The Hildene Wedding in Manchester, VT

East Coast Soul was blessed to be asked to join Megan & Andrew for their stunning The Hildene Wedding in .

Preprations for Megan & Andrew's Big Day

Our preparations for the wedding day began many weeks prior, with Megan & Andrew expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Megan & Andrew were heavily involved in this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for The Hildene 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

In this case, East Coast Soul was not involved with couple's ceremony, with those arrangements having already been taken care of.

Cocktail Hour

As is common, 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 intense emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing a variety of relaxed music for guests to listend to. In this case, We provided a Piano/Sax Duo and and featured music by artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a majority of celebrations, we is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This The Hildene 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 moved into into the bride and groom’s first dance.

The bride and groom's first dance is traditionally one of the most unforgettable 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. Megan & Andrew danced to You Are The Best Thing by Ray LaMontagne, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. With this part of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick break, East Coast Soul's King ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

The Parent Dance was combined, and they song chosen was Forever Young by Bob Dylan.

Dance Party

our dance performances often start with older material. We've found this is a great way to get folks relaxed and dancing with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, 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 Megan & Andrew for having us at their beautiful July wedding at The Hildene! And thank you to Jenelle Kappe for sharing these beautiful photos with us!