Gedney Farm Wedding in New Marlborough, MA

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be brought to join Yael & Richard for their stunning Gedney Farm Wedding in New Marlborough, MA.

Introductions and Preprations for Yael & Richard's Big Day

Yael & Richard first reached out to us in February of 2016. Our groundwork for the wedding began well ahead, with Yael & Richard offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Yael & Richard were heavily involved in this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to New Marlborough, MA and moved swiftly through our standard load-in, set up, and sound check process for Gedney Farm weddings. Our process for loading in and setting up at any given venue is a big part of our preparation process. 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. Gendey Farm's performance space is a beautiful, spacious old barn that provides a wonderful two story venue for any wedding. Decorated with simple white lights, it truly is a sight to behold.

Ceremony

Part of our groundwork involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Yael & Richard were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Yael & Richard 's ceremony started at 6:30 pm on and was held in the tent at the rear of the venue at Gedney Farm. East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Guitar performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul providing approximately 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests found their seats, the ceremony took place. Yael & Richard provided a beautiful collection of songs for us to perform for the ceremony:

• Processional: Somewhere Over The Rainbow
• “Bride’s Entrance”: Theme From The Princess Bride
• Recessional: Signed Sealed Delivered

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was asked to provide 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 performing a variety of relaxed music for guests to enjoy. In this case, cocktail hour took place bottom floor of barn/outdoor patio. We provided a Piano/Sax Duo and and featured music by artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a majority of weddings, the band is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the wedding celebrations. This Gedney Farm Wedding was no different. The guests of honor crushed it by dancing in to Celebrate by Kool & The Gang with the wedding guests cheering them in.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

The groom and bride's first dance is almost always one of the most meaningful 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 perform the first dance tune live, instead of performing it from a recording. Yael & Richard danced to Hakuna Matata from the Lion King, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. With this part of the wedding complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Stax ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to play the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Yael & Richard to share a brief moment in the middle of the dancefloor with their father and mother. For this particular performance, Yael and her father danced to I Feel A Change Comin’ On by Bob Dylan. Richard and his mother shared a dance to You'll Be In My Heart by Phil Collins. Parent dances are an amazing 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

our performances commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get guests 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 outset of our performance. We then moved 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 Yael & Richard for having us at their beautiful November wedding at Gedney Farm!