Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA

East Coast Soul was blessed to be invited to join Alison & Ruben for their stunning Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in .

Preprations for Alison & Ruben's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding began months in advance, with Alison & Ruben offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Alison & Ruben were heavily involved in this advanced planning and a huge asset throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process 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

One aspect of our planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding 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 providing approximately 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests arrived, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is often the case, 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 performing 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 wedding celebrations, East Coast Soul is asked to take care of 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 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. It's a chance for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were asked to play the first dance number live, instead of performing it from a recording. With this part 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 many weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to perform the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Alison & Ruben to share a brief moment in the center of the floor with their mother and father. For this particular performance, the bride and her father shared a dance. Ruben and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are an amazing 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

East Coast Soul shows commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get guests relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. 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 Alison & Ruben for having us at their beautiful September wedding at Fairmount Park Horticulture Center!