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Music

What You Learn About Love and Fuckwits As a Wedding Singer

Lisa Crawley is a musician, who moonlights in the wedding industry.

Love weddings? Or crazy, funny people? Our new VICELAND show BOBBY AND HARRIET GET MARRIED premieres Tuesday, August 8 at 8.30 PM on VICELAND SKY Channel 13. It's about a real-life comedian couple who are, you guessed it, getting married. It is very funny.

Weddings. That special day of a lifetime that takes months of planning, thousands of dollars and hours agonising over where to sit drunken Aunt Martha and whether or not the giant monogrammed ice sculpture will melt into a puddle on the floor. On average, Lisa Crawley goes to one a week. Singing in a wedding band funds her musical career, which makes her kind of a professional wedding crasher. Along the way she's seen some pretty crazy dance moves, many failed pick-up attempts, and snuck a camera along to catch it all on film. In her new music video for 'Wedding Band', the singer shares some of this footage with the world.

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We talked to Lisa about what she's learned about love and wedding etiquette being a fly on the wall on a strange couple's special day.

VICE: Hi Lisa. Do you feel like you're invisible when you play at weddings?
Lisa Crawley: Oh absolutely and I'm quite happy with that. Especially later on, people aren't really listening and you're just kind of there. I equate it to being musical wallpaper. People are pretty quick to ask you to turn it down as well. It's funny. I just people watch, hence the video. I go home and I'm kind of like "well that was work."

You must see some crazy stuff being a fly on the wall at weddings. What are some of the craziest things you've seen people do or heard people say at weddings?
Once, an older man decided to pull me aside to interview me as the female member of the band in front of everyone. It was like a creepy uncle kind of vibe. He asked what my relationship status was and the bride and groom were just like what are you doing? I just felt incredibly awkward. You see people hooking up throughout the evening as they get more drunk, but yeah. I haven't had any extreme, break-up-the-wedding kind of vibes. Mostly it's us just seeing guys pulling down their pants. So yeah, it's good to be a fly on the wall.

"There's the orange girls, the girls that wear nothing basically and fake tan."

Do people fall into roles at weddings?
Yes, absolutely! There's the guy that's trying to pick up but not having much luck, that's pretty obvious. There's the orange girls, the girls that wear nothing basically and fake tan. The kind of bogan dudes that just want to hear you play ACDC and Cold Chisel's 'Khe Sanh', which is Australian bogan rock. The mother of the bride can sometimes be a little bit pushy to make sure we're not too loud and we've learnt all our requests and things. There are the dads that used to be in a band that ask us to have a go on your instrument or dip in for a song, which always puts you in an awkward situation because they could be terrible and we could get in trouble. We've had our instruments hijacked on our break once, people just kind of took over.

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Lisa Crawley.

Why do people think it's okay to make a fool of themselves at weddings?
My insight is that throughout the day there's a lot of emotions and it probably makes people evaluate where they're at in life. Maybe that combined with the alcohol, people are looking to meet somebody. People get really loose. It depends on the kind of wedding as well, there are more conservative ones where people are just looking at you like you're the scum of the earth while you try and get people dancing, but then there's the opposite ones where people are like yelling at you for not playing a certain song.

Are there any songs you just don't want to play anymore or never want to hear again?
There's this song called 'Horses' by Daryl Braithwaite in Australia, written by Rickie Lee Jones. Everyone loves that song and will harass you until you play it. There's some pretty cringe ones.

Can you tell if couples are going to work out from how they act?
You judge but it's hard to know what goes on behind the scenes, like maybe the groom's got agoraphobia. Sometimes I'm like why are they separated the whole night? But maybe they've just got their own friends to talk to. Are they not talking to each other because they're so in love and comfortable they're going to be with each other for the rest of their lives or they've actually got very little chemistry? But you can see couples that are pretty happy and very relaxed with each other and I do think they'll be together for a long time.

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"I watched a couple dry humping in their first dance. "

Are the first dances ever over the top?
I watched a couple dry humping in their first dance. It was weird, like a rave or something. It was really bizarre.

Does seeing all this stuff make you question whether or not you want to get married?
I don't think I would want a wedding band at my wedding now. It's probably put me off that.

Do you still believe in love after these experiences?
Yeah, I do. I've been to my friends' weddings as well as a non-band member and I've seen a lot of people very much in love and yeah I still believe in love. I struggle with being in love, but I do believe in it. It's like when I grew up playing music in church. There's going to be fuckwits in the church, there's going to be fuckwits getting married, but there's going to be some great people too.

Why did you put the footage from the weddings in your music video?
The story of the song is that she's come back to her small hometown and is singing at her ex's wedding. I filmed some travel footage to show the contrast between being at a wedding and actually having your own adventures, but it just seemed to work because I had no money and had all this footage and I just enjoyed seeing how it fit together. Some of the dancing just amused me and when I've been at the weddings I've wished that I could show someone what's going on, and I guess it's my way of doing that.

There's this idea that weddings are these romantic, glamourous, lovey-dovey affairs, and they can be, but there must be the other side of it that you see as a singer.
Absolutely. It's like someone being on drugs and someone being sober. You're in different head spaces.

And remember, watch BOBBY AND HARRIET GET MARRIED on VICELAND SKY Channel 13, Tuesdays at 8.30 PM. Check out the trailer here.

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