Your Wedding First Dance is the key to launching your disco in style. There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to launch your wedding first dance. With Nicola Martin from Five Star Wedding Dance we break down exactly what you must know to give your Wedding guests a wedding first dance and a disco to remember.
In all our long years filming Weddings, it was the First Dance that ultimately became one of the most complicated arrangements of the whole Wedding.
Want to know why?
Well I have a theory!
Because it’s easy to assume that it’s perfectly straightforward and “just happens”…
But as the day draws nearer, you start to think about it some more…
Shouldn’t we have arranged something? We haven’t even picked a song yet!
Hubby to be is a terrible dancer… or an amazing dancer…
Time and time again, at our last meeting before the Wedding Day, it would be the first dance arrangements that had yet to be sorted.
Worst case scenario, a plan never materialised!
This left the DJ / band in a bit of a muddle as to how to kick off the evening dances.
More often than not, it sort of limped into action amidst guest confusion.
Any kids at the Wedding will start dancing, own the dance floor and before you know what’s going on, they’ve just danced away the Band’s first set.
Sometimes your mum joins in and the occasional dad… but it isn’t exactly what you wanted 🙂
It happens more than you realise!
The next most common muddle is when it is assumed that the DJ will have the song you were going to dance to.
A mad scramble then takes place, trying to download the song to an iPhone and get it hooked up to the sound system.
Note: ALWAYS take spare recordings of your song on CD, mp3, iPhone, iPod and anything else you can find 🙂
A really fool proof plan is to dance your first dance to the band playing your song if they know it or are prepared to learn it for you…
We’ve heard some AMAZING covers done this way!!!
This is probably one of my favourites. It adds an extra layer of awesome to it.
We couldn’t do this however as our chosen song was a remix of a cover of a song by Jacques Dutronc…in French… whaaaaaat!?!
Yes, it’s true!
So we went the CD route… and brought several backups too…
I believe that our sound guys copied the track to hard drive, tested it and played it from there!
Now as you know, we had a pretty small and intimate Wedding so we did wonder whether it was worth investing the time, money and effort into learning something.
I recall with much fondness a couple who’s Wedding we filmed a few years ago, practising their very complex routine outside the marquee at dusk, where no one could see.
Luckily, I was investigating angles, spotted this and caught a glimpse of it on camera…
and it was fantastic. The look in their eyes was just so real, that was truly a “moment”.
The ultimate conclusion was yes, absolutely we should do this. We were ALL in!
I’m a self confessed TERRIBLE dancer – hence the title of this article.
I’m happy enough jumping around and waving my arms in the air a bit but anything more than that and you’ve lost me.
So probably the absolute WORST case scenario guy for leaning a first dance routine.
What I’m trying to say in a round about way is, take heart!
If I can do it, literally ANYONE can do it!!!
Now we had the BEST dance teacher. Kathryn arranged our entire dance for us and taught us the moves.
I don’t think it was easy for her at all, but she persisted and knew what to say and when, to get us there.
In a sec, you’re going to get to watch the whole thing, as it happened on the day.
But there are lessons to be learnt from this first 🙂
Firstly, Kathryn was always reminding us that when you’re performing, 150% effort looks like 100% effort to the audience.
So you need to constantly over express to stop it looking limp.
You think you’re killing it with your groovy moves and then you watch it back…
(Kathryn filmed our rehearsals so that we could study ourselves!)
Ahah! See what you mean there, Kathryn. You’ve got to get over that 100% effort you think you’re putting in and raise the bar even higher.
Now come the Wedding Day we discovered something that in all fairness, we HAD been warned about…
Dance floors, well they can be slippy when they’re all clean and fresh!
Ours… yeah, you guessed it, it was SUPER slippy!
During our practice run when, thankfully, there was no one watching, Rachel went flying and that really put the heart palpitations in us!
But we persisted, Rachel now barefoot.
Watching it back now is amusing for us, as you can literally see our feet sliding about as we try to control our movements.
This did make it about 1000% more difficult for sure and we HAD to hold back a little for fear of falling over.
But when all is said and done, this is great fun right?
I mean, Mr can’t dance, won’t dance did a massive 4 minute routine with his new wife to the delight and excitement of our family and friends.
We even filmed it so baby Xander can enjoy it in a few years.
I’d LOVE to have seen my parents get married and having a great time!
This is a gift for him which we hope he treasures his entire life.
Theatrics are kind of cool too, we love that stuff, so we actually tacked on a dramatic intro from another song and borrowed the idea of confetti cannons from a Wedding we’d filmed the year before.
What a blast! 🙂
Another grand finale that we really liked, if your dance is slower, is to bring on your bridal party to join you on the dance floor for the closing minute.
Ours is a version of this, we just used a second track to kick it off.
This signals to everyone else that the dancing proper is about to begin.
Ultimately, what you want is for the party to begin in style and send a clear message out that the evening do has begun 🙂
Can’t dance, won’t dance but could dance, DID dance 🙂
Remember, you’re only one inspiration away…
Happy DIY Wedding Planning!
