Vail weddings
Live music for a Vail wedding.
A Vail wedding happens at 8,150 feet, and the day is shaped by it. The ceremony is outdoors while the light is on the mountain, the cocktail hour is on a terrace that cools the moment the sun drops behind the ridge, and the floor fills a ballroom in a village that measures its sound at the property line. So the music is a guitarist for the vows, a duo for the hour after them, and a band or a DJ for the dancing.
It’s one of our weddings bookings: one part of the day or all of it, on one contract with a personal contact through the day and one travel line for the drive up I-70.
Trusted and booked by
The look
A processional on nylon strings, and a guitarist outdoors.
Can’t Help Falling in Love on Spanish guitar, the size that plays a mountain ceremony inside the noise cap, and an acoustic set on a lawn.
The day
The three parts of a Vail wedding day, and what suits each one.
The mountain sets the clock. The light leaves the ceremony site early, the terrace turns cold fast, and the village has a noise limit the floor has to respect. The music follows the guests from one to the next.
- The ceremony, on a deck or a lawn
- One guitarist, acoustic, jazz or Spanish, on a covered spot near the aisle with a small system that carries the officiant’s microphone too. The system is small on purpose: it sits inside the village cap on its own, and the guitarist stretches the processional to however long the walk takes.
- The cocktail hour, on the terrace
- A jazz duo or an acoustic duo at a level guests talk across. The one thing a Vail terrace asks of a duo is the cold: fingers and strings both slow down once the sun is behind the ridge, so the hour is timed to the light and moving indoors is agreed before the day.
- The floor, in the ballroom
- A jazz band that grew through the day, a covers band like Tejas Singh that starts as a duo and finishes as a quartet, or the DJ from the end of dinner to the last song. Indoors the cap is the venue’s own, and the hotel ballrooms take a quartet without strain.
The whole song list is on the repertoire page.
The venues
The venues, and what each one asks of the music.
The village hotels hold the classic Vail wedding: a ceremony on a lawn or a deck with the mountain behind it, the cocktail hour on the terrace, and the reception in the ballroom once the cold comes down. The Sonnenalp and the Four Seasons Resort Vail anchor that day in Vail Village, The Arrabelle at Vail Square and The Hythe carry it in Lionshead, and the Grand Hyatt Vail runs the same day at the west end of town along the creek. Their ballrooms take a quartet or a full band, their terraces take a duo, and a ceremony guitarist reaches any of their outdoor sites with one small case.
Donovan Pavilion is the town’s own venue on Gore Creek, and the one to book when a couple wants a single floor with their own vendors and their own timeline. The ceremony and the reception happen in one building, so a duo through the hour and a band for the floor share one load-in, and the creek outside is the backdrop for the ceremony music.
A ceremony up the mountain, reached by gondola, is a different plan: the guitarist and a small system ride up with the guests, the music is battery powered or runs on the venue’s own circuit, and the reception happens back in the village afterward. Tell us the site and we plan the ride.
The mountain
Light, cold, a noise cap and thin air.
An outdoor ceremony in Vail is planned around the light. The sun goes behind the ridge early, the color on the mountain goes with it, and a ceremony timed for that light has a fixed start the music is built around. The guitarist is set up and sound-checked well before it, on a covered, level and dry spot with power run to it, because a summer afternoon can turn to rain and a fall afternoon to snow in the time it takes to seat the guests.
The village measures outdoor sound at the edge of the permitted area, so the dance floor goes indoors or onto a terrace the venue has already permitted, and a ceremony guitarist and a cocktail hour duo sit inside the cap on their own. Every mountain town’s number, cited and dated, is on the mountain corridor page.
The altitude reaches the gear as well as the guests: strings drift between an afternoon ceremony and an evening set and get retuned, and anyone singing or playing a horn paces a set differently in thin air, which is why the sound check is longer here than in the city.
For the order the wedding decisions usually come in, see how far ahead to book wedding musicians in Colorado. A corporate group in the same hotels is on the Vail retreats page, and a wedding on the Front Range is on the Colorado Springs wedding page.
Questions
Asked about Vail weddings.
Stage sizes, circuits and input lists for every size are on the technical page, in a form a venue’s events office can check line by line.
- Do you play weddings in Vail?
- Yes, the whole day or any one part of it, at the fee a Denver wedding sees plus one travel line for the drive, with no lodging line. Signet Artists books Vail weddings from Denver.
- What does the Vail travel line cover?
- The drive up I-70 and back over Vail Pass for the musicians and the gear, as one line on the quote. Vail sits inside the corridor we price as a single travel line, so there's no mileage arithmetic and no night's lodging, which the far resorts like Aspen and Telluride do carry. On a winter date the musicians travel early and the venue knows it.
- Can a band play an outdoor wedding in Vail?
- Yes, with the village noise cap in the plan from the start. Vail's outdoor limit in the resort villages was reported at 65 dBA measured ten feet from the permitted area, which a ceremony guitarist and a cocktail hour duo sit inside on their own. A dance floor runs louder than that by design, so it goes indoors or onto a permitted terrace, and we confirm the current number with the venue before the day.
- How far ahead should we book wedding musicians in Vail?
- Whenever you're ready. Couples usually book the music after the venue and before most of the rest of the list, and a mountain venue is often the first thing settled. Tell us the date and we'll come back quickly with an answer and a price.
Extras that can appear on a quote.
- Front Range travel: Boulder, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins
- I-70 corridor travel: Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Winter Park
- Far resort travel and a night's lodging: Aspen, Telluride, Steamboat, Crested Butte
- Holiday and peak weekends, and New Year's Eve
- Live-band karaoke
- Learned songs, with four weeks' notice
Send us the date, the venue and the ceremony site, and we'll plan the rest for the altitude.
Live music for your event, from a solo musician to a full band, with sound support that’s the right size for the venue and a personal contact for the night.