River Road Farm Wedding in Manchester, VT

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

Preprations for Maggie & Jessie's Big Day

Our preparations for the big day began many weeks prior, with Maggie & Jessie offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the big day (preparation is a key part of our process). Maggie & Jessie were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the big day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Manchester, VT and moved swiftly through our standard 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

One aspect of our preparations 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 found their seats, 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 heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing 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 bulk of weddings, 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 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 couple's first dance is invariably one of the most meaningful parts of the big day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular wedding, we were requested to perform the first dance number live, instead of performing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening finished, 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 perform 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 mother and father. For this particular wedding, the bride and her father danced together. Jessie 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 commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get guests relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Sam and Dave, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. 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 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!