Gedney Farm Wedding in New Marlborough, MA

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be invited to join Yael & Richard for their stunning Gedney Farm Wedding in New Marlborough, MA.

Introductions and Preprations for Yael & Richard's Big Day

Yael & Richard first reached out to us in February of 2016. Our preparations for the wedding day began well ahead, with Yael & Richard offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Yael & Richard were heavily involved in this advanced planning and a huge asset throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to New Marlborough, MA and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for Gedney Farm 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. Gendey Farm's performance space is a beautiful, spacious old barn that provides a wonderful two story venue for any wedding. Decorated with simple white lights, it truly is a sight to behold.

Ceremony

One aspect of our preparations involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Yael & Richard were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Yael & Richard 's ceremony started at 6:30 pm on and took place in the tent at the rear of the venue at Gedney Farm. East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Guitar performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul performing roughly 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests arrived, the ceremony took place. Yael & Richard provided a beautiful collection of songs for us to perform for the ceremony:

• Processional: Somewhere Over The Rainbow
• “Bride’s Entrance”: Theme From The Princess Bride
• Recessional: Signed Sealed Delivered

Cocktail Hour

As is often the case, 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 blend of relaxed music for guests to enjoy listening to. In this case, cocktail hour took place bottom floor of barn/outdoor patio. We provided a Piano/Sax Duo and and featured music by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and more.

Reception

In a bulk of wedding celebrations, we is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This Gedney Farm Wedding was no different. The bridal party crushed it by dancing in to Celebrate by Kool & The Gang with everyone cheering them on.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

The couple's first dance is almost always one of the most emotional 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 asked to play the first dance song live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. Yael & Richard danced to Hakuna Matata from the Lion King, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. With this portion of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Stax ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In many weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to play the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Yael & Richard to share a brief moment on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this particular performance, Yael and her father danced to I Feel A Change Comin’ On by Bob Dylan. Richard and his mother shared a dance to You'll Be In My Heart by Phil Collins. Parent dances are a great way to start the dance party 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

East Coast Soul shows commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get everyone up on the dance floor with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, The Temptations, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then moved into performing music by artists like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince 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 Yael & Richard for having us at their beautiful November wedding at Gedney Farm!