Harrington Farm Wedding in Princeton, MA

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be asked to join Erin & Brendan for their stunning Harrington Farm Wedding in Princeton, MA.

Preprations for Erin & Brendan's Big Day

Our groundwork for the wedding day began many weeks prior, with Erin & Brendan expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Erin & Brendan were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Princeton, MA and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for Harrington Farm 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 groundwork involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Erin & Brendan were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Erin & Brendan '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 great opportunity for the bride and groom to relax after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by performing 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 lion's share of celebrations, the band is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Harrington Farm Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The couple’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we transitioned into the couple’s first dance.

The newly married couple'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 asked to perform the first dance tune live, as opposed to playing it from a recording. With this part of the wedding 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 many weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to play the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Erin & Brendan to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their parents. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Brendan 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

our shows commonly kick off with vintage material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get folks relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then transitioned into performing music 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 Erin & Brendan for having us at their beautiful July wedding at Harrington Farm! And thank you to Audrey Cutler for sharing these beautiful photos with us!