The Choir

Last week, I went out to Ivoryton, Connecticut, where the girls' choir that is singing at our wedding was at choir camp. They were spending the week rehearsing music for our wedding, and when I arrived, the girls exclaimed, "It's Danielle!"

Before we shared dinner together, they sang some of the music for me that they'd been rehearsing. The first piece they sang--The Father's Love--was the first anthem I sang with my choir growing up as a little girl. I remember coming home from that first rehearsal and singing it every day until our next rehearsal, including in the shower! So it was incredibly moving to hear a new generation of girls sing it, some of them for the first time. They made wonderful eye contact while they were singing and smiled at me, and I definitely got a little weepy! They also sang John Scott's arrangement of How Can I Keep from Singing, and I joined them to sing John Rutter's For the Beauty of the Earth; it was a real privilege for me to blend my voice to theirs, as they are incredibly disciplined, talented young ladies. It was also really special to me that the girls and their choir director had put in so much time and energy into making beautiful music for us and our friends and family. What a gift!

At dinner (which was preceded by a multi-part sung blessing), I asked the girls whether they liked the music that we'd picked and they got so excited. One girl even said, "I love the anthems so much! They are so, so...so....so....so....um....they're really so nice!" I tried to pick the music I had loved as a child, so I was glad to hear they loved it too.

Another girl asked whether I had sung with their choir as a child. I said to her, "This choir didn't exist when I was little girl. I sang with a girls' choir on Long Island." Without missing a beat, she then said, "Oh, so they were your family?"

What a very powerful comment and a true one in many ways: I didn't always get along with the other choir girls, but we had to learn to sing together, to be together three, four, sometimes six or seven times a week. And even if we didn't particularly like each other, the music seemed to bind us together and affect us all in such deep ways.

After returning from that evening at choir camp, I sent facebook messages and e-mails to the girls from my choir for whom I still have contact information. I told them about the music for our service, and several of them who are already married responded by telling me how they had chosen the same pieces or other ones we sang as children. Some had corralled fellow choristers from our childhood to sing; some had hired our Cathedral's choir, with its new group of girls. Some, like me, looked to other musical voices with whom we had become acquainted in our adult years. A couple even asked if they could come to the service because they never got to hear that music anymore, and they missed it.

All amazing stuff! We hope you enjoy the music from the girls choir and the adults who will be joining them! If you can, make sure to get to the church around 3:30 to hear the prelude music!