"It's the happiest day of your life," proclaims the jacket of the For Your Wedding CD, which is part of a series called For Your Life. "Let this music be your ultimate guide to planning the perfect wedding. Helping brides everywhere create beautiful weddings can be simple and worry-free." Indeed! If it's one-stop wedding music shopping you're looking for, this could fill the bill. The hits are all here: the Lohengrin bridal chorus played on the organ, both the
Bach/
Gounod Ave Maria and the
Schubert, the
Mendelssohn wedding march from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Pachelbel Canon, as well as a group of Baroque pieces that have picked up a patina of exclusivity from being used as soundtrack music for various PBS series down through the years. There's even an offbeat choice: the "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" from
Grieg's Lyric Pieces. So what's not to like? Oh, the crass lack of individuality of the whole thing, an image consciousness that, taken to extremes, could doom any marriage. The conviction that money is what love's all about pokes out from any number of places here, but it shows itself most clearly when one inserts the CD in a computer in order to experience the enhanced content. Mightn't a pressured bride hope for some poetry, some nice photographs, even a few wedding tips? Instead, what she'll see as all the lovely music plays is a set of advertisements for other discs in the For Your Life series. Decca's #1 Wedding Album offers more music and less annoyance.