A wedding march is a piece of music played during a wedding, usually during the entrance of the bride (processional) or the departure of the married couple at the end (recessional).

Famous wedding marches

The traditional processional at Western weddings is the Bridal Chorus from Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, while a traditional recessional is the Wedding March from Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The popularity of these selections was greatly increased when they were used for the wedding of Princess Victoria.

While their musical works are often paired today, Mendelssohn, a strict Lutheran of Jewish decent, was the target of Wagner's anti-Semitic essay Das Judenthum in der Musik.¹

References

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