Valley View Farm Wedding in Haydenville, MA

East Coast Soul was grateful to be brought to join Erica & Matt for their stunning Valley View Farm Wedding in .

Preprations for Erica & Matt's Big Day

Our preparations for the wedding day began months in advance, with Erica & Matt expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Erica & Matt were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and began our standard load-in and sound check for Valley View 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 preparations involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Erica & Matt were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Erica & Matt '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 intense emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by performing 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 John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of weddings, East Coast Soul is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the receptions. This Valley View Farm Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

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

The bride and groom's first dance is invariably one of the most meaningful 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 requested to play the first dance number live, instead of performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's Soulsville 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 Erica & Matt to spend a couple minutes in the center of the floor with their father and mother. For this particular wedding, the bride and her father shared a dance. Matt and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are a fantastic 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 dance performances commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get folks relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. We then transitioned 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 Erica & Matt for having us at their beautiful August wedding at Valley View Farm! And thank you to Novella Photography for sharing these beautiful photos with us!