Cliff House Maine Wedding in Ogunquit, ME

East Coast Soul was grateful to be asked to join Carlos & Patrick for their stunning Cliff House Maine Wedding in .

Preprations for Carlos & Patrick's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding day began many weeks prior, with Carlos & Patrick offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Carlos & Patrick 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 and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for Cliff House Maine 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 planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Carlos & Patrick were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Carlos & Patrick '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 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 do our part by performing a variety 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 lion's share of receptions, East Coast Soul is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the receptions. This Cliff House Maine Wedding was no different. However, there were actually 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 almost always one of the most unforgettable parts of the wedding day. It's a chance for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular wedding, we were requested to perform the first dance tune live, instead of performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick break, East Coast Soul's Stax ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, East Coast Soul is often requested to perform the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Carlos & Patrick to spend a couple minutes in the center of the floor with their parents. For this particular wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Patrick 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 shows often start with older material. We've found this is a great way to get folks up on the dance floor with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, 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 Carlos & Patrick for having us at their beautiful July wedding at Cliff House Maine!