Shady Lane Farm in New Gloucester, ME

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be invited to join Abby & Joel in .

Preprations for Abby & Joel's Big Day

Our preparations for the big day began well ahead, with Abby & Joel sharing their music and logistical preferences and vision with us for the big day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Abby & Joel 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 and began our standard load-in and sound check for Shady Lane Farm 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

Part of our preparations involves outlining exactly what portions of the big day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Abby & Joel were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Abby & Joel 's ceremony . East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Piano performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul providing 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 Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and more.

Reception

In a lion's share of receptions, the band is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This Shady Lane Farm 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 changed gears to into the groom and bride’s first dance.

The groom and bride's first dance is almost always 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 wedding in particular, we were asked to perform the first dance song live, as opposed to playing it from a recording. With this part of the wedding complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's 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 Abby & Joel to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this wedding in particular, the bride and her father danced together. Joel and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are a great way to kick off the performance 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 performances often start with older material. We've found this is a great way to get everyone relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, The Temptations, 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 Abby & Joel for having us at their beautiful July wedding at Shady Lane Farm! And thank you to Lensy Michelle Photo for sharing these beautiful photos with us!