Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA

East Coast Soul was fortunate 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 many weeks prior, with Alison & Ruben expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Alison & Ruben were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and began our standard load-in and sound check for Fairmount Park Horticulture Center weddings. We're often asked about our process for loading in and sound checking at various venues. 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 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 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 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 John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a bulk of celebrations, we 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 in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The groom and bride’s First Dance

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

The newly married couple'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 specific wedding, we were asked to play the first dance number live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening finished, 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 perform 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 parents. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father shared a dance. Ruben and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are a fantastic way to start the performance 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 commonly kick off with vintage material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get everyone relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then transitioned into playing tunes 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!