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We thought we'd continue on the wedding blogs this week, taking you to James and Jenny's beautiful Wedding at the gorgeous Victoria Gallery in Liverpool. This was the first time we'd got the opportunity to play this stunning venue and it did not disappoint! Although we are a Cheshire based band, we do cover a large range of the Northwest such as Liverpool and Manchester! James got in touch with us beforehand as he was concerned that there might not be enough space for us to play in, but with our 3 piece option, we re-assured him it's never really been a problem! We've literally setup in a living room to play, and although bassist Tom's head nearly touched the ceiling, we managed to squeeze everything in! Luckily, when we arrived at this venue, we found there was copious space compared to the living room!
All today's stunning pictures come from the lovely Nicole Photography, who was the awesome photographer for the day! We were not good at recording videos and taking pictures at this wedding, like we usually are, so thankfully Nicole managed to capture the magic!
We arrived super early for this one, as we were due to provide some background music for the wedding breakfast. After greeting the venue as usual, we spied a perfect spot to setup just behind the top table! James and Jenny got married in the historical 'Leggate Theatre' so we didn't want our acoustic soundcheck to disturb them, hence the early arrival! It was a later ceremony than usual too, but it was still worth it to be setup and ready for the proceedings as it was quite a quick turnaround!
The drinks reception followed the ceremony in the super interesting Tate Museum, which looked cool and interesting for guests! However, it wasn't long before people started arriving for the wedding breakfast. Speeches came first, with us caught laughing along at one of them here! It's sometimes strange to sit in on speeches as we don't know the couple as well as the rest of the guests do, but usually, it's a great moment for us to learn more about their love story!
Once speeches were concluded, it was time for us to start the acoustic set! Usually, with wedding breakfasts we tend to start with super chilled out songs as people are eating and we don't want to disturb them with anything intrusive. Drinks receptions are usually a little different - we tend to want to start a bit of a party atmosphere.
We really enjoyed the acoustics of this room - it's quite a high ceiling, which allows for some gorgeous naturual reflections and reverbrations around the room. We found we could easily fill the space without being too loud, at low volumes on our speakers. This is a little unusual for bands, as usually the rule is more loud = more good!
As we continued to enjoy the acoustics and the beautiful space, we found ourselves really humbled as guests were stopped to clap after we finished our songs. This might sound a little strange to say, but normally with wedding breakfasts, we tend to provide more of a background type atmosphere rather than be in the limelight. But it was really nice to have people clap and appreciate the songs - one song that went down particularly well was 'Yellow' by Coldplay, which was met with a really warm reception!
After wrapping up our wedding breakfast set, we didn't have long to wait before needing to setup for the evening. Included as always was our free playlist service, which we put on as soon as we finished, matching the same vibe as our sets.
Luckily we had made the decision to bring all of our gear into a room behind where we were playing to setup for the full band sets in the evening. This really saved us some valuable time, as the load in from the van was from the street, which was a fair way to carry gear from!
As soon as the room turnaround started we were clear to get in and set our evening's equipment up. I think the venue was surprised at how quickly we managed to sort everything, as we were finished setting up before the room turnaround was complete!
Soundcheck was a little trickier in comparison to the acoustic sets, as we found that the reverberations made balancing the levels of the instruments a bit more difficult. Luckily, our PA is something that we invested into quite heavily, so after a few tweaks in order to make sure things didn't sound too echoey, we were ready!
We put on some background music whilst the evening's guests arrived and got ourselves ready to go for the first dance. James and Jenny originally asked if we could perform 'It's a Kind of Magic' by Queen for their first dance. However, after trying it in rehearsal, we found it too tricky to do the song the full justice it deserves.
Nonetheless, James and Jenny were happy to change it as they still wanted a live band song for their first dance. They settled on Shotgun by George Ezra, and they had a surprise in store! They had worked out a dance routine, which is always a treat as sometimes it surprises us on stage as much as the guests!
After the surprise of the first dance, it was time to kick into our party sets. It was so great to see all guests young and old up and enjoying live music - I think for some of the younger generation it was the first time they'd seen a band play live!
We had 3 x 40 minutes worth of music and it went down really well. With the ceremony being quite late in the afternoon, it meant that to fit our sets in we had to have quite short breaks, but this was not a problem! We usually advise shorter breaks unless there's food coming out - in which case, it's worth leaving time for people to eat as people tend to prioritise food over dancing!
James and Jenny wanted us to finish the night as the live band, which is something we really recommend if your venue allows it - it enables us to pick some really big anthemic songs in order to leave everyone with a long lasting memory of dancing away on the dancefloor! The guests were really up for it and the venue were happy for us to play a little over midnight as everyone had been so awesome throughout the day!
The final photo of the night - Rob's face is awesome on this one!!
We were packing up our gear on a high from this gig - loadout didn't take too long as we were still buzzing from the reception we'd had! James and Jenny were also kind enough to leave us this lovely review:
"An excellent band. Very personable and kept in touch all the way up to the date trying to make sure that we were happy. They even tried to play songs not on their set list for us! They did an acoustic set during the wedding breakfast, which made the whole meal relaxing and highly enjoyable. During the evening they set up quickly and went from an acoustic duo to a full electric three piece with drum kit. The sound and music was great and exactly what was required. All of our guests enjoyed it and they even got some of the non-dancers up on their feet! We highly recommend them. James and Jenny."
It was an absolute pleasure rocking out for the amazing James and Jenny and so nice to play the Victoria Gallery and Museum in Liverpool for the first time! If you're after a live wedding band in Liverpool, please don't hesitate to get in touch, we'd love to play for you!