Topnotch Resort Wedding in Stowe, VT

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be brought to join Ellen & Peter for their stunning Topnotch Resort Wedding in Stowe, VT.

Preprations for Ellen & Peter's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding began well ahead, with Ellen & Peter offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Ellen & Peter were heavily involved in this advanced planning and a huge asset throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Stowe, VT and began our standard load-in and sound check for Topnotch Resort 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

Part of our planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Ellen & Peter were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Ellen & Peter '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 found their seats, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was asked to provide cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a great opportunity for the bride and groom to unwind after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing a blend 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 weddings, the band is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This Topnotch Resort Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact 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 groom and bride'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 specific wedding, we were asked to perform the first dance tune live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's King ensemble circled back 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 Ellen & Peter to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Peter and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are an amazing way to kick off the main dance performance. 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 commonly kick off with vintage material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get everyone relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and more dominated the outset of our performance. 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 Ellen & Peter for having us at their beautiful September wedding at Topnotch Resort! And thank you to Kelsey Regan for sharing these beautiful photos with us!