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 East Coast Soul in June of 2021. Our preparations for the wedding day began well ahead, 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 incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Gloucester and began our standard load-in and sound check for Beauport Hotel weddings. Our process for loading in and setting up at any given venue is a big part of our preparation process. 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 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 asked to provide cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a great opportunity for the bride and groom to unwind after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by providing a variety of relaxed music for guests to enjoy listening 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, East Coast Soul is asked to handle 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 couple’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we changed gears to into the couple’s first dance.

The bride and groom's first dance is consistently one of the most emotional 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 asked to play the first dance song live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this part of the evening finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's King ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, 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 middle of the dancefloor with their mother and father. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Matt and his mother danced together 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

our dance performances often start with older 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, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. We then transitioned into performing music 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!