Are you gearing up for your grand wedding sometime this year? We get it, your nerves are frazzled, and you have no idea how to prepare for the big day. Moreover, weddings are a costly affair, especially after the pandemic.
No matter where your wedding is taking place or how intimate the affair is, making a list of the essential items will help you at the last minute. You can even divide the categories, such as catering, decorations, clothes, and the ring!
Each category itself will have many items under it, so make check boxes and tick them off one by one once you’re done handling that particular area.
Make sure you miss nothing important on a grand day, and everything goes perfectly!
2. Select the ring beforehand
You don’t want to be looking at your wedding ring just a week before the wedding, right?
That is why it’s important to go through as many catalogs as possible and find a ring that looks good and is comfortable. After all, you will wear it for the rest of your life!
There are innumerable engagement rings Sydney, so visit a few and explore. And on your wedding day, make sure you don’t forget the ring or the box!
3. Buy small items from wholesalers
We’ve got you covered if you’re planning on saving up a bit of money. Instead of visiting plush malls or luxury stores, try to source some items from wholesalers or manufacturers, especially when it comes to your bridal accessories.
For example, if you’re going to wear a brooch along with your wedding dress, purchase it from a small store or directly from the wholesaler. Similarly, try to see if you can find gloves, veils, or anything else at a lower price.
4. Have the bachelorette party in advance
This, again, is something that most brides don’t do. If you plan the bachelorette party just a few days before the wedding, you’ll have to take care of the party and your preparations.
Not only will this increase your workload, but it will also increase the chances of missing out on important things. So make sure you have a grand bachelorette party at least two or three weeks before the wedding.
This way, you can enjoy your girls’ trip without worrying about the wedding!
5. Fix your budget and compare accordingly
Fixing your budget for the wedding is a must, especially if you and your to-be have decided to spend only a moderate amount of money. You must have already started to check the approximate cost of various items online or in stores.
Plan all this and decide on a fixed amount. No matter what, don’t sway from it because that will ultimately increase the entire cost of the wedding.
Make a rough estimate of the budget you need and compare it with the budget you’ll be spending.
6. Borrow jewelry
Even though this isn’t popular, wearing hand-me-down jewelry or borrowing it from your mother or family can be a lifesaver.
After all, heritage and love do go hand in hand, especially when it comes to wearing your mom’s precious stones!
Borrowing jewelry will save you a lot of money that you can save up for the future and will also give you an opportunity to flaunt those timeless pieces.
So instead of letting old jewelry gather dust in the wardrobe, choose these over new ones.
7. Prepare your vows
This is probably one of the most important parts of the entire wedding ceremony. Preparing your wedding vows properly will help eliminate any signs of cold feet and help you improve the vows if needed.
So, even if you are a good speaker in general, don’t take this tip lightly. Write down whatever thoughts you have and then frame them in proper order. If you need guidance, simply ask your or your husband’s friends!
Over to you…
Your wedding day is arguably one of the most important days in your life. So, naturally, you’ll want everything to go perfectly! So, just follow these few tips, and don’t forget to enjoy… enjoy your hearts out.
The Oscars are fast approaching, and among the prized awards set to be handed out at the Dolby Theatre on the 12th of March will be the best original song, a category that has been won by a host of unforgettable classics.
It is always one of the most eagerly awaited awards of the night, not least because each of the nominated acts will perform their song during the event itself, leading to some of the most memorable moments that have ever occurred during the running of the prestigious event.
What Makes a Great Movie Soundtrack or Song?
You can never underestimate the importance of a song and soundtrack when it comes to putting together a cinematic masterpiece; indeed, if you are an aspiring filmmaker, you may well be keen to pair up with musicians you may know to produce a track that is ideal for the story you are attempting to tell. Failing that, you can make good use of royalty-free music that could be the right choice for your production and one that won’t break the bank.
Often once a movie is over and you’ve left the cinema, it’s a tune, track, or theme that will linger in your mind and play in your mind. A great soundtrack or song needs to hit home in two ways.
Firstly, clearly, the track or soundtrack needs to be of superior quality, but more importantly, it needs to fit the film, and the relevant scenes, perfectly.
Some directors make great use of non-original soundtracks, such as Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorcese, who frequently use existing material in ways that greatly elevate their masterpieces.
The use of original scores and songs is, arguably, a far harder nut to crack. There are some directors who frequently use the same composers to put together the overall score and may seek out other contributors for specific songs that fit the overall piece.
A song that suits a movie needs to do so on many levels. It will need to fit the pace of a scene and the overall vibe that the director is seeking to convey to an audience, and it’s an art form that is far tougher than you might at first think.
Top Six Best Every Oscar Winning Songs
For the purpose of this article, we are only looking at the original song winners, which doesn’t mean we don’t value the original score category, but just that it’s often the case that an individual song, rather than a long-running theme or score, really captures the attention of an audience.
Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – Burt Bacharach and Hal David
This is an interesting one. On the face of it, the song doesn’t really seem to suit a western, but it has now quite simply become iconic as part of the overall feature film. By all accounts, star Robert Redford didn’t like the song, but even he must now understand the greatness of the tune and the way it adds to the excellent movie.
Take My Breath Away from Top Gun – Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock
There are occasionally songs that effectively will always only be remembered for the context within a film they are in. Take My Breath Away, performed by Berlin, is now synonymous with the original Top Gun movie and very evocative of the 1980s as a whole.
It’s not a song you might expect to have won an Oscar due to the fact that it’s incredibly mainstream and went on to become a massive hit, but you can’t deny that when you hear it, all you think of is Tom Cruise and a fighter jet!
Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer
This ranks in the truly unforgettable category. This classic, from the superb Breakfast at Tiffany’s, has been covered by many artists since its 1961 release, and it’s very interesting in the sense that the song doesn’t have a chorus.
It’s only a two-minute-long song sung by Audrey Hepburn for the movie, but one that perfectly illustrates the romance between the two lead characters. As well as winning an Oscar, it also picked up a number of Grammy Awards.
Can You Feel the Long Tonight from The Lion King – Elton John and Tim Rice
Interestingly, Elton John and Tim Rice would have known their chances of winning the Oscar for best original song in 1994 was very much a likely event. That’s because of the five songs nominated, three were from the Lion King soundtrack, and therefore they were always likely to pick up the statuette.
It’s a great song and one that was sung by Sir Elton John in the closing credits but covered by other artists during the film itself.
My Heart Will Go On from Titanic – James Horner and Will Jennings
Sung by Celine Dion, this song waltzed to the prize of the best original song and was one of eleven Oscars that the James Cameron epic won that year. The track went to number one just about everywhere in the world. It sold over 4 million copies in the United States alone and is one that will live long in the memory.
Lose Yourself from Eight Mile – Jeff Bass, Eminem, and Luis Resto
Given that 8 Mile, from late director Curtis Hanson, is effectively a biopic of sorts, Eminem was always going to be producing the music that his character would be performing, as well as the songs that appear on the film’s soundtrack.
The world-famous rapper took home the best original song for his excellent work on Lose Yourself, which quickly became something of an anthem and a massive success in its own right.
Janelle Monáe is back with a new single, ‘Float’, which features Fela Kuti’s son Seun Kuti and his band Egypt 80. The track was co-produced by Nate “Rocket” Wonder, Nana Kwabena, and Sensei Bueno. Check it out below.
According to a press release, the new song is “inspired by Muhammed Ali talking shit in Zaire, 1974, Jane’s evolution, Mary Poppins’ umbrella, Aladdin’s magic carpet, Ja Morant’s flotation to the rim while dunking on his ops, Sara Elise’s ropes, excerpts from Paramahmsa Nithyananda’s talks on levitation, Raul’s toast on Dec 1, and Bruce Lee’s mighty philosophy on being ‘shapeless, formless,’ and becoming one with your surroundings, to be like water…”
‘Float’ marks Monáe’s first new music since her 2021 singles ‘Say Her Name (Hell You Talmbout)’ and ‘Stronger’. Since the release of her last album, 2019’s Dirty Computer, she’s also starred in the 2022 film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
Black Belt Eagle Scout is the project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Katherine Paul, who grew up in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in Washington. From an early age, KP was inspired by her family’s native traditions of singing and drumming, and taught herself how to play guitar by watching bootleg Hole and Nirvana VHS tapes. In 2007, they moved to Portland to attend Lewis & Clark College and stayed for 13 years, becoming involved with the Rock & Roll Camp for Girls and playing in several bands before forming Black Belt Eagle Scout. Following the release of 2019’s At the Party With My Brown Friends, their sophomore LP under the moniker, KP moved back to her homeland, an experience that has largely informed her arresting new album for Saddle Creek, The Land the Water, the Sky.
While continuing to meditate on themes of grief, loneliness, and identity that have permeated their previous releases, the album moves further in the direction of hope and healing, rooting itself in KP’s connection with the natural world to conjure a beauty that can feel hazy, mystical, and utterly breathtaking. It’s both empowering on a spiritual level and an ambitious expansion of the typically ethereal Black Belt Eagle Scout sound, which KP allows herself to get lost and revel in, sometimes reducing her voice to a gentle, worldless hum while inviting others into their process. The statements she does make, whether directly or implicitly, are deeply resonant: “When the end is near/ I will hold you dear,” she sings on ‘Sedna’, “In the dawn of all my layers.”
We caught up with Katherine Paul for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about The Land, the Water, the Sky artwork, the album’s guitar tones, her journey of returning home, and more.
Because the music on The Land, the Water, the Sky is so visually evocative, I wanted to ask you about the artwork for the advance singles: ‘Don’t Give Up’, ‘My Blood Runs Through This Land’, ‘Nobody’, and ‘Spaces’. They’re all paintings by your partner, Camas Logue, who also did the ‘Loss & Relax’ single in 2019. Is there a thread that you feel like runs through them?
I think it was just a natural request of mine to ask Camas to be a part of the process,just because he was there alongside me – in my writing of the album, moving with me. A lot of the album is about reinstalling what it feels like to be home, so it just made sense to include him in this way. I do all the songwriting myself, but he plays the drums in my band, so he plays the parts that I write. He’s this incredible visual artist and painter, he’s learning to carve with my dad, because my dad is a wood carver and he makes story poles and wall hangings and all this stuff. Those paintings in particular are from the land, because he used elements of the earth from his homelands to create them. I also wanted to uplift his art alongside my art, because what we do is in partnership. I think it’s really awesome that I write the drum parts and then he learns them and plays them on tour, so I want to respect his artistry like he does with his paintings, and I want to combine them all.
As for the album cover, it’s kind of a shift from your previous albums in terms of the framing and the palette. When you look at them side by side, how do you feel like they capture your progression as an artist?
It’s funny, because when I did the second album, I didn’t realize that it matched the first album. The colours are kind of similar, and I was like, “Is that just the colour that I like?” And then I realized I actually do really like that colour. This last album, I wanted to do it during this time when the sun is setting and there’s that pink that happens, it’s kind of like cotton candy. I wanted to try and do that, but it didn’t happen, so the album could have potentially also been the same color. [laughs] But then it just ended up being blue, and there are some aspects of that pinkish color in some of the other elements. With the album title, I wanted to be able to show in a visual way what that was, what I was singing about and singing to. And so, I just kept seeing myself in water. Water is really important to my culture and to my people, and to the specific region of where I’m from. We spend a lot of time on the water – there’s this thing called canoe journeys, it’s a really big part of our culture and way of life. So I was like, “I need to be in the water.”
I knew I wanted to be photographed in some way on the cover, but I didn’t realize that you’re going to see the behind shot, from my perspective of looking out. That was when I started working with my friend Evan Atwood, who is really creative and an incredible photographer. They did all of my music videos for this album campaign, and they’ve done two other music videos for previous albums. We just worked really well together, and Evan took what I was thinking and brought their own creativity to the shoot. The thing that I love the most about working with Evan is it’s very spontaneous. We have this idea, and what feels good is it tends to happen naturally. It wasn’t one of those things where a month beforehand, the schedule is set, the time is set. It was like, “Let’s just go here.” And Camas helped, too –there’s this red string that connects to the back of the album, and it’s also me, but you can see my face and I’m looking this other way. The red string was Camas’ input and suggestion, because it was used in our wedding. Within his culture, you tie this red rope around each other’s arms. Evan was like, “I feel like you should be holding something.” And Camas was like, “We have this red string still.” So it just ended up coming together in this very spontaneous, beautiful, natural way.
The album centers around your journey of returning home. In that process, did you find new meaning in the idea of home, or was it more about remembering and reconnecting with the places and stories that were already tied to it?
I always knew that I was going to return home and come back to live with my people full-time. I just didn’t know it would happen this soon, and it would happen in this way, the way it happened with the pandemic and needing to come back to take care of my parents. Wanting, also, to get out of Portland and wanting to go back to this beautiful place where I’m from and having that joy back into my life of connecting with the land and the water. The time in which I moved home was very interesting, because had I moved home in any other time, I would have had a different experience. You couldn’t hang out with people as much, you couldn’t go to large gatherings, you couldn’t socialize – it pushed me to go out into the land, and to get back to my roots and what’s important to the foundation of my people. I probably would have done that like if it had been a different time, but it wouldn’t have been so abundant and so needed.
There’s something about the guitar sound on this album that has a kind of unwavering quality to it, almost like it’s an extension of yourself while also mirroring the natural forces that you’re singing about. Could you talk about your connection to the guitar as an instrument and the role it played on this album?
A lot of the guitar tones in the album and the feel of the guitar was because I worked with a really incredible producer. Her name is Takiaya Reed, and she plays in this metal band called Divide and Dissolve. She brought these particular pedals that I think matched what I was trying to have the songs be about. We used a Stryman Big Sky – that was really foundational in the sound of the album, a lot of those reverb sounds I feel like matched how you look at the land. You can see it in the music video for ‘My Blood Runs Through This Land’ and ‘Nobody’, it’s really foggy at times. And ‘Spaces’, if you look at the water, it’s really sparkly. I think it was also really helpful that we were recording it in my homelands, too. We recorded it at a studio that was 20 minutes away from where I lived. Being in the place where the songs were written, that the songs are written about, helped immensely with crafting that foundational sound of the guitars. I felt really supported to be able to use that kind of mystical, magical essence of the sound and really lean in and tune into what I wanted to channel out into the recording.
Did a lot of the songs also start with just you and the guitar? What was it like to see them evolve in this way?
Yeah, I write all of my sounds starting off with guitar and vocals. Guitar is very central to my songwriting. I sing within my songs, but I also try and put this same sort of singing energy into the instrumentation, and definitely into the guitar playing. I think that’s why some of my songs don’t have a lot of lyrics, and some of the songs have more melodies, is because I want to be able to have these moments with guitar or with the keyboard or with the drums, where those instruments can sing as well. It just comes down to what my dad said to me, which his dad said to him, which is: when we sing in our culture, you sing from your heart. You have to be in a good place to do it, you have to sing in a meaningful way. So that also goes into creating the guitar lines in particular, is coming from a good place.
‘Treeline’ is one of my favorite tracks on the album for that reason, how all the subtle textures unfold and match the pensive delivery of the lyrics. What went into the making of that song?
I think ‘Treeline’ is probably one of the most artistic and dark songs on the album – maybe even the only darker song. The guitar line came from this time when I was doing a cover of a Geneviève Castrée song. I was asked to do a cover of one of her songs and I chose my favorite song of hers, it’s called ‘Masks’. In that song, she does this kind of loop [sings vocal], so I was in that mindset at that time. I remember playing a show at a record shop in Boise, Idaho, and I was checking my guitar and went to this different key that I really love playing in. And I just put down something that had the same feel of her vocals in that song. That’s sort of where it originated.
The reason why the song is so dark – with this album, I decided that I don’t really want to talk very much about the darkness, because I feel like sometimes people will take tragic stories and boost up the tragedy, when really it’s just one song on the album, and the album itself is a lot about healing and hope. But that song, a big part of moving back home in the pandemic – yes, I was able to be a part of nature and have that connection to nature, but it was also very lonely. I struggle with depression and anxiety, so a lot of that song was talking about what those feelings that come up from depression and anxiety mean for me. I was learning about how, when you think about depression and anxiety in your life, you can sort of other it from you and create this separation, like it’s a person, it’s this thing. So that song is about is about depression and about anxiety being its own person. And then it goes into, like, I wish that I would have told on this anxiety and this depression, I wish I would have said something about it, because maybe I wouldn’t be feeling this way, and maybe the song wouldn’t be in existence.
The closing track, ‘Don’t Give Up’, begins by recognizing “slow, important love.” How did you settle on those two adjectives?
When I was thinking about those lyrics, I was trying to think about what love means to me in the long run of things, and that sometimes, it doesn’t always have to be this fast, romantic thing. Really, if you think about loving something or someone, there’s beauty in it being a slow process, because you get to enjoy it more. And there’s beauty in it having importance in your life. I was thinking about loving my family, loving my partner, loving my community, and how I want that love to be extended – I want it to last almost forever, or continue on. And how that aspect of love in general is a reason to live, a reason to continue. I think sometimes, because I struggle with mental health issues, I think about, like, what are the rates of suicide within native communities – I was learning about a lot of suicides within native communities during the pandemic, a time when you just could not be around people and it was really hard. And so, I just was trying to think about, what is something that keeps me going? And it’s love, but in this very slow way, in this way that’s really meaningful, and this way that I know it will always be there.
With the album being out in the world, do you feel a new appreciation for the things that make you feel grounded?
A big thing that has been a part of my life lately is meditation and taking time for myself. That’s one of the reasons why I feel like I have the tools to know when I need a moment, when I need to just sit and be quiet, when I need to breathe; knowing the importance of breathing and how that affects my nervous system. Knowing, if I do yoga or if I stretch today, I’ll feel a lot better than if I’m stiff and dehydrated. The fact that I know that grounding is something that I need, it just helps in the long run of things. When my nervous system is calm, there’s a lot more capacity and space to appreciate things. Even if they suck, you know. Like, for instance, if you’re traveling and your flight’s delayed, even those inconveniences – having the tools to ground yourself makes those things a lot easier to deal with, and makes having appreciation just for life in general, for me, a lot more visible.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Winter has shared a Water From Your Eyes remix of ‘good’, the SASAMI-featuring highlight from her latest album What Kind of Blue Are You? Take a listen below.
“A movie flashes in my mind every time I listen to this remix,” Samira Winter commented in a statement. “The track maintains it’s hypnotic spell only now with a twist of electrifying chaos that only Water From Your Eyes can bring.”
Fiona Apple has scored The Court Watchers, a new short film about the importance of court watching for the National Courtwatch Network. She also serves as one of the film’s narrators, talking about her own court watching experience. Watch it below.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Apple explained that part of her involvement in the PSA was due to her own arrest for drug possession in 2012: “It was drugs, it was hash. I wasn’t violent. But I could have gone away for 10 years, you know? And that’s happening to people all of the frickin’ time. It’s happening to people every day. For less.”
“Court watching is really the gateway to a better community, a better world, because it will make you care,” Apple added. “It makes you care about people you don’t know. And we need more of that. We really need more of that.”
Injustice happens in empty courtrooms. But in a growing number of places, people are holding the system accountable by showing up in court. Volunteering to court watch. Documenting what they see.
We’re watching. This powerful short film (scored by Fiona Apple!) tells our story: pic.twitter.com/zMFiZo2WNR
Kae Tempest has announced Nice Idea, a Record Store Day-exclusive EP produced by Dan Carey. Today, they’ve shared the EP’s title track, which marks their first solo music since last year’s The Line Is a Curve. Give it a listen below.
“This is a song about wanting to stay in bed all day with the person you’re in love with,” Tempest said of ‘Nice Idea’ in a statement “Imagine you could just shut the whole world out and enjoy each other. Nice idea.”
Fenne Lily has shared a new track from her upcoming album Big Picture, which was led by the single ‘Lights Light Up’. Listen to ‘Dawncolored Horse’ below.
The new song takes its title from a Richard Brautigan poem, ‘The Horse That Had a Flat Tire’. In a press release, Lily explained, “[Brautigan] talks about the woman he loves as being a ‘breathing castle.’ I truly don’t know what that means, but for me he’s distilled a feeling of absolute closeness. When you know someone so well it feels like you’re almost living inside them. That can be claustrophobic, but before it’s too much, it’s incredible.”
“A lot of the music I was listening to while I was writing seemed to be old kind of country stuff; the album Anymore For Anymore by Ronnie Lane and Slim Change was a big one (‘hear Roll On Babe from ’74’) — anything that sounded warm and comfortable, just people in a room playing what came most naturally,” she added. “When I brought this song to the band it easily fell into that sort of world — it felt stable, which is cool for a song that came from a place of total instability.” The song features Joe Sherrin on lead guitar, Kane Eagle on bass, James Luxton on drums, Phil Cook on bango, and Brad Cook on mellotron.
Big Picture is due for release April 14 through Dead Oceans.
The New Pornographers have released a new track, ‘Angelcover’, lifted from their forthcoming LP Continue as a Guest. Listen to it below.
“I pictured this one as a weird little George Saunders-esque sketch, a snapshot,” frontman A.C. Newman explained in a statement. “I found myself a lot more concerned with performance and/or delivery, changing melody and phrasing to get a better performance, less concerned, less precious about the original melody or lyric that I wrote. With that in mind, I had the idea of angels visiting me in the night with the message that ‘melody ain’t got nothing on delivery.’ Kind of a fever dream, where feelings take on their own personality and shape.”
Continue as a Guest, the New Pornographers’ first album for Merge, arrives on March 31. The band previously previewed the record with a video for the lead single ‘Really Really Light’, which made our Best New Songs segment.
Naima Bock has unveiled a new song called ‘Lies’. The track was engineered and produced by Ali Chant and arrives with a music video directed by Kit Harwood. Check it out below.
“‘Lines’ is about what we do to each other, some call the dance of intimacy, exchanges,” Bock explained in a statement. “What we are given, carry with us, then subsequently pass on to others good and bad. How the recipient is often undeserving of the negative side of this reality. It’s about trying to dodge blame and the loneliness of guilt. It’s about the irony of impermanence and unhealthy patterns coexisting; ‘nothing stays’ but ‘nothings changed’. The idea of change I had grown accustomed to but the reality that some things won’t change until you actively work on them is something new to me, preferring to adopt a slightly lazy attitude and misunderstanding the saying ‘all passes’. Sometimes it doesn’t pass quickly enough. It’s also a song about anger, and the familiarity of not knowing where to put it.”
