The First Dance

On Wednesdays I share everything wedding with you: tips, projects, organisation, photos, faux-pas, fun things and golden rules I ‘learned’ from my own wedding. I feel I need to give something back to the fabulous blog community who helped me stay sane and enjoy every second of my ‘big day’.

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One thing that seems to create more stress than pleasure on the big day is the first dance. If you read through wedding blogs, bridal magazines or online communities, this tiny part of the day (5min max) seems to be an endless source of fear. Full of stage fright. Full of unrealistic expectations. Full of drama. Full of pressure. Full of Dirty-Dancing-like lifts. Therefore the bridal couples often end up spending weekend after weekend taking dancing lessons. Preparing choreography. Practising steps and turns and lifts. Oh dear!

Right in the beginning of our wedding preparations, however, we decided to make our wedding a relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable affair for us. We didn’t want to feel like we are doing a show. Therefore stressing about the first dance just didn’t fit into our concept of a casual wedding. Thus we decided not to take dancing lessons at all. We would just dance like we always do. With more passion than skills.

We did spend some time choosing a first dance song though.

In the end we choose First day of my life by Mel C which was perfect, because

a) it was meaningful to us because it was my husbands’ alarm tone when we first met (romantic, huu?)

b) it is about starting a new life (together)

c) it is slow but not too slow (you want to motivate your guest to dance and not fall asleep)

and

d) it is not too long (as above).

Perfect n’est pas!

Looking back I am so glad that I haven’t obsessed about the first dance because it turned out to be all different in the end. Very different than I have ever imagined, but also much more fun.

Yes, my lovely husband wore flippers (from a previous wedding game) and I had a present with a balloon on my wrist. Yes, it was unusual. It was unplanned. In a weird way, however, it was romantic and wow, it got the party started ;-)