Beauport Hotel Wedding in Gloucester

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be brought to join Sarah & Matt for their stunning Beauport Hotel Wedding in Gloucester.

Introductions and Preprations for Sarah & Matt's Big Day

Sarah & Matt first reached out to us in June of 2021. Our planning for the wedding day began months in advance, with Sarah & Matt expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Sarah & Matt were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Gloucester and moved swiftly through our standard load-in, set up, and sound check process for Beauport Hotel 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 planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Sarah & Matt were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Sarah & Matt 's ceremony . East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Piano performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul performing approximately 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests found their seats, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was requested to perform cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a great opportunity for the bride and groom to unwind after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing 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 weddings, the band is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Beauport Hotel 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 headed into into the groom and bride’s first dance.

The groom and bride's first dance is invariably one of the most emotional parts of the wedding day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were asked to perform the first dance tune live, as opposed to playing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick break, East Coast Soul's King ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, we are also asked to play the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Sarah & Matt to share a brief moment in the center of the floor with their parents. 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 fantastic way to start 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 folks relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Sam and Dave, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. 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 Sarah & Matt for having us at their beautiful May wedding at Beauport Hotel!