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 .

Preprations for Maggie & Jessie's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding day began well ahead, with Maggie & Jessie expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Maggie & Jessie were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and took care of the 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 day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Maggie & Jessie were also looking for 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 roughly 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 great opportunity for the bride and groom to relax after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by providing a blend of relaxed music for guests to listend 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 majority of wedding celebrations, the band 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 groom and bride’s First Dance

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

The groom and bride's first dance is consistently one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this specific wedding, we were requested to perform the first dance tune live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this part of the wedding finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's Atlantic ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In many weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to play the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Maggie & Jessie to share a brief moment in the center of the floor with their parents. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Jessie and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are an amazing way to start 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 dance performances 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 Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then moved into playing tunes 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 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!