Harrington Farm Wedding in Princeton, MA

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be brought 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 months in advance, with Erin & Brendan sharing their music and logistical preferences and vision 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 moved swiftly through our standard load-in, set up, and sound check process for Harrington 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.

Ceremony

One aspect 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 roughly 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 great opportunity for the bride and groom to relax after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing a blend of relaxed music for guests to listend to. 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, East Coast Soul is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Harrington Farm Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The groom and bride’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we changed gears to into 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 an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this specific wedding, we were requested to perform the first dance tune live, instead of performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, 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 play the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Erin & Brendan to share a brief moment in the middle of the dancefloor with their mother and father. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Brendan and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are an amazing way to start 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

our shows often start with older material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get guests relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then moved into playing tunes 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!