Bells are ringing, rice is flying, and June weddings have been busting out all over.
It has been planned for six months or more: the flowers, the food, the band. When the bride-to-be insists the “Chicken” is not negotiable, she’s giving instructions to Becky Cagen, not the chef but the wedding singer.
“We usually start by asking the bride and groom songs they’d die if they heard,” said Cagen. “The `Chicken,’ `Celebration,’ `Macarena,’ `YMCA’–those are the ones that get crossed off the list first.
“You’d be surprised how sophisticated people’s musical tastes are, how much money they spend on a band to make the wedding fun,” said Cagen, who has been singing professionally for 17 years with the Don Cagen Orchestra, led by her husband.
On a recent morning, she was in the midst of returning 42 phone calls from her in-home office in Northbrook. The band is booked through November for weddings in downtown Chicago hotels, under tents in Lake Forest, on a dock at Winthrop Harbor, in a ballroom in Lincolnshire, at a mansion in Vernon Hills and at a country club in Highland Park.
Cagen and co-vocalist Pennington McGee know a thousand songs, literally, from “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” to “My Yiddishe Momma,” “One O’Clock Jump” to “Midnight Hour.” Besides a mastery of the standard repertoire, they bring to each gig a working knowledge of klezmer, swing, Polish and Portuguese plus such incidentals as tea and honey, Velcro and the extra pair of pantyhose.
Cagen has a 4 1/2-octave range but said that in her line of work, people skills have to be as finely tuned as musical gifts. “People are under a lot of stress planning their weddings. When brides and grooms can’t agree, we’re the peacemakers. I’ve been in the bathroom with the bride minutes before the ceremony helping her glue her shoes back together. I carry corn pads, needle and thread, buttons, nail polish–for the bride, the band, whoever.”
The singer-as-diplomat is also called on to move long-winded speechmakers along, preside over cake-cutting and, in the case of Winnetka’s Eric Hochberg, who plays bass and sings with his own orchestra and was once caught in a downpour on a floating deck in the middle of a lake, row a boat ashore full of grateful bridesmaids.
Maybe the neatest trick in the singer’s bag is to make a guest who’s wearing tight shoes, who paid too much for the gift and who has just consumed a rubbery entree forget all that and enjoy the show.
“I’ve done parties where people just sit there and don’t look at each other,” Hochberg said. “Our job is to get them up dancing.”
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If the words “I’m looking for a wedding band” conjure up something ’60s and tacky–the off-key Sinatra guy in a powder-blue tux or some schmoozy female singer dressed in fuchsia–think again.
Cagen wears designer clothes to match the wedding. “What if it was done in red and I came in wearing purple?” she said.
“Eighteen years ago, brides were completely different,” she explained. “It was, `Sing your song; do your job.’ Now they want a professional show.”
In the world of “serious” musicians, there is this notion that the wedding singers are jaded, bored people who’d rather be anywhere else on the planet–like on Broadway, a nightclub stage, a concert hall. They’re the “hired help.” Crumbs of “reject” wedding cake slices fall from the corners of their mouths just seconds before they take the mike to croon “Quando Quando.”
Week after week they get dressed up to attend strangers’ weddings. And they must tolerate what few can: the same sappy song sung over and over.
So maybe artistic interpretation is not the top priority for a wedding singer. Cagen said, “On some songs, they don’t want to hear me putting my interpretation on it. They want to hear it just the way they imagine it. I’m a romantic. Donny and I planned our own wedding, so I can empathize.”
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It’s true that Cherryl Fonfara of Chicago started off with youthful dreams to record her own music, traveled to London when she was 16 in search of Paul McCartney and wound up living there for years.
But to hear her tell it, her life as a wedding singer is very good indeed. “It keeps you young. I’m not stuck listening to one style of music,” said Fonfara, who sings with her husband’s orchestra, the Dennis Keith Band, and also does commercial voiceovers and jingles. “We’re very good. We’re very tight, we just happened not to make it (to the big time).”
“When I was 22, I thought wedding singers were losers,” said Niki Rich, 30, co-owner of a Highland Park optical shop. Rich has sung jazz in clubs, recorded TV jingles for peanut producers, wailed the national anthem at ballgames and fronted a rock band.
Now she’s the wedding singer with the Stuart Rosenberg Orchestra. “At first I felt like I was selling out,” she admitted. “But your feelings change when the people say, `Your voice is so beautiful, it made my wedding.’ “
“The steady stuff is weddings,” Rich explained. “It pays the bills. People are always getting married. You make so much more money than playing a club. (And) you get to sing all different styles, and you play with some of the best schooled musicians around.”
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If there’s a sour note to be heard, it’s the trend of deejays replacing live musicians. “Over the last decade, it’s (been) a big problem,” Hochberg said. “There used to be five or six bands at every hotel every Saturday or Sunday; now there’s maybe three deejays and one or two bands. Some people prefer listening to records; a lot of them were weaned on MTV.
“People don’t get the distinction. It’s filet mignon as opposed to McDonald’s. It’s (infinitely) more entertaining to have 8 to 12 people on stage doing what they love to do.”
Hochberg’s job just got easier. Young couples discovering cigars, martinis and swing music are returning to old-fashioned weddings featuring big bands with one, two or even three lead singers.
When planning her May wedding at the Marriott in Lincolnshire, Lori Henry was anxious about the music for her bash for 300 out-of-state guests and another 100 friends and relatives.
“The band can make or break the reception,” she explained.
Henry considered using a deejay, but “so many in my circle of family and friends get up and sing, that we went with a live band because it’s interactive,” said the former Luvabull, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., with husband Bob Donnelli.
Listening to a tape, Henry recalled, “I was sold right away on the singer because she was so diverse. We could get a little bit of everything, from Bonnie Raitt to Whitney Houston to Tanya Tucker.”
That singer would be Fonfara, who said her role means different things to different people.
At some weddings, “there are a lot of special requests, some just leave it in our hands. Either way, I’m very much a part of the celebration,” she said.
For the Henry soiree, Fonfara went from belting out “Proud Mary” to announcing the guests who got up on stage to sing. “Music is what keeps the people there. We have to put on an incredible show,” she said, “but I’m also the hands-on den mother. Sometimes (it’s like) a dictatorship because I have to corral the guests for announcements and toasts.”
It’s those unplanned moments of champagne-fueled spontaneity that the wedding singer must play to. “There are two crowds,” Fonfara offered. “The gentile crowd needs to get some drinks in them. We say it’s a slow start, wild finish. The Jewish crowd is on the floor dancing from the get-go.”
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It’s Mike Glick’s business to match bands to the style of wedding. “You either want the `Chicken’ or you don’t,” Glick said from his MRD agency in Highland Park. “After that, if you want to appeal to all ages, from 20s to 80s, you have to be able to do different genres, different tempos. If most of the people at the wedding are young, they’re going to want to have singers who sing the music they grew up with. They are not looking for traditional bands.
“But sometimes what the kids want doesn’t matter,” he added. “It’s whoever is paying for it.”
A 12-piece band with two singers who’ll rock until you drop (or six hours, whichever comes first) will cost $4,500 to $5,000. That can be adjusted downward to $3,000 and upward to $8,000 depending on whether the bridal party wants continuous music and on how many musicians are requested.
A more low-key afternoon or evening wedding might find singer Hilary Feldman in demand. The Highland Park musical theater actress began doing her friends’ weddings, then branched out with her I Do Wedding Productions. Her solo performances are usually ceremony-only and run $100-$150. Feldman sings to a list of 20 to 25 prerecorded songs. For reasons even beyond her, Feldman said, she has been asked to sing “Freebird” more than once.
The most popular of all requested wedding songs are ballads that come from movies, Cagen said, as in “Titanic.” Celine Dion songs reign supreme; the Supremes are crowd pleasers. Louis Prima, Louis Jordan, Frank Sinatra are all very hip these days. The BeeGees are okay again. For some, Cole Porter is the tops. For others, a Grateful Dead jam would be groovy.
Cagen said it all works together: “There’s so many tragedies in life. A wedding is a happy time. It’s like being an O.B. What a great job.”
“We’re somewhere between the invited guests and the caterers,” said Hochberg, who will be singing at a Lake Forest tent wedding in July. “I think we’re looked at as artists in a way. We’re not saving the day. We’re along the same line as the chicken dinner.”
WHAT, NO `DISCO DUCK’?
Life according to wedding singers:
– Top requested ballad: “My Heart Will Go On” (theme from “Titanic”)
– Top requested up-tempo song: “Dancing Queen” “Play That Funky Music”
– Song I never want to sing again: “Unforgettable” (Cagen); “Butterfly Kisses” (Hochberg); “Endless Love” or “Misty” (“We call it `Must we?’ “–Fonfara)
– Bad-hair month: “Never have an outdoor wedding in August,” Cagen said.
– A New York wedding: Official lingo for a wedding where the bride and groom are announced, walk into the reception room, then immediately go into the first dance.
– Biggest surprise (it’s unanimous): Swing. “It’s the biggest change in 25 years,” Fonfara said.
– Biggest complaint: cigar smokers
– Going the distance: 90 percent of weddings demand continuous music that lasts, on average, six hours: one-hour ceremony, one-hour cocktails, one-hour dinner, after-dinner dancing with full band for three hours.
