Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA

East Coast Soul was grateful to be brought 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 day began many weeks prior, with Alison & Ruben offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Alison & Ruben were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Philadelphia, PA and moved swiftly through our standard load-in, set up, and sound check process for Fairmount Park Horticulture Center weddings. Our process for loading in and setting up at any given venue is a big part of our preparation process. 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

One aspect of our groundwork involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day 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 roughly 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests arrived, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was asked to provide cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a wonderful chance for the bride and groom to unwind after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing a variety of relaxed music for guests to enjoy listening to. In this case, We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of receptions, 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 in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The couple’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we moved into into the couple’s first dance.

The bride and groom's first dance is invariably one of the most unforgettable parts of the wedding day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were requested to play the first dance number live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this portion of the wedding complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Philadelphia International ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to perform the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Alison & Ruben to share a brief moment on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this particular performance, the bride and her father danced together. Ruben and his mother danced together 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 shows often start with older material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get folks relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. We then moved into performing music 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!