Gedney Farm Wedding in New Marlborough, MA

East Coast Soul was grateful 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 got in touch with us in February of 2016. Our preparations for the wedding day began many weeks prior, with Yael & Richard expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Yael & Richard were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to New Marlborough, MA and began our standard load-in and sound check for Gedney Farm 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. 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 preparations involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Yael & Richard were also interested in 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 performing roughly 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 often the case, East Coast Soul was asked to provide cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a wonderful chance for the bride and groom to relax after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing a blend of relaxed music for guests to listend to. 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 lion's share of celebrations, the band is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the wedding celebrations. This Gedney Farm Wedding was no different. The guests of honor danced in to the sounds of Celebrate by Kool & The Gang with the wedding guests cheering them in.

The groom and bride’s First Dance

The couple's first dance is traditionally one of the most emotional parts of the wedding day. 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 song live, as opposed to playing it from a recording. Yael & Richard danced to Hakuna Matata from the Lion King, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. With this portion of the wedding finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's Stax ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to perform the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Yael & Richard to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their mother and father. 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 kick off 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 commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way 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 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!