Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding in Philadelphia, PA

East Coast Soul was blessed 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 began many weeks prior, with Alison & Ruben sharing their music and logistical preferences and vision with us for the wedding (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Alison & Ruben were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Philadelphia, PA and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for Fairmount Park Horticulture Center weddings. Being prepared for load-in and set-up at any given venue is a critical part of our workflow. 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 interested in 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 relax after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing a variety of relaxed music for guests to listend 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 celebrations, we is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the receptions. This Fairmount Park Horticulture Center Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The couple’s First Dance

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

The newly married couple's first dance is traditionally one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were requested to perform the first dance song live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this part 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 a majority of wedding performances, we are also asked to play the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Alison & Ruben to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their parents. For this particular performance, the bride and her father danced together. Ruben and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are an amazing 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

our shows often start with older material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get folks relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then transitioned into playing tunes 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!