Jaclyn booked a string quartet for her wedding and wanted to have Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" during the ceremony.

I write a lot of arrangements of various rock groups' songs and am always up for the challenge of turning a rock song into something that sounds great for strings.

When I went onto YouTube to listen to Coldplay's recording, I discovered that The Vitamin String Quartet had posted their own version of "Viva La Vida" online. I loved the way they played it and ended up writing a similar arrangement.

Of course discovering that they follow the piano part pretty closely made the job easier. I’m really happy with our version and I know Jaclyn will love it too. Her wedding’s in August 2010.

Winter is a good time for me to write these arrangements. Wedding season doesn’t start until April so I have plenty of time to arrange and rework the requested songs. Next on my list are “Ripple” by Jerry Garcia, “The Right Man” by Christina Aguilera, and “Stay With Me”, a John Legend song. I can’t wait to play them at next summer’s weddings!

Happy string quartet planning.