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It was when we got to printing the order of service for my wedding – two days and counting – that I realised that things might have got out of hand. We had the song titles; the composers’ names; the full lyrics of the relevant German lieder. English translations were discarded (the ones from the CD booklet) and replaced (the ones from Faber & Faber’s Book of Lieder). By the time we turned to the cast biographies and recommended recordings the thought occurred that perhaps this was a bit much. This wasn’t a wedding ceremony – it was a concert. With a buffet. And extra shiny shoes.

Then again, whose special day was this supposed to be? For some brides and grooms it’s all about the swans, thrones, pageboys or tiaras. For us – a classical critic and a (part-time) French horn player – it was always going to be about the music. But whether or not your life revolves around music, is there a better opportunity to find a tune that actually speaks to you than on your wedding day? “Every bride imagines themselves walking up the aisle to a really romantic song,” confides Deborah Joseph, editor of Brides Magazine, “and as brides are getting older, women want to be in control of absolutely everything.”

Yet when pressed on what the modern bride ought to choose she is less enthusiasic. “I’ve never really noticed what people walk up the aisle to. You know what the truth is? I’m so busy looking at the bride and her dress, and checking out her shoes and her hair.” This is presumably why Brides Magazine is happy to devote 12-page spreads to the strappy silver sandal, but there’s nary a paragraph on Mendelssohn’s wedding march v the bridal chorus from Wagner’s Lohengrin.

There is guidance out there. This month’s edition of Classic FM magazine carries the results of their wedding survey, but overall it’s a predictable trawl. What’s more, despite the fact that civil ceremonies accounted for two thirds of all wedding ceremonies in 2006, a big chunk of this selection would get a big nono from the registrar: the Charpentier, the Bach and the Franck are all explicitly religious and hence would only pass muster in a church. (For those with a pop sensibility, it’s worth noting that the fustiest registrars will even veto Robbie Williams’s Angels on the ground of excessive religiosity.)

Commenting on these results, Classic FM’s chosen style guru – Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen – got one thing right. “Three or four generations ago, people got married in a much more straightforward way,” he says. “These days we make a big hoo-ha and there’s far more pressure on couples to get it right.”

But “getting it right” needn’t be so predictable. It’s a curious fact that while everything in the modern wedding seems customisable, the music can be formulaic – both for those cheesy dancefloor fillers (“Come on Eileen just keeps coming back, sighs Joseph) and the ceremony itself.

“Most people tend to stick to the same sort of thing ,” confirms Alison Cathcart, superintendent registrar at Westminster Register Office, who admits to hearing such aisle ballads as Johnny Cash’s Walk the Line and Elvis Presley’s It’s Now or Never. But when asked for the most common pieces she immediately replies: “wedding march” (that’s the Mendelssohn) and “canon” (that’s the Pachelbel). It’s almost as if the brides and grooms at civil ceremonies feel the need to “legitimise” their nuptials with the old staples.

Help is at hand. Times writers have scoured their CD collections for appropriate ceremonial fare. Overleaf, we dissect the chemistry behind the ultimate wedding party. And when it comes to that tricky classical niche, you could do worse than reach for A Bride’s Guide to Wedding Music, just released on Naxos.

But what’s surely most important is to choose something that complements the kind of couple you are. Thomas Adès, one of Britain’s leading young composers, happily confessed in these pages two weeks ago that he had walked down the aisle to Girls Aloud at his civil partnership ceremony. Cathcart tells me of the football-mad groom who compromised with his bride by booking a harpist to play the Match of the Day theme tune.

And me? I can’t imagine many brides and grooms who would choose my combinination of Schumann, Strauss, Fauré, Debussy, Bonzanini and Christenus. But, after all, who on earth would want to copy anyone else’s wedding?

Britain’s brides choose

THE MOST POPULAR . . .

1. Widor Toccata from Symphony No 5
2. Pachelbel Canon in D
3. Handel Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
4. Bach Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring
5. Clarke Prince of Denmark’s March, Trumpet Voluntary
6 = Franck Panis Angelicus
6 = Charpentier, Prelude from Te Deum
8 = Mendelssohn Wedding March
8 = Grieg Wedding Day at Troldhaugen
8 = Morricone Gabriel’s Oboe from The Mission

. . . AND THE MOST OFFBEAT

1. Z-cars Theme
2. Star Wars Theme
3. Sound of Music Wedding Music
4. Handel Dead March from Saul
5. Chopin Funeral March
6. Wagner Funeral March, Lohengrin
7. Gilbert and Sullivan March from Iolanthe
8. BerliozMarch to the Scaffold
9. Morricone Cinema Paradiso
10. Orff Carmina Burana

Source: Classic FM magazine, June 2008 issue

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