Artists For Humanity Wedding in Boston, MA

East Coast Soul was blessed to be invited to join Sarah & Ben for their stunning Artists For Humanity Wedding in Boston, MA.

Preprations for Sarah & Ben's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding began months in advance, with Sarah & Ben expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding (preparation is a key part of our process). Sarah & Ben were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Boston, MA and began our standard load-in and sound check for Artists For Humanity 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

Part of our planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Sarah & Ben were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Sarah & Ben 's ceremony started at 6:00 pm on and was held Artists for Humanity at Artists For Humanity. 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 arrived, the ceremony took place. Sarah & Ben provided a beautiful collection of songs for us to perform for the ceremony:

• Processional: The Who – Love Reign O’er Me
• Recessional: Bill Withers – Lovely Day

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was requested to perform cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a wonderful chance for the bride and groom to unwind after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing a blend of relaxed music for guests to listend to. In this case, cocktail hour took place Second floor of Artists for Humanity. We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and more.

Reception

In a majority of receptions, East Coast Soul is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This Artists For Humanity Wedding was no different.

The couple’s First Dance

The newly married couple's first dance is almost always one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding. 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 number live, instead of playing it from a recording. Sarah & Ben danced to The Horrah, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. 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 Stax ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, East Coast Soul is often requested to play the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Sarah & Ben to share a brief moment on the dance floor with their parents. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Ben and his mother shared a dance to The Temptations - My Girl/Ain't Too Proud to Beg. Parent dances are an amazing way to start the dance party 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 guests relaxed and dancing with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then moved 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 Sarah & Ben for having us at their beautiful November wedding at Artists For Humanity!