Topnotch Resort Wedding in Stowe, VT

East Coast Soul was blessed to be brought to join Ellen & Peter for their stunning Topnotch Resort Wedding in Stowe, VT.

Preprations for Ellen & Peter's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding day began months in advance, with Ellen & Peter sharing their music and logistical preferences and vision with us for the wedding day (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Ellen & Peter were happy to be a key part of this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding day arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to Stowe, VT and began our standard load-in and sound check for Topnotch Resort 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

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, Ellen & Peter were also looking for East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Ellen & Peter 's ceremony . East Coast Soul prepared a a Solo Piano performance and Single Mic for speeches. Following East Coast Soul performing 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 unwind after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by providing a blend of relaxed music for guests to enjoy. In this case, We provided a Playback and and featured music by artists such as Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and more.

Reception

In a majority of celebrations, the band is asked to take care of MC services for the formal portions of the wedding celebrations. This Topnotch Resort Wedding was no different. However, there were in fact 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 couple's first dance is consistently one of the most emotional parts of the wedding day. It's an opportunity for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this specific wedding, we were asked to play the first dance number live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this portion of the evening complete, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After a super brief break, East Coast Soul's King ensemble circled back 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 Ellen & Peter to spend a couple minutes on the dance floor with their mother and father. For this specific wedding, the bride and her father shared a dance. Peter and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are an amazing way to kick off the main dance performance. 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 shows often start with older material. We've discovered this is an excellent approach to get folks relaxed and dancing 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 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 Ellen & Peter for having us at their beautiful September wedding at Topnotch Resort! And thank you to Kelsey Regan for sharing these beautiful photos with us!