River Road Farm Wedding in Manchester, VT

East Coast Soul was grateful to be brought 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 day began well ahead, with Maggie & Jessie expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Maggie & Jessie were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Manchester, VT and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for River Road Farm weddings. We're often asked about our process for loading in and sound checking at various venues. 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 day 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 providing roughly 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 wonderful chance for the bride and groom to relax after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing 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 Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of wedding celebrations, we is asked to handle 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 bride and groom's first dance is traditionally one of the most unforgettable parts of the wedding day. 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 number live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this portion of the wedding finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Atlantic ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, we are also asked to perform the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Maggie & Jessie to spend a couple minutes in the center of the floor with their parents. For this particular wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Jessie and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are a great 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 found this is a great way to get everyone relaxed and dancing with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Sam and Dave, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, 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 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!