11 songs about getting married you should never hear at a wedding

You may have spotted that there's a royal wedding happening this Saturday (19 May) - you can follow full coverage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding over on the BBC News website, and 6 Music's Liz Kershaw show on the same day is dedicated to listeners’ wedding songs/dances from their own nuptials (suggest yours here).

In the meantime, we take a look at 11 songs about weddings that are unlikely to find themselves on the happy couple's playlist this weekend...

Originally published July 2016 to coincide with Bat for Lashes' session for Lauren Laverne, updated May 2018.

Bat for Lashes’ 2016 album The Bride is a captivating song suite that begins with a doomed wedding. On his way to get married, a young groom dies in a car crash, leaving his bride to honeymoon alone and deal with her conflicting emotions of grief, love, celebration and recrimination. Despite the tragedy at its heart, it’s actually quite an uplifting tale (honest!).

The first single from Bat for Lashes' The Bride sets the scene for the album's over-arching story. A bride waits by the altar for her absent groom. Sensing that something is amiss, she starts to see visions of her fiance's demise - "my baby's hand on the wheel"; "my baby died on the beach" - and her mind lingers on the word 'fire'. Overcome with grief and panic, she hides behind her veil so that no one can see her tears. For her live shows, Natasha Khan amped up the melodrama by donning a bridal gown and walking down the aisle to the stage.

This song is an impressionistic retelling of François Truffaut's film The Bride Wore Black (La Sposa In Nero), a revenge fantasy in which a young groom is murdered on his wedding day. Heartbroken and vowing revenge, his new bride tracks down his assailant and kills him. Her wedding list isn’t filled with toasters and towels - it’s a hitlist that ends with the bride herself, because she can’t face life without her true love. A dramatic tale that Kate Bush keeps just the right side of hammy…

Dolly Parton’s lover has chosen to marry someone else and all she can do is watch, wishing that the confetti in her hand was something heavier and spikier. “Now while they're all outside, waiting to throw rice,” she wails, “what I want to throw will surely black her eyes”. She goes on to fantasise about throwing rocks at the new bride, stealing her husband back and tying dynamite to the side of her car. Country music is truly the darkest of all genres.

A similar scenario to Dolly’s wedding, but in this case Etta James takes matters into her own hands (without lobbing any rocks, thankfully). When the preacher finishes his “speak now or forever hold your peace” spiel, she decides to intervene, informing the assembled company that the groom is only marrying to get back at her. “Don’t break two hearts,” she pleads. Does Etta get her man back? We never find out, but either way it’s going to be one awkward reception.

More country darkness courtesy of Gram Parsons, in which a wedding turns inexorably into a funeral. The lyrics are vague but seem to involve a reluctant groom, a disappearing bride, a “mean old mama”, some terrible news and vast quantities of booze only serving to make matters worse. At least the last aspect is something that most British wedding guests can empathise with.

There’s nothing sadder than a couple sleeping in separate rooms on their wedding night. The lyrics don’t give any real clue as to why the groom immediately goes cold on his virginal young bride - Were they just too young? Is it a marriage of convenience? Is he embarrassed about his impotence? - but the devastation in Freda Payne’s voice resonated with millions, sending this Holland-Dozier-Holland song to No. 1 in the spring of 1970.

In the free-loving late-60s, the idea of settling down was considered terminally uncool, underlined by this song - the B-side to Purple Haze - which portrays marriage as something akin to a life sentence. Jimi Hendrix might be going a teensy bit over to the top when he imagines “a thousand kids” running around hungry and the parents turning to drink, but his point is made. “So you, you say you wanna be married?” Jimi teases his young conquest, “I’m gonna change your mind.”

This song is taken from Prince’s 1980 album Dirty Mind and, suffice to say, it’s one of Prince’s more lurid fantasies, in which he encounters a bride on her way to church. He’s such a handsome, smooth-talking devil that she sacks off the wedding and starts frolicking with him, though happily her bridal gown isn’t wasted because she ends up marrying Prince instead.

Here’s a tale of young love thwarted first by parental scorn, and then something a little more violent in this 1965 single by the Shangri-Las. Jimmy and Mary love each other and want to get married, and go to Mary’s parents to ask for their approval. Sadly, they are roundly mocked for their juvenile passions, so Mary runs crying to Jimmy’s car. The two drive off in a highly agitated state, and that may be why Jimmy doesn’t notice the lethal new detour in the road. More brutal tragedy of the type you don’t encounter in the songs of, say, Little Mix.

Weddings don’t get much more disastrous than Game of Thrones’ infamous ‘Red Wedding’. Without giving too much away, let’s just say a rubbish best man’s speech is the least of their worries. Coldplay brilliantly summarised Rob Stark’s doomed nuptials in this Red Nose Day sketch about a spoof Game of Thrones musical (fast-forward to 7:51 for the Red Wedding Song). Altogether now: “Keep that wedding cake in the fridge / He didn’t pay me back for using the bridge."

Commonly known as Here Comes the Bride, this stirring tune is used to herald the appearance of the bride at many a wedding without many people being aware of its bloody original context in Wagner's opera Lohengrin. The titular knight has just retired to the bridal chamber with his new wife Elsa when the evil count Telramund ambushes them; Lohengrin slaughters Telramund but is forced to immediately return to his kingdom, prompting Elsa to drop dead from grief. Maybe country music isn't so dark after all.