Wedding Wednesday: Our First Dance

Shall we dance?  On a bright cloud of music shall we fly?  This is one of my favorite songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1944 classic film The King and I but this was not our first dance song.  Today in the latest edition of Wedding Wednesday I am going to share everything you ever wanted to know about the 90 seconds we did spend dancing at our wedding.

Our big day contained many traditional elements and one that I knew I always wanted was a bride and groom first dance.  Since I knew I wanted it to be special and a focal point, in the timeline I planned it right after our entrance into the ballroom to make sure everyone was there, to do it before we ate, and in Mark’s words “to get it out of the way”.

It had been more than 20 years since I had ballroom dancing lessons and Mark had never taken dance lessons so we knew it would be a good idea.  We were not going to have anything crazy but wanted something beautiful and memorable.   For our October 30th wedding we took a trial lesson at the beginning of July and it was a bit too complicated for us.  Thus we switched to a different instructor and did a total of five lessons leading up to our big day.  Our instructor was great and worked with us to create a custom a first dance that worked with our song, our skillset, and the venue’s dance floor.

We listed to dozens of song’s and ended up with a true classic but not a tune that is traditional for first dances according to Spotify playlists, our instructor and the band leader – Elton John’s Tiny Dancer.  We chose a clip from the middle of it and when all was said and done our first dance ended up being 90 seconds with three twirls and finishing with a lift and spin.  Despite the amount we practiced no one saw the dance before hand but we did tell the photographer when the big moves were and she, with the second shooter, were able to get many great shots. Take a look:

And one more for good measure.

And because behind the scenes shots are always fun here are a few photos from our lessons:

I loved this dance and even though Mark was against it he obliged me and we were able to do the full dance a second time at our UK celebration in January, but more on that later. I have quite a few more posts in this series coming including ones on the bridesmaids, father-daughter moments, our registry, photo booth, and more!