Valley View Farm Wedding in Haydenville, MA

East Coast Soul was grateful to be brought to join Erica & Matt for their stunning Valley View Farm Wedding in .

Preprations for Erica & Matt's Big Day

Our groundwork for the wedding began well ahead, with Erica & Matt offering a myriad of musical and logistical options with us for the wedding (preparation is a key part of our process). Erica & Matt were incredibly helpful during this advanced planning and a huge asset throughout.

Once the wedding arrived, East Coast Soul traveled to and began our standard load-in and sound check for Valley View Farm 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

Part of our groundwork involves outlining exactly what portions of the wedding East Coast Soul will be involved with. For this wedding in particular, Erica & Matt were also interested in East Coast Soul to help out for their ceremony. Erica & Matt '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 asked to provide cocktail hour music. Cocktail hour is a great opportunity for the bride and groom to unwind after the heightened emotions of the ceremony. We do our part by performing a variety 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 handle MC services for the formal portions of the receptions. This Valley View Farm 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 changed gears to into the couple’s first dance.

The bride and groom's first dance is almost always one of the most unforgettable 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 song live, instead of playing it from a recording. With this part of the evening finished, the guests and vendors took a break for dinner. After as short a break as possible, East Coast Soul's Soulsville ensemble returned to the stage.

Parent Dances

In a majority of weddings, we are also asked to play the couple's parent dances. The parents dances were an opportunity for the to join Erica & Matt 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 shared a dance. Matt and his mother shared a dance as well. Parent dances are an amazing way to kick off 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 shows commonly kick off with vintage material. We've found this is a great way to get guests relaxed and dancing with songs they know and love. Artists like Sam and Dave, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more dominated the beginning of our set list. 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 Erica & Matt for having us at their beautiful August wedding at Valley View Farm! And thank you to Novella Photography for sharing these beautiful photos with us!