Harrington Farm Wedding in Princeton, MA

East Coast Soul was grateful to be invited to join Erin & Brendan for their stunning Harrington Farm Wedding in Princeton, MA.

Preprations for Erin & Brendan's Big Day

Our groundwork for the wedding day began well ahead, with Erin & Brendan offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Erin & Brendan were heavily involved in this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Princeton, MA and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for Harrington Farm 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 wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Erin & Brendan were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Erin & Brendan '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 requested to perform cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a great opportunity 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 enjoy listening 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 majority of wedding celebrations, East Coast Soul is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the receptions. This Harrington Farm Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

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

The bride and groom's first dance is consistently 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 wedding, we were requested to play the first dance song live, instead of performing it from a recording. 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 Atlantic ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, East Coast Soul is often requested to perform the couple's parent dances. This was a chance for the to join Erin & Brendan to share a brief moment on the dance floor with their parents. For this particular wedding, the bride and her father shared a dance. Brendan and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are a fantastic way to kick off 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 often start with older material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get guests relaxed and dancing with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, The Temptations, 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 Erin & Brendan for having us at their beautiful July wedding at Harrington Farm! And thank you to Audrey Cutler for sharing these beautiful photos with us!