By Colleen Gorman

A tradition began in my family about 10 years ago that has snowballed and really taken on a life of its own. For each major life event in a family member’s life, that person can expect to be serenaded to by the rest of the family. At last count, the “rest of the family” had swelled to 105, so there is almost always a song in the works. Now we have the added blessing(?) that technology is helping us to coordinate and capture the magic.

We start with a well-known song and re-write the words to suit the person and occasion. While our singing prowess has not improved over the years, our process has evolved tremendously. I clearly remember the event that started it all. My cousin Jeff’s rehearsal dinner – a nice restaurant in Dallas, a fiancé’s family that was just getting to know us, and clearly a few cocktails. My Mom and her siblings decided on the spur of the moment that they wanted to serenade the couple. It was so impromptu that the song was hastily written on a cocktail napkin (how appropriate). My generation – recognizing that singing a song scrawled on a cocktail napkin in front of 50 people we didn’t know, probably wasn’t the best representation of the family – gladly sat this particular song out.

We’ve learned a lot over the years and have started to really perfect the process. I admit, we’ve had some misses (the “Bye, Bye Blackbird” tune is not meant to be sung by a group of wannabe singers), but mostly we’ve improved exponentially. The most recent serenade happened at my cousin Evan’s wedding and during this particular song writing and singing process, I was struck by how far we’ve come since the hastily scrawled napkin. My Mom is usually the instigator in the song writing process. She began the process weeks ahead of the wedding with an email chain with a rough draft of the song and it made the rounds several times until we all added our two cents and the words were just right. Rehearsals are now built into the wedding weekend schedule and, for the first time, our on-site rehearsal included the karaoke version of the song on Mom’s iPod. To the delight of the other B&B guests, we were able to fit in a breakfast table practice before the wedding.

There was a time when the fruits of our labor (and subsequent embarrassment) were relegated to the wedding video and it would be months before we were able to experience the song from the audience’s perspective. But now, half the digital cameras in the room have video capability built in so for the first time, we could watch the video that very night. My cousin Karen and I returned to the B&B and realized we had about 10 videos and a couple of hundred photos of the wedding between us. And, of course, the song! At the risk of inviting a flood of readers to request our talents at your next event, I offer the video of the latest Mauser family song.

Can you imagine what the impromptu song was like? With our family spread across the country, at least now we can write the song together through email, research the best version of the song to sing to, download the song and easily rehearse. So, the tools for improving are readily available to us. Although, I have to admit, I have some mixed feelings about the number of videos that can now be taken of us.

Does your family have a tradition that has been aided and abetted by the evolution of technology?

Popularity: 47% [?]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 11:13 am and is filed under Digital Photography, Portable Electronics, Wireless Communications. Reply to this post, or trackback from your own site. Follow responses to this entry through the comments RSS feed.