Migis Lodge Wedding in South Casco, ME

East Coast Soul was grateful to be asked to join Avery & Jack for their stunning Migis Lodge Wedding in South Casco, ME.

Preprations for Avery & Jack's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding began months in advance, with Avery & Jack offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Avery & Jack were heavily involved in this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to South Casco, ME and began our standard load-in and sound check for Migis Lodge 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

One aspect of our planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Avery & Jack were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Avery & Jack '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 often the case, East Coast Soul was requested to perform cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a wonderful chance for the bride and groom to relax after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing a variety of relaxed music for guests to enjoy. In this case, We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and more.

Reception

In a majority of wedding celebrations, the band is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Migis Lodge Wedding was no different. However, there were actually no formal intros for this wedding.

The couple’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we headed 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. It's a chance for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular wedding, we were asked to play the first dance tune live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's Soulsville ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, East Coast Soul is often requested to perform the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Avery & Jack 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. Jack and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are an amazing 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

East Coast Soul 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 Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then transitioned into playing tunes 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 Avery & Jack for having us at their beautiful May wedding at Migis Lodge! And thank you to Natalya Desena for sharing these beautiful photos with us!