The Barn at Gibbet Hill Wedding in Groton, MA

East Coast Soul was grateful to be invited to join Lindsay & Jared for their stunning The Barn at Gibbet Hill Wedding in .

Preprations for Lindsay & Jared's Big Day

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

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for The Barn at Gibbet Hill 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 planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Lindsay & Jared were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Lindsay & Jared 's ceremony . East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Piano performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul performing approximately 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests found their seats, the ceremony took place.

Cocktail Hour

As is common, East Coast Soul was asked to provide 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 performing 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 weddings, we is asked to provide MC services for the formal portions of the celebrations. This The Barn at Gibbet Hill 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 headed into into the groom and bride’s first dance.

The bride and groom's first dance is invariably one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this wedding in particular, we were requested to perform the first dance tune live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this part of the wedding complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Atlantic ensemble returned 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 Lindsay & Jared to spend a couple minutes in the center of the floor with their mother and father. For this wedding in particular, the bride and her father shared a dance. Jared and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are an amazing 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 dance performances commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get guests up on the dance floor 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 transitioned 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 Lindsay & Jared for having us at their beautiful June wedding at The Barn at Gibbet Hill! And thank you to Lacey Gabrielle for sharing these beautiful photos with us!