November 25, 2022
A destination wedding that moved across two historic sites — and through every emotion live music can hold.
Some weddings ask you to simply show up and execute. And then there are weddings that remind you why you do this at all. Rich and Katherine’s evening in Antigua, Guatemala — spanning two landmark sites across a single extraordinary night — was the latter.
This was a full-service musical collaboration between East Coast Soul and Atlantic Sound Machine: a live band for the ceremony and formal dances, a DJ carrying the crowd through cocktail hour turnover and dinner arrival, and the full nine-piece ensemble taking the floor for the late-night dance party. Multi-phase, multi-site, and built entirely around keeping people in the moment from the first note to the last.
The evening began at Ermita la Santa Cruz — a quietly stunning church in the hills above Antigua — where a solo keyboard performance anchored the arrival of guests and the procession itself. No PA, no ensemble. Just keys, the acoustics of an old stone building, and the right song choices.
The bridesmaids walked to the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun. Katherine entered to Canon in D — a choice that works because it’s earned, not because it’s safe. And when Rich and Katherine walked back up the aisle together, Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered sent the room into the street with exactly the energy a recessional should carry.
Ceremony program
Ten steps from the ceremony — literally — the ensemble shifted to cocktail mode. A keyboard, trumpet, and bass trio held down the jazz standards and American Songbook for the hour, with vocalists Giang and Astha joining for the formal dances that opened the evening’s emotional chapter.
The first dance was John Hiatt’s Have a Little Faith in Me — performed live, edited down to a tight two-to-three minutes. Katherine danced with her father to James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend. The groom and his mother closed the formal dances with I Hope You Dance. Three very different songs, each carrying a different kind of weight, all performed in the same room within the same hour.
A bus carried everyone up to Santo Domingo del Cerro for the reception — a venue with a roof, a stage, and a full evening ahead. While the band ate and the guests arrived to circus performers, caricaturists, a magician, and a tattoo artist working the room, DJ Vinay held the room with a curated opening set from 6:30 to 7:30.
At 7:30, the couple was announced. Toasts from the parents of the bride followed, then a blessing from the Ambroses, and dinner service began — accompanied by a small instrumental combo that kept the room warm without competing with conversation.
At 9:00, the full band took the stage.
Rich and Katherine had one clear directive for the night: keep people on the floor. Their crowd, they told us, would respond to Motown, and to decades of soul, pop, and R&B — with a lean toward the vintage end of the dial. No group dances. No choreographed moments. Just a room full of people who knew how to move and wanted to be pushed.
The set ran from 9:00 through to somewhere between 11:00 and 11:30 — the exact end time a game-time call based on the energy in the room, which is exactly how it should be. The finale: a full-crowd Hey Jude singalong that, as those always do, refused to end on the first attempt.
DJ Vinay took back over for the final stretch, carrying the crowd to close.
Events like this one are only possible because of the musicians. Bandleader JoJo Streater held it together across two sites and seven hours of music. The full ensemble — three vocalists, trumpet, trombone, keys, drums, bass, and guitar — navigated a night that asked them to be a jazz trio, a ceremony soloist, a dance band, and a backup group for formal dances, all in the same evening.
That range is what the DJ/full band hybrid model makes possible. The DJ gives you control and continuity. The band gives you presence and spontaneity. Together, they give you a night that no playlist — however well-curated — can quite replicate.
