As I was working on the recording of “Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee”, my initial inclination was to offer it as a wedding recessional – because it’s the song Mary and I used for our exit from our wedding (our recessional)! So naturally that was the way I had conceived it.
But as I worked on various versions of the song, it seemed to me it could work quite nicely as a bridesmaids or bridal processional as well. Our version utilizes a beautiful and majestic pipe organ sound, and I added a short fanfare section before the body of the song as an option for the processionals. The fanfare is somewhat reminiscent of the first couple of measures of the traditional bridal chorus, making a musical announcement as it were that it is time for all to rise and see the bride as she comes down the aisle.
This is another wedding processional that is performed in various timings – 4 that include the fanfare at the beginning, and 4 that do not. The shortest version with fanfare is about 50 seconds long; without it is 45 seconds. With fanfare, the longest timings are about 2 1/2 minutes. It might seem a little odd to have such short versions, but there are many small churches in which the time required for the bride to go from the back of the church to the front is about a minute, and it would be a VERY long aisle that would make the journey down the aisle longer than 2 1/2 minutes.
Lastly, this would make a nice wedding prelude piece if you want to include some more stately or classical numbers, and not to overstate the possible uses… but it would work great as a a “postlude” number as well after the primary recessional.