Carly Pearce on Using Her Songwriting Chops for Wedding Vows
'I really didn't expect it to be that hard!' she says.
It won’t be long before country singers Carly Pearce and Michael Ray tie the knot, and that means the final details are now getting worked out… Just little things like, you know, the vows.
Speaking with reporters Tuesday (September 24) about her upcoming “I Hope You’re Happy Now” duet with Lee Brice — which comes out Friday — Pearce also made some time for a wedding update. She mentioned having just finished her vows, so naturally Sounds Like Nashville asked how it went, seeing how she’s so comfortable pouring her heart into tracks like “Every Little Thing” and “Closer to You.”
“I found it really hard, I really didn’t expect it to be that hard!” she said in amazement. “It was like ‘I’m a songwriter, I know what I want to say, how hard can it be?’ But it was very hard to articulate in a short little piece to this person where they’ve taken you, what you’ve seen, your promises to them, where you want to go. It was pretty hard for me. I started writing it a month in advance.”
Admitting she had to write it in pieces because she kept getting emotional, Pearce also said she had to flash the finished product and her soon-to-be husband from across the room, just so he would know how much to write himself.
View this post on InstagramFRIDAY 💔 Link in bio to pre-save #ihopeyourehappynow.
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“Well, Michael is a talker,” she said with a sly smile. “He’s long winded and I love him for that, but I was like we’ve gotta have some [parameters]. Bill Cody from WSM is marrying us, and we’re gonna have him look at both our vows, but literally last night I [showed Ray] how long mine is, from just far enough away that he can get a good idea to make sure his isn’t too much longer, because I figure his will be. … I’ve looked at enough of my friends’ to be like ‘OK.’ Not that there has to be a time limit, but nobody wants to sit through vow after vow, but I also don’t want to be like ‘You only get four sentences.'”
Pearce and Ray still aren’t giving too much away about the actual day — but she says friends like Kelsea Ballerini and Maren Morris who have recently gone through the same process are helping her embrace all the public interest. “We really are so in love and are thankful for the opportunity to have people who actually care about our wedding,” she explained. “We’re taking it as it is — I don’t think anybody will camp out, but if they do I’ll give them some wine.”
View this post on InstagramA Monday at home together means drinking margs at 2pm 💛🍹 #ilovehim
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It’s already been revealed that fellow hit maker Jake Owen will be singing “Made for You” as the couple’s first dance, and Pearce now says “People can figure out when [the wedding] is … it’s the only weekend we both have blocked off with no shows on our schedule.” After that comes an end-of-the-year honeymoon and hopefully, the release of Pearce’s second album in early 2020. But along the way she’ll be promoting a deeply personal heartbreak ballad, and she recognizes the irony in that. Luckily, Ray understands.
“It’s been interesting to be like ‘Hey, I wrote this song that’s actually because I met you, but I’m gonna take this next year and talk about my ex boyfriend and Lee Brice is gonna play him in a song, and I need you to be OK with that, and we’re gonna get married during this,'” she explained. “But we’re both artists and we understand we’re here to tell stories, and he has a heartbreak ballad out right now about somebody in his past [“Her World Or Mine”]. I think it’s both of us giving you guys the closing chapters of this time in our life before we met each other.”
