Beauport Hotel Wedding in Gloucester

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

Introductions and Preprations for Sarah & Matt's Big Day

Sarah & Matt initially got in touch with East Coast Soul in June of 2021. Our preparations 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 take our preparation process extremely seriously). Sarah & Matt were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and a huge asset throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Gloucester and carried out our normal 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

Part of our preparations 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 interested in 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 providing roughly 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests arrived, the ceremony took place.

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 relax after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing a blend of relaxed music for guests to enjoy. In this case, We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and more.

Reception

In a bulk of celebrations, we is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This Beauport Hotel Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact 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 couple's first dance is almost always 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 specific wedding, we were requested to perform the first dance song live, instead of performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's King ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, we are also asked to play the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Sarah & Matt to spend a couple minutes in the center of the floor with their mother and father. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father shared a dance. Matt and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are a great 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 everyone relaxed and dancing with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, The Temptations, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. We then transitioned into playing tunes 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 Sarah & Matt for having us at their beautiful May wedding at Beauport Hotel!