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The Distance

Leicestshire wedding band acoustic duo
Leicestershire
Acoustic duo
/
17th November 2022

Badgers Mount Wedding band & Acoustic duo

Even though we are a wedding band & acoustic duo based in Cheshire, we travel all over the UK to perform for our couples. Todays road trip led us to Kate & Adrian’s spectacular easter wedding day in Leicestershire… Badgers Mount Hotel in Elmesthorp, to be exact. A gorgeous venue nestled away in the countryside, perfect for a sunny April wedding. 

The day was beautifully decorated by Kelly at Twinkles & Tiaras, who also brought the wedding ceremony garden to life with blossom trees and a foliage arch which, with a white carpet, made the ceremony look Pinterest worthy!

As a surprise for Adrian, Kate had secretly booked an acoustic wedding duo (that’s us) to play during the ceremony and drinks reception, and managed to keep the secret since last year, so in true 007 style, we unpacked our battery powered amps and guitars quietly not to give the game away before Adrian arrived to view the ceremony garden, before everyone arrived. 

Before thinking about wedding band hire, Kate had chosen a few acoustic ceremony songs, which we coincidentally aren’t knew, which is always a nice bonus for us…. choosing songs like Ella Henderson’s ‘Yours’ a gorgeous love song to walk down the aisle to as well as our signature Elvis cover ‘Can’t help falling in love’ for the signing of the register – this one is very popular with our ceremony couples right now and Soph loves singing it – so it’s always a win-win! We’ve also started sneaking in a cheeky little harmonica solo halfway through this one as we love the way it breaks up the flow before the final verse. Then, to walk back down the aisle as husband and wife, the bride and groom opted for an acoustic cover of ‘Finally’ by Cece Peniston – due to their postponements over the last year or so, Such a brilliant and fitting way to end the wedding ceremony music, and raising a smile on the faces of everyone: The perfect choice to ‘finally’ walk back the aisle as husband and wife!

See the ceremony video we filmed here:

After the ceremony everyone drifted to the drinks reception area for the confetti and group photos taken by the ultra talented, and ever-so lovely, Calvin Tasker Photography, we’ve since checked out his instagram and are in awe of his work! 

This is always a great time for us to setup in time for the drinks reception. We use battery powered amps and wireless microphone and guitar units for our acoustic show for the ceremony and drinks receptions, this ensures we are very efficient in moving from one area to another quickly, and can also perform in the middle of a field without power – like today – Very handy, right? No long power leads running from one side of your venue to another for us! It makes life as an acoustic wedding band a lot easier and removes a lot of the troublesome barriers that can get in the way of being able to easily and seamlessly chock out some acoustic music for drinks receptions, wedding ceremonies and breakfasts by allowing us to be much lighter on our feet.

While the group shots were taking place we took the opportunity to quickly brush up on a couple of acoustic songs which we haven’t performed in a while, but which we thought would be particularly appropriate for such a beautiful wedding on this particularly gorgeous Spring day, and as Kate & Adrian were briefly whisked away to have their couple portraits taken, and we performed our acoustic drinks reception sets, with Soph on Ukulele, and acoustic guitar, Mat on acoustic/electric and a couple of really cool harmonica solos thrown in too. Mat’s harmonica skills, are a a really popular talking point when we meet guests. What do you guys think? Should we add more harmonica solos or have we already reached critical mass? 🤣

We performed a few of our favourite songs from our acoustic setlist, which went down very well with all of the guests, songs including: ‘All I want is you’ by Barry Louis Polisa from the Juno soundtrack, lovely day by Bill Withers, Send me on my way by Rusted Roots and our ‘sleepy acoustic version’ of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by Guns and Roses, a song we’ve performed for over 12 years and never get tired of! We finally got around to recording it for our latest album ‘Shoo away the sparrows’ which felt very full circle for us. The drinks reception was full of sing alongs, with inflatable microphones, foot tapping, babies jiggling and smiles in our direction, which is always a lovely sight. We also chatted with one guest who was until just a few months earlier, working in the very same arena as ourselves, having been a professional musician for over 25 years. It’s always nice to win the approval of your peers, and this particular sweetheart made a beeline for us at the end of our live acoustic music to say how much he’s enjoyed listening.


At 3pm everyone was ushered into the wedding breakfast room, once again decorated by Kelly at Twinkles & Tiaras, Where we spotted a really nice touch for an April wedding, Easter eggs as party favours! We did our best to conceal our jealousy, and we only briefly considered a ram-raid before realising that the van probably wouldn’t fit more than a couple of eggs in the back once the gear was packed away. A lucky escape for all present, if you ask us 😉

A special thank you to Aga from Badgers Mount Hotel for looking after us on the day. It’s so lovely to travel to new venues in areas we don’t typically perform in, and we wholeheartedly recommend Badgers Mount Hotel and their staff for anyone looking for a lovely, warm wedding venue which is perfect for a wedding band in Leicestershire.

Your friends and family were so warm and welcoming, and you couldn’t have chosen a more beautiful day to hold your wedding reception. We hope you had a great rest of the day and into the evening – dancing away on the lawn until the sun finally disappeared over that picturesque tree line 🙂

Soph & Mat x

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