River Road Farm Wedding in Manchester, VT

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be invited to join Maggie & Jessie for their stunning River Road Farm Wedding in Manchester, VT.

Preprations for Maggie & Jessie's Big Day

Our planning for the big day began months in advance, with Maggie & Jessie offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the big day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Maggie & Jessie were heavily involved in this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the big day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Manchester, VT and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for River Road 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

Part of our planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the big day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Maggie & Jessie were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Maggie & Jessie '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 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 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 bulk of celebrations, we is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the wedding celebrations. This River Road Farm Wedding was no different. However, there were actually no formal intros for this wedding.

The couple’s First Dance

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

The groom and bride's first dance is invariably one of the most unforgettable parts of the big day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this specific wedding, we were asked to play the first dance tune live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this portion of the wedding complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick 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 Maggie & Jessie to share a brief moment on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Jessie and his mother danced together 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 shows commonly kick off with vintage material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get folks 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 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 Maggie & Jessie for having us at their beautiful June wedding at River Road Farm! And thank you to Undressed Moments for sharing these beautiful photos with us!