River Road Farm Wedding in Manchester, VT

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be asked to join Maggie & Jessie for their stunning River Road Farm Wedding in Manchester, VT.

Preprations for Maggie & Jessie's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding began months in advance, with Maggie & Jessie offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Maggie & Jessie were heavily involved in this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Manchester, VT and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for River Road Farm weddings. Being prepared for load-in and set-up at any given venue is a critical part of our workflow. 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, Maggie & Jessie were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Maggie & Jessie 's ceremony . East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Piano performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul performing approximately 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests arrived, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is often the case, East Coast Soul was asked to provide cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a great opportunity 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 listening 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 majority of weddings, East Coast Soul is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This River Road Farm Wedding was no different. However, there were actually no formal intros for this wedding.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

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

The couple's first dance is invariably 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 performing it from a recording. With this part of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick break, East Coast Soul's Atlantic ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, we are also asked to play the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Maggie & Jessie to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their father and mother. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Jessie and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are a fantastic 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 shows commonly kick off with vintage material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get folks up on the dance floor with songs they know and love. Artists like Sam and Dave, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then moved 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 Maggie & Jessie for having us at their beautiful June wedding at River Road Farm! And thank you to Undressed Moments for sharing these beautiful photos with us!