Valley View Farm Wedding in Haydenville, MA

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

Preprations for Erica & Matt's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding began well ahead, with Erica & Matt sharing their music and logistical preferences and vision with us for the wedding (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Erica & Matt were heavily involved in this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and moved swiftly through our standard load-in, set up, and sound check process 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

Part of our planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Erica & Matt were also interested in 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 arrived, 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 wonderful chance for the bride and groom to relax after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing a variety of relaxed music for guests to listend 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 bulk of celebrations, East Coast Soul is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Valley View 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 moved into into the groom and bride’s first dance.

The newly married couple's first dance is invariably one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding. It's a chance for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were requested to play the first dance song 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 Soulsville ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, we are also asked 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 middle of the dancefloor with their mother and father. For this particular performance, the bride and her father shared a dance. Matt and his mother shared a dance 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

our performances often start with older material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get guests up on the dance floor with songs they know and love. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then transitioned into performing music 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!