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 expressing a variety of musical and logistical preferences with us for the big day (we always leave an excess of time for preparation). Hailey & John were heavily involved in this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the big day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and moved swiftly through our standard load-in, set up, and sound check process for Topnotch Resort 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

Part 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 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 wonderful chance for the bride and groom to relax after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We contribute by providing 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 Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and more.

Reception

In a majority of weddings, the band is asked to provide 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 headed into into the couple’s first dance.

The couple's first dance is consistently one of the most emotional 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 asked to play the first dance number live, as opposed to performing it from a recording. With this part of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Stax ensemble circled back to the stage.

Parent Dances

In many weddings, we are also asked to play 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 mother and father. For this particular wedding, 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

our dance performances commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get folks relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. 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 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!