Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be asked to join Alison & Ruben for their stunning Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA.

Preprations for Alison & Ruben's Big Day

Our groundwork for the wedding began well ahead, with Alison & Ruben offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Alison & Ruben were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Philadelphia, PA and began our standard load-in and sound check for Fairmount Park Horticulture Center weddings. We get a lot of questions about the logistics of loading in to any given venue. This is a part of the day that we take seriously, spending extra time to avoid rushing, and ensuring our gear is properly tuned for the room.

Ceremony

Part of our groundwork involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Alison & Ruben were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Alison & Ruben 's ceremony . East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Piano performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul providing approximately 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests found their seats, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was requested to perform cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a great opportunity for the bride and groom to relax after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by performing a blend of relaxed music for guests to listend to. In this case, We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of weddings, we is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding was no different. However, there were actually no formal intros for this wedding.

The groom and bride’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we transitioned into the groom and bride’s first dance.

The couple's first dance is almost always one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular wedding, we were requested to play the first dance tune live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick break, East Coast Soul's Philadelphia International ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, we are also asked to perform the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Alison & Ruben to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this particular wedding, the bride and her father shared a dance. Ruben and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are a great way to kick off the performance portion of the evening. We often ask guests to join the couple and their parents on the dance floor, and then move directly in to the rest of the performance.

Dance Party

our performances often start with older material. We've found this is a great way to get everyone relaxed and dancing with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then moved into playing tunes by artists like Whitney Houston, Prince, Michael Jackson and more. Finally, we ended the night performing contemporary material that everyone could sing along with.

Guests danced non-stop from beginning to end, and we limited our breaks to ensure people had as much time to dance as possible.

Thanks so much to Alison & Ruben for having us at their beautiful September wedding at Fairmount Park Horticulture Center!