cheerful when thinking about how great she is (or talking to her on the phone), thinking about how many more long days before I would see her, and finally a calm serenity knowing I would see her again soon. The piece is a little dark in places, but I thought it was very beautiful and still appropriate to play at the wedding.

• Ceremony
  Time:	4:57
  Size:	6.60 MB

  This piece originally evolved from Preparations, about 5 years ago. By late 1997 I had recorded about 4 minutes of it, including the acoustic guitar melody. And there it sat for years before being revisited for the wedding. I've always been very proud of this song, so it also had to be in the wedding program. I threw a quick ending on it and called it good; I'm pretty happy with the result, but I may go back and revisit this song again in another 5 years and see where else I can take it.

• Family & Friends
  Time:	3:06
  Size:	2.96 MB

  Like Missing You, this song is stricly piano only. It was written completely from scratch for the wedding and was the last piece to be finished.

  We played this song while our parents and the minister walked down the aisle, just before we walked to the Processional.

• Processional
  Time:	1:03
  Size:	1.05 MB

  The processional is a one-minute variation on Reflections. I changed the background part to a mellow piano with an airy string pad. Then I pulled about a minute of the background and melody from different parts of the song and put them together (so it's not exactly like any part of the original). Finally I added a nice ending chord after a minute, giving us plenty of time to walk down the aisle.

  This song reminds me somewhat of Mark Sloniker's piece The Light Inside, which was our original frontrunner for the processional. That would have been an excellent piece for our processional, but I really wanted to use my own music if I could create something suitable. It wasn't completely intentional that this was so similar, but I suppose it's no surprise that it ended up this way.

  Preparations and Ceremony are also loosely inspired by Mark's work. Do check him out if you like those pieces.

We decided to use some popular music for the recessional - something appropriate for the theme, but maybe a little more lively to get things started for the reception. Ultimately we decided on Van Halen's When It's Love.

As the lyrics say, when it's love, it lasts forever . . .

All music available above is Copyright © 2002 Mike Heasley. Redistribution or public performance of this music without the author's express written consent is strictly prohibited. Please email "wedding-music @ this site" if you have any questions or comments.