Topnotch Resort Wedding in Stowe, VT

East Coast Soul was grateful to be invited to join Hailey & John for their stunning Topnotch Resort Wedding in .

Preprations for Hailey & John's Big Day

Our planning for the big day began months in advance, with Hailey & John sharing their music and logistical preferences and vision with us for the big day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Hailey & John were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and incredibly helpful throughout.

Once the big day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process for Topnotch Resort weddings. Our process for loading in and setting up at any given venue is a big part of our preparation process. 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 big day East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Hailey & John were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Hailey & John '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 intense emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing a variety of relaxed music for guests to enjoy listening to. In this case, We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and more.

Reception

In a bulk of weddings, the band is asked to handle MC services for the formal portions of the weddings. This Topnotch Resort Wedding was no different. However, there were actually no formal intros for this wedding.

The couple’s First Dance

With no introductions to take care of, we moved into into the couple’s first dance.

The groom and bride's first dance is invariably one of the most emotional parts of the big day. It's a chance for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were requested to perform the first dance song live, as opposed to playing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a quick break, East Coast Soul's Stax ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of wedding performances, we are also asked to perform the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Hailey & John 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. John and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are an amazing 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 dance performances often start with older material. We've found this is a great way to get folks up on the dance floor with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Sam and Dave, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. 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 Hailey & John for having us at their beautiful July wedding at Topnotch Resort! And thank you to The Light and Color for sharing these beautiful photos with us!