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 .

Preprations for Alison & Ruben's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding day began well ahead, with Alison & Ruben offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Alison & Ruben were heavily involved in this advanced planning and a huge asset throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and took care of the 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

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 providing roughly 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 great opportunity for the bride and groom to unwind after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by performing a blend of relaxed music for guests to listend to. In this case, We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of weddings, East Coast Soul is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

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

The couple's first dance is invariably one of the most emotional parts of the wedding day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this wedding in particular, we were asked to play the first dance song 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 as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Philadelphia International ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In many weddings, we are also asked to play the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Alison & Ruben to share a brief moment in the middle of the dancefloor with their mother and father. For this wedding in particular, the bride and her father shared a dance. Ruben 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 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 Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, The Temptations, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then transitioned 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!