Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA

East Coast Soul was grateful to be asked to join Alison & Ruben for their stunning Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA.

Preprations for Alison & Ruben's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding day began months in advance, with Alison & Ruben expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Alison & Ruben were heavily involved in this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Philadelphia, PA and began our standard load-in and sound check for Fairmount Park Horticulture Center 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 day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Alison & Ruben were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Alison & Ruben 's ceremony . 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 found their seats, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was asked to provide 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 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 Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of wedding celebrations, the band is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding was no different. However, there were actually no formal intros for this wedding.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we transitioned into the bride and groom’s first dance.

The bride and groom's first dance is almost always 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 wedding in particular, we were requested to play the first dance song live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this portion of the wedding complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's Philadelphia International 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. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Alison & Ruben to share a brief moment on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this wedding in particular, the bride and her father danced together. Ruben and his mother danced together 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

East Coast Soul shows often start with older material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get folks up on the dance floor with songs they're familiar with. 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 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 Alison & Ruben for having us at their beautiful September wedding at Fairmount Park Horticulture Center!