Harrington Farm Wedding in Princeton, MA

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

Preprations for Erin & Brendan's Big Day

Our preparations for the wedding day began months in advance, with Erin & Brendan offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Erin & Brendan were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Princeton, MA and began our standard load-in and sound check for Harrington Farm 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

One aspect of our preparations 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 looking for 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 providing approximately 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 wonderful chance for the bride and groom to relax after the intense emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by performing 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 lion's share of celebrations, we is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Harrington Farm 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 transitioned into the groom and bride’s first dance.

The groom and bride's first dance is consistently one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this wedding in particular, we were asked to perform the first dance number live, as opposed to playing 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. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Erin & Brendan to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this wedding in particular, the bride and her father danced together. Brendan and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are an amazing 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 dance performances often start with older material. We've found this is a great way to get everyone relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. We then moved into performing music 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 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!