The Barn at Gibbet Hill Wedding in Groton, MA

East Coast Soul was grateful to be invited to join Maya & Adam for their stunning The Barn at Gibbet Hill Wedding in .

Preprations for Maya & Adam's Big Day

Our groundwork for the big day began months in advance, with Maya & Adam offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the big day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Maya & Adam were heavily involved in this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the big day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for The Barn at Gibbet Hill 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 groundwork involves outlining exactly what portions of the big day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Maya & Adam were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Maya & Adam 's ceremony . East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Piano performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul performing approximately 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 asked to provide cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a wonderful chance for the bride and groom to unwind after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing a blend of relaxed music for guests to enjoy. 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 receptions, the band is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This The Barn at Gibbet Hill Wedding was no different. However, there were actually no formal intros for this wedding.

The groom and bride’s First Dance

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

The groom and bride's first dance is almost always one of the most emotional parts of the big day. It's a chance for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular wedding, we were requested to play the first dance song live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this part of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's Stax ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

In many weddings, East Coast Soul is often requested to perform the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Maya & Adam to spend a couple minutes in the middle of the dancefloor with their father and mother. For this particular wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Adam and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are a fantastic way to kick off the main dance performance. 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 shows commonly kick off with vintage 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 beginning of our set list. 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 Maya & Adam for having us at their beautiful June wedding at The Barn at Gibbet Hill! And thank you to Linda Barry for sharing these beautiful photos with us!