The Maine Boathouse Wedding in South Freeport, ME

East Coast Soul was fortunate to be brought to join Cara & Matthew for their stunning The Maine Boathouse Wedding in South Freeport, ME.

Preprations for Cara & Matthew's Big Day

Our groundwork for the wedding began well ahead, with Cara & Matthew offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Cara & Matthew were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to South Freeport, ME and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for The Maine Boathouse 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 groundwork involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Cara & Matthew were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Cara & Matthew 's ceremony started at 4:00 pm on and . East Coast Soul prepared a a Guitar/Keyboard Duo performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul performing roughly 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests arrived, 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 intense emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by performing a blend of relaxed music for guests to listend to. In this case, We provided a Guitar/Sax Duo and and featured music by artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davies, and more.

Reception

In a majority of celebrations, we is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This The Maine Boathouse Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact no formal intros for this wedding.

The bride and groom’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we changed gears to into the bride and groom’s first dance.

The newly married couple's first dance is invariably one of the most meaningful parts of the wedding. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular wedding, we were asked to play the first dance tune live, instead of performing it from a recording. Cara & Matthew danced to More Than Anyone by Gavin Degraw, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. With this portion of the wedding finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick break, East Coast Soul's Daptone ensemble circled back to the stage.

Dance Party

our performances commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get folks up on the dance floor with songs they know and love. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, 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 Cara & Matthew for having us at their beautiful August wedding at The Maine Boathouse! And thank you to Leslie Swan for sharing these beautiful photos with us!