It was the picture of the D.J. — headphones around his neck, saxophone in his hands — that caught Tiffany Yamasaki’s eye. She didn’t like the music options her wedding venue offered, and seeing the woodwind instrument reminded her of live sax performances she and her fiancé had seen recently at concerts by Chromeo and the 1975.
Ms. Yamasaki, a 32-year-old physical therapist in Lakewood, Colo., said she knew the D.J.-sax combination would be “a way to tie together a traditional wedding band and a D.J.”
When the D.J. Tim Lacatena emerged from behind the decks with a saxophone at her March 29 wedding to James Wade, a 33-year-old occupational therapist, in Huntington Beach, Calif., the response was everything the couple had hoped.
“People were losing their minds,” Mr. Wade said.
What felt like an original choice to the couple quickly became a more common occurrence, and two of the five weddings they’ve attended in the last six months have also featured a D.J.-sax combo.
It’s a good time to be a saxophone. The London-based brand Damson Madder featured a sax player at its New York Fashion Week party. So did the band Haim in its recently concluded “I Quit” tour. The rapper and singer Doja Cat was joined by Kenny G at the MTV Video Music Awards in September, and that same month, the retired football player Jason Kelce played sax with the Baltimore Ravens band.
The research firm Dataintelo projects the global saxophone market will pass $343 million by 2033, up from $215 million in 2023. In China alone, increased interest among retirees has led to a 30 percent jump in sax sales.
A beat drop for some history: Adolphe Sax, of Belgium, invented the instrument in 1842, but it wasn’t exactly welcomed in the music scene, said Michael Segell, a music historian and the author of “The Devil’s Horn: The Story of the Saxophone, from Noisy Novelty to King of Cool.” There were three attempts on Mr. Sax’s life that “were thought to be from rival instrument makers fearing loss of popularity of their horns,” he added.
Over the past two centuries, Mr. Segall said, the sax was banned from Catholic sacred music by the Vatican and deemed profane by Ladies’ Home Journal. The Legion of Decency wouldn’t endorse “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the 1951 film, partly because of the sax music, he added. But the instrument was also a key player in the emerging art forms like vaudeville, jazz and rock ’n’ roll.
“If not for the jazz bands in the ’20s and R & B in the ’40s and ’50s, it may have disappeared,” said Branford Marsalis, the sax legend. “At some point things become ingrained in the cultural DNA of a people, and that’s the saxophone.”
Weddings are no exception. “Everyone wants an element of surprise with their wedding,” said Preston Bailey, an event planner in New York who has overseen the weddings of Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian, and President Trump and Melania Trump (neither wedding featured sax). “The D.J. plays the songs the guests love, and the saxophone gives you the feeling you’re listening to a live performance. It’s a major plus.”
A ‘Cilantro’ Effect
Of course, for every couple who have embraced this trend — according to the British wedding website Hitched’s trends report, searches for “saxophone wedding” increased 143 percent in 2024 — there are those who might wonder, When is it going away?
Patrick Sargent, a saxophonist who went from playing one to two weddings a year to seven this past summer alone, acknowledged that “it does have this cilantro thing happening”: Some people might hear something pleasing, while others — “a very small amount of people,” he said — “cannot stand it.”
Perhaps that’s why Mr. Bailey, the New York planner, has strict rules for the sax: It shouldn’t be played longer than five or 10 minutes at a time. Any longer and “it becomes annoying.”
Eliny Almonte Rodriguez, a 34-year-old account manager in Queens, N.Y., had to convince her husband, Roberto Hinojosa, a 45-year-old accountant, to hire a saxophonist for their June 7 wedding in Roslyn, N.Y.
She showed him a video of a saxophonist accompanying Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” hoping he would be sold. He wasn’t. In the end, she agreed to limit the sax, and “now,” she said of the performance, “he just brags to everybody how awesome it was.”
For Fallon Carter, an event planner in New York City, one minute is one minute too long. For a recent wedding in France, the bride informed Ms. Carter that a saxophonist/D.J. combo had already been hired. “I was like, Oh, that’s a choice,” Ms. Carter said.
As far as she is concerned, this trend can’t end fast enough. “I’m not a fan,” Ms. Carter said. “I think couples are feeling forced to create this ‘wow factor.’ But the saxophone is extremely distracting to me as someone who loves good quality music.”
It’s a delicate negotiation for an antisax planner and a pro-sax couple. What did she tell that bride in France? “Let’s just keep him for an hour. No need to extend.”
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