Topnotch Resort Wedding in Stowe, VT

East Coast Soul was grateful to be asked to join Ellen & Peter for their stunning Topnotch Resort Wedding in .

Preprations for Ellen & Peter's Big Day

Our planning for the wedding began many weeks prior, with Ellen & Peter sharing their music and logistical preferences and vision with us for the wedding (we take our preparation process extremely seriously). Ellen & Peter were heavily involved in this advanced planning and super helpful throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and carried out our normal load-in, set up, and sound check process 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

Part of our planning involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Ellen & Peter were also interested in 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 approximately 30 minutes of “prelude” music as guests arrived, 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 great opportunity for the bride and groom to unwind after the intense 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 receptions, 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 in fact 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 newly married couple's first dance is consistently one of the most emotional parts of the wedding. It's a chance for the bride and groom to take a moment for themselves. For this particular performance, we were asked to play the first dance number 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 King ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In many weddings, 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 in the center of the floor with their father and mother. For this particular performance, the bride and her father danced together. Peter and his mother danced together as well. Parent dances are an amazing way to start the performance 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 performances commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get everyone up on the dance floor with songs they're familiar with. Artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam and Dave, and more dominated the outset of our performance. We then transitioned 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!