River Road Farm Wedding in Manchester, VT

East Coast Soul was grateful to be brought to join Maggie & Jessie for their stunning River Road Farm Wedding in .

Preprations for Maggie & Jessie's Big Day

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

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and took care of the normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for River Road 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 preparations involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Maggie & Jessie were also looking for 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 performing roughly 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests found their seats, 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 unwind 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 John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of wedding celebrations, we is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the receptions. This River Road 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 bride and groom's first dance is traditionally one of the most emotional parts of the wedding. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were asked to play the first dance tune live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening finished, 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 weddings, we are also asked to play the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Maggie & Jessie to spend a couple minutes in the middle of the dancefloor with their parents. For this particular performance, the bride and her father danced together. Jessie and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are a great way to start 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

East Coast Soul 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, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. We then transitioned into performing music 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 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!