Cole Swindell and his bride, Courtney Little Swindell, celebrated their dedication to each other with not one—but two—matrimonial events in June.
The couple hosted a private family wedding in Sonoma County, California, on June 12 before heading off for their tropical honeymoon in Turks and Caicos. Then, 10 days after their initial ceremony, the Swindells threw a wedding reception in Nashville for more than 250 people.
“Honestly, I just can’t believe it,” Cole Swindell said. “I mean, this time last year, we were just getting engaged.”
He said he might have approved a few details along the way but left the planning up to his new wife and their wedding planners. It was her day, and he wanted her to be happy.
However, he did take charge of the wedding song, “Forever To Me,” which he wrote with Greylan James and Rocky Block earlier this year.
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Cole Swindell: “This Time Last Year, We Were Just Getting Engaged”
It was January, and Swindell knew he still had to write a song for his wedding when he headed to Texas with James and Block. He had a show the night before the National Championship game, so he thought they’d write songs, play music, and watch football.
The men wrote one song on the way to Texas. The next night after his show, they started trying to write his wedding song. Swindell had recently written multiple love songs, but none felt exactly right for his wedding.
“We were just talking, and somehow I ended up saying that Courtney, I was like, ‘She’s forever to me,'” Swindell said. “And they just both looked at each other, and I’m usually the one that catches things like that. But they both looked at each other and just were like, ‘That’s it. That’s what it’s got to be, ‘Forever to Me.'”
Captivated by the idea, Swindell and the men worked on “Forever to Me” all night long and went to bed the next morning. They got up, started writing again, and continued until they were nearly late for the National Championship game.
Swindell called the experience “a happy write” and said the last chorus “tugs at you.” He said one of the last lines they wrote for “Forever to Me” was the first line to the song.
“They were like, ‘How are we going to start this off?'” he said. “‘This has got to be something that grabs people.’ I don’t know; it just came to my head. I said, ‘You ever seen a prayer in person?’ That’s how the whole verse one starts and here we are.”
The Swindells Danced to “Forever to Me” at Their Wedding
The couple danced to “Forever to Me” at their wedding. The song is out now and is the first single from Swindell’s forthcoming fifth studio album.
“I was like, ‘I don’t care if I miss this game,'” Swindell said. “‘I don’t have a dog in the fight. I just wanted to go watch some football.’ I remember telling people in the suite, ‘I just wrote one of my favorite songs; that’s probably going to be my wedding song.’ It’s a pretty crazy crazy story, but that’s how some of my favorite songs happen. You just got to be present.”
Swindell said everyone was “freaking out” when they finished the song. He wasn’t going to see Courtney for a few days, so he sent her the work tape as soon as he received it. He couldn’t wait for her to hear it.
“Obviously, she loved it and she and her sisters played it for their family and just everybody obviously loved it,” he said.
The singer is addicted to the feeling he gets when coming up with lines for a song and can’t wait to share them with others.
“It’s hard to explain, but it fires me up just because I moved to this town … to write songs,” he said. “I’m so thankful I get to sing them as well. If somebody could be a fly on the wall and just watch (us write), you’d probably think we’re nuts.”
(Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
